Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processor that allows the user to write, edit, save, and print documents. Some of the documents created can be letters, flyers, or reports. Graphs, clip art (cartoon type pictures), or actual pictures can be inserted into a Word document. Word documents can be printed, sent as an attachment on an email, or even posted as a download on a web page.
There are a number of ways to get to Microsoft Word. You can use the strategy you used when creating a Word document on your USB memory stick. Or, you can go to the Windows Desktop, then to the Word icon (if there is one), and tap enter. You can tap the Windows key, then the letter p for All Programs, right arrow one time, tap the letter m until you hear "Microsoft Office," right arrow one time, down arrow until you hear something like "Microsoft Word," then tap enter. An easy way to go to Microsoft Word is to press and hold down the WIndows key and tap the letter r. Type "winword" (without the quotes), then tap enter on time. You will be immediately taken into a blank document in Microsoft Word.
Now that you are in Microsoft Word, type a sentence. Let's say you are ready to save your file for the first time. Press and hold the control key and tap the letter s. A "Save As" dialogue box will come up. Type the name you want to give your Word file, then tab one time to the "Save as Type," combo box. A generic Word type will be displayed. Down or up arrow until you hear the type you want to save as. For example, if you are using Office Word 2007, but the person you will be sending the file to uses Office Word 2003, down arrow to "Word 97-2003 Document." If you are not sure what the person you are sending the document to is using, down arrow to Rich Text Format (RTF). This will save the bolding, underlining, and general formatting that you have created in the document. In most cases, especially if this document is only for you, you will not have to make a change in this box. Now you need to determine where the file will be saved. Press and hold down the alt key and tap the letter i. This takes you to the "Save in" combo box. Down arrow until you hear the drive you want to save in. Tap enter one time. Tap tab three times. Down arrow to the folder you want to save the file in. Tap enter one time. When the folder opens, press and hold down the alt key and tap the letter s. You file will be saved in the format you chose, on the drive and in the folder you chose. If you simply do a control s, type a name for your file and tap enter, your file will be saved in "My Documents," in the format of the version of Word you are using. Another way to get to the "Save" and "Save As" dialogue box, is to press and hold down the alt key and tap the letter f. Release both keys. Tap the letter s to save, or tap the letter a to "Save As," and the "Save As" dialogue box will come up.
Another way to edit your file is by using simple navigation key commands. Press control home to go to the top of the document. Start tapping the right arrow. You will be moving one letter at a time, forward, through the document. After right arrowing for a while, start tapping the left arrow key. You will now be moving one letter at a time to the left, or backwards, through your document. Press control home to go to the top of the document. Now, press and keep the control key down, and start tapping the right arrow key. You are moving one word at a time to the right, or forward, through your document. Now, keeping the control key down, start tapping the left arrow key. You are now moving one word at a time to the left, or backwards, through your document. At this point, for JAWS users, some key commands specific to that program are necessary.
JAWS reading commands. The numeric keypad, turned off, is a valuable reading resource for the JAWS screen reader. Although you can use the standard keys to do this, the num pad (numeric keypad) puts most of the navigation into a small area where you can use the right hand to work the keys. Remember that your left and right arrow keys are represented by the four key for left and the six key for right arrow. Use these keys to move letter-by-letter through your document. There is no control key on the numeric keypad, so press and hold the left control key down, and tap the left or right arrow key on the num pad, and you will be moving word-by-word. To read the line you are on, with JAWS, press and hold the insert key (the zero key) on the num pad, and tap the 5 key. The individual word will be read. Hold the insert key down and tap the 5 key two times quickly and the word will be spelled out. Make sure to hold the insert key and tap the 5 key one more time to go out of spell mode. If you hear a letter you do not understand, tap the 5 key two times quickly and the phonetic pronunciation will be given. Make sure to tap the 5 key one more time to go out of phonetic pronunciation. To read the line you are on, press and hold down the insert key and tap the up arrow key one time. To read the next line up, tap the up arrow one time. To read the next line down, tap the down arrow one time. To jump to the next paragraph, press and hold down the control key and tap the down arrow key one time. To read from anywhere in your document to the end of the document, press and hold down the insert key, then tap the down arrow key, then release both keys. Remember the 8 is the up arrow, and the 2 is the down arrow on the num pad, when it is turned off. Also remember, the 1 key is end, the 7 key is home, the 3 key is page down, and the 9 key is page up. The delete key is just to the right of the insert key, and the enter key is to the right of the delete key.
Editing without the Spell Checker. Let's say you have a short document and that you want to change a few words. Press control home to go to the top of the document. Press and hold down the control key and start tapping the right arrow key. When you hear a word you want to replace, press and hold both the control and shift keys, then tap the right arrow key one time. The word is highlighted. Type in the new word, followed by a space and the word will be replaced. Note: If there is punctuation such as a period, comma, questions mark, or whatever, after a word, you do not have to space after typing in the new word. You can actually highlight more than one word, and do replacements. Remember that control shift right arrow highlights going to the right, and that control shift left arrow highlights going to the left. Also, if you just hold shift and tap the left or right arrow, you will be highlighting one letter at a time.
