1.5 Editing a Document

Now that you have seen the basic features used to develop a document in Word, you will practice using some additional editing features and simple formatting effects that can be added to a document.

Moving Content

As you work on a document, you may find that the paragraphs or objects you have in the document should be in a different location or order. You could delete the work and redo it in another location, but this would require you to remember everything. There are two simple methods available to move text.

If the block of text to be moved is not large, and if it is to be moved to a nearby location, the easiest way to move it is to use drag and drop. To move content in a document, highlight the text you want to move, click the highlight text with the mouse pointer, and drag the text to its new location. Let go of the mouse pointer when the insertion point is in the new location. Figure 1.28 illustrates this technique. Part (a) shows the highlighted text and the insertion point. Part (b) shows the block of text after the move.

If the block of text is quite large, or if it must be moved to a distant location or even a separate document, it’s best to use cut and paste. To use cut and paste, first highlight the block of text to be moved, then cut it out of the document. It can be cut by using the shortcut Ctrl+X or by mouse clicking on the Cut icon in the “Home” ribbon. Next, paste it at the new location by positioning the cursor at the insertion point and use the shortcut Ctrl+V or click the paste icon in the “Home” ribbon.

Cut and paste is supported at the operating system level, which means that it is available across application programs. In other words, you can cut text or images from one application, such as Word, and paste in another application, such as Excel or PowerPoint or Notepad. Items that have been cut are placed on the Windows or macOS Clipboard, which is a rather sophisticated temporary repository. It is sophisticated because it is smart enough to know if an item placed on the Clipboard must be reformatted before it can be pasted to a new location or application.

You will notice that there is also a “Copy” icon on the “Home” ribbon in the “Clipboard” group. The shortcut key to copy is Ctrl+C. Copying an item also places it on the Clipboard, but does not delete the original text or image. The copyied text or image can be pasted at a new location or in a new application as well.

To help you understand the sophistication of the Clipboard and the options available with it, let’s look at the “Paste” options under the “Paste” icon. In Figure 1.28 (b) there is a small “Ctrl” pop-up icon next to the moved text. This small icon contains the same paste options, which become visible by clicking on the small down arrow, as those within the “Paste” icon on the “Home” ribbon and shown in Figure 1.29.

Figure 1.29 illustrates the paste options. When pasting, the formatting that was in the original block of text can be used for the paste. The text can also be merged into the destination location and use the destination formatting. Another option allows the removal of all formatting and pastes only text.

The drop-down menu also shows two other options: “Paste Special” and “Set Default Paste.” “Paste Special” allows you to paste with many different options, such as in HTML formatting. “Set Default Paste” takes you to the “Options” menu on the backstage view.

Mouse Features

In a previous section, you learned how to use the “Home” ribbon to access various features to format the text and paragraphs. These features can also be accessed through the right button on the mouse.

When the mouse cursor is placed over some text in the document and the right button is clicked, two things occur. First, the insertion point is moved to the mouse location, and second, two pop-up windows appear. These pop-up windows contain frequently used menu icons. These menu icons are primarily the same ones that appear on the “Home” ribbon, although there are also a couple of other frequently used icons. Figure 1.30 illustrates these two pop-ups.

Using “Select” and “Find and Replace”

At the far right of the “Home” ribbon is the “Editing” group of menu icons. We have already discussed selecting text and other objects using the mouse or the keyboard; the “Select” option is convenient if you want to select the entire document or any specifically formatted text within the document.

The other two menu icons, “Find” and “Replace,” work together, and in fact use the same dialog box. “Find” is used to find all instances of a particular word or phrase. This is helpful when you need to locate a specific phrase in the document, but you don’t remember exactly where that phrase is.

The “Navigation” pane opens and displays all occurrences of the word that is entered in the text box. You can select an occurrence that is displayed, and the document will jump to that word in the document. You can then make any editing changes you want in the document.

For example, Figure 1.31 shows the pane to find the word stove. Perhaps we want to ensure that we have used the term correctly throughout the document, so we want to check all occurrences. Figure 1.31 shows that we used the word four times in the document. The pane lists all occurrences. By clicking on one occurrence, the document jumps to that location with the text highlighed, in this case in yellow. Notice in the figure that “Find” locates all occurrences of the word, even when it is part of another word. In fact, “Find” locates the sequence of characters typed in the box whether they are a complete word or not.

