Microsoft Word 2013 for Administrative Assistants

The lecture starts from square one, showing you how to open Word, and basically an overview of the opening screen. You will also learn how to anchor the Word program to your taskbar for easy access.

It is important to understand the depth of the Word ribbon and the commands on the ribbon. This lecture breaks down the Contextual Tabs Commands and gives an overview of when you would use the commands and also 'how' to interact with the commands.

You have to realize that you can control the way Word operates with Options. This lecture gives an overview of Word Options. We use them throughout the course, this lecture gives a 'peak' as to when you would use them.

We started at the beginning, so to speak by opening Word, exploring the Word start screen, identifying parts of the Word main screen and defining the tabs and their respective commands. In the rest of the lectures, we will use these commands.

It is now time to get to work! This lecture has you entering text in a document. Non-printing characters are so important to see the background of your work, this lecture will discuss why you will want to have them on all the time. The most important part of this lecture is the explanation of how Word 2013 recognizes a paragraph. Why is that important? Watch and find out.

Have you ever heard of the three Autos? This lecture shows you how to use AutoComplete, AutoFormat and AutoCorrect. Don't miss this lecture because all of these features assist you in the creation of your document. There is even a 'Math' AutoCorrect.

This lecture is all about navigating around the screen. We will practice using the keyboard and the mouse to move the insertion point, and customize the Quick Access Toolbar so that commands you use most often are right at your fingertips.

There are many ways to select text. We cover all ways to select text, and discuss the reasons for selecting text. Namely; to use the copy/paste feature. Have you ever used the Office Clipboard? Nice feature. Once again, assisting you in the creation of an error-free document.

It is good to talk about 'what you did'. As a review, we recap all the tasks in this section.

There is more to fonts than just 'Times New Roman'. You will be surprised how much is involved in choosing the correct font for your document. Do you know the difference between a Proportional vs Monospaced font? Open this lecture and find out. There is also a supplemental file in this lecture for your further understanding of fonts.

When you think of formatting, you probably do not think much past bold, italic and underlining. Those are good, and are labeled character formats. However, I bet you have not heard of the Format Painter where we actually use a paint brush to format text. It is a great feature, open this lecture and try it! (supplemental files available)

This lecture covers three paragraph formats: Text Indents, setting indents and line spacing. You will receive hands-on practice of how Word 2013 formats these topics. (supplemental materials available)

You may have used bullets and numbering lists because quite often, Word will create them automatically. However, in this lecture you will not only create bullets, you will format them to better accommodate the subject of your document. Then you will use the Borders and Shading command to emphasize a paragraph of importance. (supplemental materials available)

This section covered the differences between character and paragraph formatting. You received hands-on experience creating both formatting options. Just remember that it is important to use these formats to emphasize important words and/or paragraphs in your document.

Not too many people use Tabs. I don't know why, it is so easy and a 'must' if you are using Proportional fonts (and we all do). Since proportional fonts are measured vertically (you knew that from lecture 11, right?) you cannot use spaces to align. There are five tab settings in Word. You will use everyone of them! Open this lecture and let's begin. (supplemental material available)

Tabs can be very useful when wanting to separate lists into columns. This lecture re-examines the five tab stops and how to set them. This will prepare you for the next skill builder exercise. Review this lecture and you are ready to work independently.

It is time for you to work on your own. You can do it! You have been watching and working very hard. This lecture has you creating a Word tabulation problem. Please send it to me, I am anxious to see how you are doing.

You know about line spacing, but have you ever heard of 'paragraph spacing'? This lecture is going to answer your question 'why is there a blank line between my lines of text when I set it to single space'? Stay tuned to this lecture for that answer. Also, we cover 'Widows and Orphans' (did not make that up) and also how easy it is to 'sort paragraphs'. Lots of good things in this lecture! (supplemental materials available)

This lecture finished the types of paragraph formatting features in Word 2013. They are the least known features I believe. Now you know them!

No one thinks too much of hyphenation in Word because of Word's Wordwrap feature. But did you ever look at the right side of your text when you are typing in left alignment mode? It is sometimes very uneven and very unattractive. Hyphenation evens up that right margin to make a more presentable finished document. This lecture begins the introduction of yet another formatting feature: Document Formatting. (supplemental materials available)

Word's margin feature is discussed and you are shown all of the margin types available and how to change them. Page orientation is also used; portrait or landscape.

Another Document Formatting feature is Columns. They are great when you have to send out a newsletter. You will be surprised how easy it is to create and format columns. Click into this lecture and let's try creating and formatting some columns.

Document Formatting was introduced in this chapter. We covered Hyphenation, Margins, Orientation and Columns. This lecture summarizes what you learned in Section 7.

Outline view is not very commonly used, but one of the most important features in Word. Outlining helps you organize your thoughts. This lecture has you using the Outline feature.

This is one of my favorite lectures, so much fun! In this lecture, we begin in Word, in Outline view. Then, at the click of the mouse, we end up in PowerPoint with all of our slides created! And if that wasn't enough, we begin in PowerPoint, and with another click of the mouse, we end up in Outline View in Word! You have to see this!

This section showed you the many facets of the Outline feature in Word 2013. We went from Word to PowerPoint and back and this lecture reviews just how we did that.

Tables are a bit more common than tabs. This lecture has you creating and formatting a table. What you probably did not know though was that Word can do formulas. Yes! Ok, so it isn't Excel, but it does formulas. Click into this lecture and see how. (supplemental materials available)

Your turn. There are two skill builder exercises in this lecture. One on Tables alone and one on Tabs and Tables. As I stated numerous times, 'Learning is not a Spectator Sport'! Let me see what you have absorbed from these lectures. Please send them to me and I will give you feedback. Good luck! (supplemental materials available)

This lecture goes over everything we completed in the Tables section. Review this and take notes because another skill builder is coming up, and there are two! Yikes!

Did you ever wonder how Word knew to go to the next page? It is all automatic, of course it is counting the lines. Word does not know how to read, however. It will split headings and text, tables, tabulation problems, etc. You must control where Word breaks to a new page. This lecture will show you how to do that. (supplemental materials available)

Lecture 31 was a long lecture, so this lecture will recap how to use page breaks and manual page breaks, and most importantly, why we need to control where a page ends and begins.