Word Rundown

Microsoft Office Word 2003 is an incredibly powerful, general-purpose, word-processing program that you can use to create basic documents of all kinds—memos, letters, faxes, reports, contracts, resumes, manuals, theses, and books—to mention only some of the possibilities. Word is also surprisingly good at creating complex or specialized documents that are normally the province of more specialized software applications—for example:

Web pages Although it’s not as good at creating Web pages and managing Web sites as Microsoft FrontPage (see Part 8 of this book), Word now has more Web publishing features than ever, and it lets you easily create attractive and dynamic Web pages.

Brochures, newsletters, and other documents with complex page layouts You might be able to do a better job at creating short, layout-intensive documents using a program such as Microsoft Publisher. However, Word’s improved drawing and layout features make it a highly viable tool for creating these kinds of documents.

Printer-ready publications Dedicated desktop publishing packages (such as Adobe PageMaker, Corel Ventura, or QuarkXPress) do a superb job of creating printer-ready publications with precise page layouts, cross-references, indexes, tables of contents, and so on. Word is ideal for the initial organizing, writing, editing, and proofing of a publication. However, you can also do quite a good job in Word of preparing the final
printer-ready publication. (Many books and other manuscripts have gone directly from Word to the printer.) If your page layout needs are a bit demanding for Word’s tools, you can always transfer your Word document to a dedicated desktop publishing program to create the final layout.

Tables of numbers or other data Clearly, Microsoft Excel is the tool of choice for working with numbers and Microsoft Access for working with databases (for more information on those applications, see Parts 4 and 7 of this book). However, you can use Word tables to store and display reasonable amounts of numeric or textual data. Word even provides mathematical functions for working with numbers in tables, as well as database tools for working with data fields and records in tables.

XML (Extensible Markup Language) documents A custom XML editor or a fullfeatured text editor might be your tool of choice for creating XML documents. However, Word now lets you create, edit, and check the validity of any XML document using convenient interactive tools. It also allows you to apply a custom transform to an XML document so that it can be displayed in Word using any Word formatting, text, or graphics.

Word Document Views

Normal

Shows the document in a generalpurpose format for efficient editing and formatting. Doesn’t display margins, headers, or footers.

Web Layout

Displays the document in a format that’s easy to read on the screen. Ideal for previewing Web pages or for reading regular Word documents online. The text is shown without page breaks and with only minimal margins. Lines of text are wrapped to fit within the window, and any background color or image assigned to the document is visible.

Print Layout

Displays text and graphics exactly as they’ll appear on the printed page, showing all margins, headers, and footers. All editing and formatting commands are available, but Word runs somewhat more slowly than in Normal view and scrolling is not as smooth.

Outline

Shows the organization of the document. Lets you view various levels of detail and rapidly rearrange document text.

Reading Layout

Displays the document in a format that’s optimized for online reading. Divides the document into small pages that fit completely within the screen, simulating a book. Features a large, smoothed font and a simpler application interface.

Print Preview
Displays an image of one or more entire printed pages and lets you adjust the page setup.

Modifying the Way Documents Are Displayed

In addition to changing the basic view, you can also set a variety of options that affect the way a document is displayed in the current view. To divide the document window into two panes, click the split box and drag the pane divider to the desired position.You can then scroll each pane independently, so that you can view and work with two portions of the document at the same time.

To scale the characters and graphics on the screen choose View, Zoom and enter a scaling factor into the Zoom dialog box (shown in Figure 10-4). You can specify the scaling factor by typing or selecting a percentage of the normal size of the text and graphics or by selecting the Page Width, Text Width, or Whole Page zooming option. In Print Layout view, you can select the Many Pages option to display several full pages on the screen at once (as you can in Print Preview view). Click the button immediately below the Many Pages option to select the number of pages you want to display (from 1 to 24) and their rrangement. Displaying multiple pages might make it impossible to read the text, but it can be useful for examining the overall layout of a group of adjoining pages.

Zooming

An alternative way to change the zooming factor is by using the Zoom drop-down list on the Standard toolbar (or on the Print Preview toolbar if you’re in Print Preview view).

Zooming is available in all views. However, the particular zooming options that are available vary by view (the Print Layout and Print Preview views support them all). Zooming affects only the view in which you set it, so you need to set it separately for each view you work with. Rest assured that zooming does not change the actual size of the text or graphics that are printed and stored in the document; rather, it affects only the level of magnification at which you view the document in the window.

You can learn more about zooming at