Highlighting, cutting or copying and pasting is a skill that allows you to either copy text within the document, or from the internet into your document, or to cut text in one part of the document and paste it into another part of the document. Highlight one of the words in the sentence you typed earlier. Do this by control arrowing to the word, then, if you are on the left side of it, press control shift and tap the right arrow key. The word is highlighted. Press control c to copy the word. Tap the right arrow one time. Press and hold the control key and tap the letter v. You will notice that you now have the word you copied a second time. Press control v several more times, then check your text. You will find that you have this text a number of times. Now, highlight all of the words you just copied. Press control x to cut the text. Check the document to make sure the words are gone. Press control end to go to the end of the document. Tap enter several times. Press control v to paste the cut text. Now check your document and you will find the words at the end of the document. Press control z to undo the last command, and you will be back to having your sentence, and nothing more.
We are now back in the file where the sentence was typed. We will pretend that the document is long, and that we want to get back to the top of it. Press and hold down the control key and tap the Home key. We are almost ready to print, but want to be sure all of the words are spelled correctly. Tap the F7 key and the Word Spell Checker will come up. This is in the form of a dialogue type box. At the top left is where a ms-spelled word, punctuation errors, grammatical error, spacing error, and so on, are shown. Just below this box are items such as suggested replacement words. If you hear a word that is incorrect, you have the option of back spacing to remove it, then re-type it, pressing and holding both the control and shift key, then left arrowing one time to highlight the word, then re-typing it, or to tap the tab key one time to go to the suggestion list. If you go to the list, down arrow until you hear the replacement you want, then either tab until you hear the Change button, or press and hold the alt key and tap the letter c one time to make the change. It is important to note that seven buttons are to the right of the Suggestion area: they are in order, going down, Ignore Once, Ignore All, Add to Dictionary, Change, Change All, Auto Correct, and Cancel. You can use the alt key to activate most of these buttons. Alt i means ignore once, alt g means ignore all, alt a means Add to Dictionary, alt c means to change the word to something you typed, or picked from the suggestion list, alt l means to change all, alt r means to auto correct, and alt s means to resume, it this box has went to sleep. You have to tab to the Cancel. button, or tap the escape key one time to cancel. You will want to make a file with simple ms-spelled words, and practice with the Spell Checker, before using it seriously.
We are finished with the file we were editing. We want to close the file, but not Microsoft Word. Press control s to save the file. Press and hold down the alt key and tap the letter f. Release both keys. Tap the letter c to close the file. Press and hold down the control key and tap the letter n to create a new Microsoft Word file. We want to make a formatted document, specific to format for a class. Following is a list of simple text position commands:
control r means right allign--the text is lined up on the right side of the document
control e means center--the text is centered on the document
control l means left allign--the text is aligned to the left side of the document
control 1 means to single space the document
control 2 means to double space the document
Let's say you need to type a report that is double spaced. Press control 2. The report needs the date to be right aligned at the top right of your document. Press control r, type the date, then tap enter. You are sill aligned on the right side. Now, let's say you need a title for your report that is bold, and that it is to be centered. Press control e to center, then control b to bold this text. Type the title for your report. Tap enter one time. Now let's say the rest of the document needs to be left aligned in standard print. Press control l to left align the document, and press control b to turn off the bold. Now you are typing your report and you come to a word that you need to underline. Press control u to go into underline mode, type the word, then press control u to come out of underline mode. You are typing and come to a word you need to italicize, press control i to italicize, type the word, then press control i to go out of italicize. You come of a paragraph in your report that you need to single space. Press control 1, type the paragraph, tap enter to leave a blank line, then press control 2 to go back into double space mode. You are typing and come to a word that needs to be in the color red. Press control d (this brings up the font dialogue box). Press alt c for color. Down arrow until you hear "red," tap enter one time, tab one time, and tap enter one more time. Type the word--it will be in the color red. To return to standard color, press control d, then alt c, arrow until you hear "black," tap enter one time, tab one time, and tap enter one more time. Your color will be back in the standard color of black. Save and close your document. Remember you are not leaving Word, so press alt f, tap the letter a, type a name for your file, press alt i, down arrow to your hard drive or USB memory stick, tap enter one time, tab three times, down arrow to the folder, tap enter, the press alt s to save the document. Now close the document by pressing alt f, then tap the letter c. The file will close. Press control n to create a new blank Word file.
Review of font commands:
control b turns on and off bold
control u turns on and off underline
control i turns on and off italics
control d then alt c brings up the font dialogue box and puts you into colors. Arrow to the color you want, tap enter one time, tab one time, then tap enter one more time. You will now be typing in that color.
