Setting and customising Word Options (Word 2007, 2010)

 Setting and customising Microsoft Word Options

• There are a range of options that you can set or customise within Word.  To view these options, click on the Office Button and then click on the Word Options button, that is displayed at the bottom-right of the dialog box that is displayed.    The Word Options dialog box is displayed. 

• As you can see there are a number of items listed down the left side.

Setting the User Name

• Within the Popular options is a section that allows you to personalise your copy of Microsoft Office.  You can enter your name into the User name section.  This information can be used by the various Microsoft Office applications to automatically insert your details into documents.

Setting the default opening and saving folder

• Display the Save options within the Word Options dialog box. 

• You can use the Default file location section of the dialog box to set the folder that by default will be looked at when you open files within Word.  This folder will also be used as the default folder location when saving new documents.

• Click on the Browse button and set this default folder to the folder containing your sample files.  Close the dialog box.  

• Click on the Office Button and then click on the Open icon.

• You should see  that by default files in your sample folder are displayed.

• Create a new document and then click on the Save icon.  You should see that by default the file will be saved to the folder containing your sample files.  Cancel the file saving and close the new document that you have just created without saving it. 

• If you have time investigate some of the option Word customisation options.

The importance of proofing

• When you have finished writing a letter always read it through before printing.  Change any errors you find.  Run the spell checker to find any spelling or grammatical errors.  The keyboard shortcut to run the spell checking program is F7.

• Preview the document within the Print Preview view.  Does the text look balanced on the page?  Does everything else look correct?

• Print out the document and read through it one more time.  Often when you read a printed document you see errors that you somehow missed when reading the document on the screen.