One of the powerful features of Word is its ability to find all occurrences of a word or a sequence of letters and replace them. When you want to find text in the document and change it to something else, you can use the “Replace” option to quickly make those changes. Figure 1.32 shows the dialog box that displays when you click on “Replace.”

Enter the text you want to find in the “Find” text box and the text you want to replace it with in the “Replace” text box. Clicking on the “Find Next” button takes the document to the next occurrence. Note that the search begins at the cursor location. In other words, the “Find Next” finds the next occurrence after the cursor. If you need to start at the beginning of the document, place the insertion point at the beginning. “Replace” will replace the found occurrence. “Replace All” will go through the entire document and replace those characters with the characters entered in the “Replace with” text box. Because many words are also part of other words, it is important to make sure, when using “Replace All,” that the text you are searching for is not part of another word.

The “More>>” option button will open the dialog box to show you additional options you can select when you search the document, as shown in Figure 1.33. Notice that you can set several options on how to find the text. The default is to find the characters wherever they are, but you can control the search to match case, find whole words only, and so forth. This is convenient if you want to replace only specific occurrences of a word.

Modifying Text

As you work with your document, perhaps you want to give the text some special effects. We have already discussed the basic special effects, such as bolding, italicizing, and underlining. In the “Font” group there are other formatting options for modifying the text. Figure 1.11 showed the “Font” group. Let’s discuss a few of the most-used options. You should also experiment with other options available.

Changing Fonts and Font Sizes

Two of the most common changes made to documents are the font face and font size. By default, Word uses Calibri (body) 11 point for the font. When the font face and size are selected before you start typing, the text following the insertion point will be displayed in that font. If you decide to change the font or size after you type, you must highlight the text before selecting the new settings from the drop-downs. Figure 1.34 illustrates the drop-down menu that appears when you click on the down arrow in the font face box. It shows the various fonts available in Word.

Use care when changing fonts and font sizes. In professional documents, all the paragraphs should use the same font face and size. Headings and titles should use a complementary font and sizes that are only slightly larger than the paragraph text. It is also sometimes a temptation to use a fancy font. However, fancy fonts are usually not professional and are best reserved for flyers or crafts. Fonts such as Times New Roman or Georgia are always acceptable fonts. For text that will be displayed on a screen or the internet, sans-serif fonts such as Arial or Calibri are usually easier to read.

Changing Case

You may have noticed that if you don't type the capital letter at the beginning of a sentence, Word will automatically enter it for you. This feature allows you to type faster since you don’t have to shift to enter the capital letter. But sometimes you want the line to start with a lowercase letter. The “Change Case” drop-down allows you to change text to one of the following options, as shown in Figure 1.35: sentence case, lowercase, uppercase, capitalize each word, and toggle case.

Special Effects

At times—perhaps when creating a flyer or an announcement of a special event—you may want to use special effects with your fonts. We emphasize that these types of special effects are usually not appropriate in a professional document or letter, but may add interest to reports or flyers.

The two most common effects are to use a different color font and to highlight the font with a background color. The two icons that implement these features are shown in Figure 1.36. Clicking on the “Font Color” icon itself will apply the last setting that was used, such as a red font. Clicking on the down arrow will open up a drop-down and allow you to choose the color of the font. Clicking on the font color first will change the default color as you type. Or the color of the type can be changed after the fact, by selecting a block of text and then clicking on the color, which will apply the chosen color to the selected block. The “Text Highlight Color” option works the same way. Selecting a color from the “Text Highlight Color” drop-down will apply that color behind any selected text or the text that is typed next.

More fancy special effects are also available with the “Typography” icon. Figure 1.36 shows the drop-down menu associated with this icon. As you can see, there are many special font effects available. Again, we caution that these special effects are not appropriate for professional documents. However, they can add an interesting flair to flyers and announcement documents.

Using Format Painter

The “Format Painter” is a handy feature that allows you to save the formatting characteristics of a block of text and then apply it to other blocks of text or paragraphs. The “Format Painter” icon displayed below is found in the “Clipboard” group of the “Home” ribbon. The “Format Painter” has two modes of use: a single use and a multiple use.

To employ the single use option, simply highlight the block of text that has the format that you want to apply. Click the “Format Painter” icon, and then highlight the block of text that you want formatted.

