Producing Web Active Files - I

MathSciCon Workshops – R.J. Bieniek

PRELIMINARIES OF WORD PROCESSING (highlight, delete, copy, cut, paste)

You are first going to learn or review some basic word processing techniques using Microsoft Word.

1.   Let’s start by acquiring a common document with which to work, the MathSciCon Document..  To get it, first click on the URL (Universal Record Locator): http://lead.mst.edu/documents/template.doc.  

2.   When the File Download window pops up, choose the SAVE option and put it in your My Documents folder or whatever folder in which you are working.  IMPORTANT:  a SAVE AS window will pop-up when you do this, and you will be allowed to save the file with a new name in whatever folder you specify.  In the File name input box in the lower part of the pop-up window, change “template.doc” to “yourlastname-template.doc” where you put your actual last name at the start of the filename.  Then click the save button to the right of the file name box.

3.   Open the file you have just saved into Microsoft Word.

4.   The first thing we need to do is to SELECT text.  This is done by left-clicking and holding down the mouse button at the start of the text you wish to highlight.  By moving your mouse, you will drag the cursor over the text you wish to work with, and then releasing the left button.  Let us highlight select Sentence 2.  Put your cursor at the beginning of Sentence 2, press and hold the left mouse button, drag the cursor to the end of the sentence, and then release the button.

5.   We will clear some space to use by deleting the text you have highlighted.  Simply press the DELETE key on your keyboard.  The highlighted text should vanish!

6.   The next thing to do is see how to copy text to “clipboard” memory.  This can be down in three different ways, the last being an ultimate backup.
      a.  After highlighting text, go to Edit on the top tool bar of Word and click Copy on the pull-down Edit menu.  This copies the highlighted text into memory.
      b.  Alternatively, right click the mouse after highlighting and click on Copy in the pop-up menu to copy text into clipboard memory.
      c.  As a third alternative after highlighting text, press and hold down the Ctrl key (Control) and then press and release the C key.  This Ctrl-C combination is the general windows command for copy.  This always works, even in cases in which 6a and 6b do not (which sometimes occurs when Copy is grayed out or does not appear in the menu).

Practice each of these procedures using Sentence 3 of the practice document.

7.   The next thing to do is paste text from the “clipboard” memory.  This can be down in three different ways, the last being an ultimate backup.

      a.  After putting the cursor where you want to paste the copied test (or highlighting text you wish to replace), go to Edit on the top tool bar of Word and click Paste on the pull-down Edit menu.  This pastes the highlighted text from memory.  Try this out by using method 6a above to copy Sentence 3 of the practice document and then pasting it below the paragraph using this method (7a) of pasting it.

      b.  Alternatively, right click the mouse on Paste in the pop-up menu to paste text from clipboard memory.    Try this by using method 6b above to copy Sentence 4 of the practice document and then pasting it below the paragraph using this method (7b) of pasting it.

      c.  As a third alternative press and hold down the Ctrl key (Control) and then press and release the V key.  This Ctrl-V combination is the general Window’s command for paste.  This always works, even in cases in which 6a and 6b do not (which sometimes occurs when Copy is grayed out or does not appear in the menu).  It will be very important in producing hyperlinks.  Try this out by using method 6c above to copy Sentence 5 of the practice document and then pasting it below the paragraph using this method (7c) of pasting it.

7.   The final thing to know how to do is cutting text.  Highlight some of the text (even a fragment).  This text can be cut and transferred to the clipboard by going to the Edit pull-down menu and clicking on CUT.  Alternatively, the highlighted text can be cut by clicking on the scissors symbol in the toolbar, or selecting CUT after right clicking the right mouse button after the text is highlighted.  In all cases, the cut text should disappear from your document.

8.  Verify the cut text is on the clipboard by putting your cursor anywhere in the document, and pasting.  The text will be inserted in the document at the cursor’s position.

9.  You can undo what you have done by going the Edit pull-down menu, and clicking on Undo [operation] at the top of the menu.

You have now verified your mastery of some very useful and efficient techniques in word processing.  Congratulations!

You may now wish to proceed to the production of web active documents by clicking here.