Now, let's say you need to use a specific font to type a report, and that your report must be single spaced. Press control 1 to make sure the document is single spaced. Press control d to bring up the font dialogue box. At this point you can choose to up and down arrow through the fonts, or, if you know the name of the font you want, such as Times New Roman, or Arial, simply type the name, or part of the name for the font, down arrow to be sure you are on that font, or down arrow some more until you get to the font, and then tap enter one time. Your document will be in that font. If you have typed the document, then realized that you need to change the font for the entire thing, press control a to highlight the whole document, press control d, type the font name, down arrow to be sure you are on the font, then tap enter. Make sure to tap an arrow key at this point, or you will erase everything when you tap another letter. The reason for this is that you will still have all text highlighted until you tap the arrow key. If you accidentally do erase your text, all is not lost. There is an undo command that takes you back one Windows step. Press and hold down the control key and tap the letter z. Your document will re-appear, still highlighted. Tap the arrow key one time to be sure you are out of highlight mode, then resume typing.
You may need to have a specific sized font in a report. Press and hold down the control key and tap the right bracket key (the second key to the right of the p key), to make the font larger by one size for each tap. To reduce the size of the font, press and hold down the control key and tap the left bracket key (the key just to the right of the p key). When finished, release the control key.
Making tables in Word
To insert a table into a Microsoft Word document, press and hold the alt key, tap the letter a, release both keys, tap the letter i, then tap the letter t. You will be placed in a dialogue box, directly in a box where you will specify the number of columns you want your table to have. Let's say you are making a table to show a person's name, company name, address, and phone number. Also remember that a column goes up and down, with each column containing a specific type of information. In the first column with be each person's name. In the second column will be the name of each company. In the third column will be the address of each company. In the fourth column will be the phone number for each person. So, type a 4 in this column box, and tab one time. You are now in the "Number of rows" combo box. Let's say you know that you will have at least ten contact, type the number 11. You will type the number 11 because on the top row you want to put a title for each column. After you have tabbed one time, then arrowed to determine if your table with have fixed column widths, or if they will auto fit to the text, you will type the following. In the first cell, at the left of your new table, you will type in a title, tab one time, type in the next title, and so on. The first column will have the title "Person" (without the quotes). The second column will have the title "Company" (without the quotes. The third column will have the title "Address" (without the quotes), and the fourth column will have the title "Phone" (without the quotes). After typing the "Phone" title tab one time and you will be on the second row, ready to type the person's name. This will be a type and tab sequence. Let's say you have finished your tenth contact and you realize you have two more to go. Go to the last cell of the last row and tap the tab key one time. A new row is immediately created. Continue typing. In the last cell on this row, tap the tab key one time, and another, new row is created. One way to read a table using the JAWS screenreader is to tab through it. You can also use your arrow keys to move through the table. To leave the table and return to standard typing, tap the down arrow to go out of the table.
Inserting page numbers in Word
Press and hold down the alt key and tap the letter i. Release both keys. Tap the letter u and a dialogue box comes up. You will be in a combo type box in which you can up or down arrow to select the top of the page, or the bottom of the page. Tab one time. You are in a combo type box where you can use the arrow keys to select left side, center, right, inside or outside of the document. Tab to the OK button and your page numbers will be placed in your document. There is more to this box, such as the check box for showing the number 1 on the first page. Tap the spacebar to unselect this, if you do not want a number 1 on your first page. You will also encounter a "Format" button. Only use this after you are comfortable working with generic page numbers.
Printing envelopes in Word
In Microsoft Word 2007, envelope printing is done as follows. Press and hold down the alt key and tap the letter m. This will put you in the "Mailings" ribbon. Tap the letter e for envelope. Type the delivery address (where the letter is going). Press and hold down the alt key and tap the letter r to go to the return address (your address). Type your return address. After doing this the first time, the computer will remember it, and you should not have to do it again. Press and hold down the alt key and tap the letter p to print the envelope. After printing your first envelope on your computer, all you should have to do is press alt m, type the address of the person you are sending the letter to, then press alt p to print the envelope. If there is more than one user on your computer, you may have to be sure the address in the return area is yours.
Sending a Word document as an email
If you have a working email program on your computer, you can send a document directly from Word as an email. Let's say you have finished typing the document, checked and saved it. Now, you want to send this document to another person. Press and hold down the alt key and tap the letter f. Release both keys. Tap the letter d one time. Down arrow to hear the selection you want, then tap enter. If you have decided to send the document as an attachment, an email box will come up. Type the email address of the person you are sending the document to. Tab until you reach the "Subject" section (about two tabs), type in a few words about the email, tab to the area where you will type the actual email message, type a message, then (if you are using something like Outlook), press and hold down the alt key and tap the letter s. The email will be sent, with your document as an attachment.