To employ the multiple use option, highlight the block of text that has the format you want to apply. Double-click the “Format Painter.” Then select other blocks of text as many times as you want. The new format is applied to each paragraph or block of text highlighted. To release the “Format Painter,” press the escape key or click the “Format Painter” button again.

Turning On and Using the Ruler

By default the ruler is not displayed in Word. When the ruler is turned on it will appear at the top and left side of the window. To turn on the display of the ruler select the “Ruler” option in the “Show” section of the “View” ribbon, as shown in Figure 1.37.

Both a horizontal and a vertical ruler appear. The vertical ruler scrolls as the pages of the document scroll up and down. The gray areas on the ruler show the margins of the page. The numbers on the ruler represent the inches across and down the page. When the margins are set at one inch, the page is six and a half inches across, as indicated by the white area of the ruler, and nine inches down.

The horizontal ruler can be used both to view the measurements of the page, and to control the indentation of a paragraph. Earlier in this chapter you learned how to create a left indent of a paragraph using the “Indent” icons in the “Paragraph” group of the “Home” ribbon. More precise control of paragraph indentation can be created using the ruler.

On the left of the ruler, next to the margin shading, are three small icons placed in a vertical row. Hover the mouse over each of these, and a tool tip appears. The top icon controls the indentation of the first line. By dragging that icon to the right, the indentation of the first line is controlled. The middle icon controls a hanging indent. By dragging that icon, all the lines except the first line in the paragraph are indented. The bottom icon is used to move all three together. Dragging all three icons indents all lines of the paragraph to the location of the icons on the ruler.

On the right side of the ruler is an icon that controls the indentation of the right side of the paragraph. Hence, the ruler provides detailed indentation control of both sides of the paragraph.

Figure 1.38 illustrates two paragraphs: the first with a left hanging indent, the second with indentation on both margins.

As with many Word features, you can apply indentation features in multiple ways. Paragraph indentation can be controlled using the "Layout" ribbon and the “Paragraph” group. Figure 1.39 illustrates these menu items. Notice that you can also set spacing before and after the paragraph here. These settings apply to the active paragraph and to any new paragraph typed after the settings are changed.

Setting Tabs

Another way to align the text to specific positions in a document is to set tabs. By default, Word sets an indent tab stop at every half inch across the ruler. To set a tab stop, click the location on the ruler where the new tab should be set. By default, a left tab will be created. The default indent tabs are removed after the new tab and replaced with left tabs at every half inch. The default tabs are not displayed on the ruler; only the tabs you set will be displayed. There are other types of tab stops that have different functions. To change the type of tab stop that is created, click the tab set options icon at the far left on the ruler. It toggles between left, right, center, decimal, bar, hanging indent, and paragraph indent. The various types of tab stops are listed in the following table.

Setting a tab stop applies it to a single paragraph—either an existing paragraph or a new one that is about to be typed. If you want tab stops and indentations to apply to multiple paragraphs, you must select them before setting the tab stop. If you are using the tab stop for a lot of paragraphs, then you should use a style. You will learn how to use styles in a later section.

Clearing Tab Stops

To clear a tab stop from a paragraph, the cursor must first be placed somewhere within the paragraph so that the tab stops are displayed on the ruler. To remove any tab stop, simply drag it off the ruler with your mouse pointer. The tab stop will disappear, and the paragraph will adjust its alignment automatically.

Changing Margins

In the previous section, the paragraph indentations and tab stops were measured from the left margin. By default, margins of a Word document are set to one inch. This gives the document a one-inch white space around the whole document. However, we can also change the margins in the document by using the “Layout” ribbon. Figure 1.40 shows the “Margin” menu options available. Word has several standard margin settings that you can choose. The “Mirrored” option makes a larger left margin on odd numbered pages, and a larger right margin on even numbered pages. This is used for documents that are printed on both sides and that are bound in a book style.

In Figure 1.40 we also note that the page orientation and page size can be controlled. Other menu icons in this group will be discussed later.

There is also an option to make your own custom margins, as shown at the bottom of Figure 1.41. Clicking on this option opens up a “Page Setup” dialog box to customize both the margins and the orientation of the page. You can set either standard margins that apply to every page, or mirrored ones for distinct even and odd pages. The “Gutter” refers to the larger margin area for even/odd layout. Notice in the figure that these margins can be applied to the entire document, to just the current page, or from the current point in the document forward.