Microsoft Word 2007

General Advice

Word 2007 no longer uses a menu bar. It now uses a ribbon bar instead. Use the following keyboard commands with the ribbon bar:

To show the ribbon bar, press the Alt key.
To move to the next or previous ribbon, press Left or Right Arrow.
To move among the controls on the current ribbon, press Tab or Shift + Tab.

You may not be used to using this ribbon bar, so please try to move around through the various ribbons and controls until you learn where to find the controls you need.

Fonts and Sizes

Increasing the Font Size

Select some text, then press Shift + Ctrl + GreaterThan. The point size of the font will become larger.

Decreasing the Font Size

select some text, then press Shift + Ctrl + LessThan. The point size of the font will become smaller.

Changing the font style

Select some text, then press Shift + Ctrl + S. You will then see the “Fonts and Styles” toolbar.
Use the tab and shift + tab keys to navigate this toolbar, and the up and down arrow keys to choose an option in the combo boxes.
When you have made the changes, press “Enter.” You will then be returned to the document.

Styles

Changing the Style of Some Text

Press Alt + H to show the “home” ribbon bar, then press Tab until you hear “styles.”
Now press space or enter, and the “Styles” pane will appear.
Select some text.
Press F6 to display the task pane.
Find the “Styles” combo box, and use Up and Down Arrow to choose a style (for example, heading level 1).
Press Enter, and the style you chose will be applied to the text you selected.

Lists

Bulleted Lists

Type in the list. Remember that each list item should be on a separate line!
Select all the list items.
Go to the “home” ribbon bar by pressing Alt + H.
Press Tab until you reach “Bullets,” and press space” You will then see the “bullets” list box.
The first item in the list box is “none,” so use Left and Right Arrow to choose the bullet style you want, then press enter. You will then be returned to the document.

Numbered Lists

Type in the list. Remember that each list item should be on a separate line!
Select all the list items.
Go to the “home” ribbon bar by pressing Alt + H.
Press tab until you reach “numbering,” and press space” You will then see the “numbering” list box.
The first item in the list box is “none,” so use Left and Right Arrow to choose the numbering style you want, then press Enter. You will then be returned to the document.

Tables

Making a Table

Go to the “Insert” ribbon bar by pressing Alt + I.
Press Tab until you reach “table,” then press Space. You are now in the “table” split button.
Press Down Arrow until you hear “insert table,” and press Enter. You are now in the “Insert table” dialogue box.
The cursor is in the “Number of columns” edit box, so type the number of columns you want your table to have.
Press Tab until you reach the “Number of rows” edit box. Here you can type the number of rows you want your table to have.
Press Tab until you reach the “OK” button, and press Space. You will then be returned to the document, with the cursor in the first cell of the table.

Navigating inside a Table

Ctrl + Alt + Right Arrow – move to the next cell to the right in the table
Ctrl + Alt + Left Arrow – move to the previous cell to the left in the table
Ctrl + Alt + Up Arrow – move to the row above the current row in the table
Ctrl + Alt + Down Arrow – move to the row below the current row in the table
Alt + 1 – speak the first cell in the current column (the column title)
Alt + 7 – speaks the first cell in the current row

Adding a Row or Column

Move to the row or column in the table next to which you want to add another row or column, for example, if you want to add another column to the right edge of the table, you would move to the rightmost column in the table.
Press Context Menu, and then Down Arrow until you reach “insert.” This is a sub-menu, so press Right Arrow to open it.
Now you can choose the kind of insert operation you want. You can insert columns to the left or right of the current column, or rows above or below the current row. Choose what you want to do, and press enter. You will then be returned to the document.

Deleting a Row or Column

Move to the row or column in the table that you want to delete, for example, if you want to delete the first column, move the cursor to that column, or if you want to delete the 5th row, move the cursor to that row.
Press Context Menu, and press Down Arrow until you hear “delete cells.” Press Enter. You are now in the “delete cells” dialogue box.
Use Up and Down Arrow to choose the delete operation you want, and press Enter. You will now be returned to the document, with the cursor in the column or row after the one that you deleted.

Sorting a Table

Select the cells you want to sort. If you want to sort a column, move to the start of the cells you want to sort, and select all of the cells until you reach the end of the cells you want to sort.
Go to the “home” ribbon bar by pressing Alt + H.
Press Tab until you reach the “Sort” button, and press enter. You will then see the “Sort” dialogue box.
Normally, you don’t have to change any of the options in this dialogue box. Just move to the “OK” button, and press Space. The cells that you selected will then be sorted, and you will be returned to the table.

Finding and Replacing Text

Finding Text

Press Ctrl + F to bring up the “Find and Replace” dialogue box.
The cursor will be in the “Find what” edit box, so Type the text you want to search for.
Press Tab until you reach the “Find next” button, or press Alt + F. If Word cannot find your text, it will display a dialogue box to tell you that no matches were found, and ask you to press the “OK” button, whereupon you will be returned to the document. If a match is found, Jaws will speak the line on which the match appears.
Press escape to return to the document, and the cursor will be on the first letter of the match. This means that if you searched for “hello,” the cursor would be positioned on the letter “h.”

Replacing Text

Press Ctrl + H to bring up the “Find and Replace” dialogue box.
The cursor will be in the “Find what” edit box, so type the text you want to search for.
Press Tab to move to the “Replace with” edit box, and type the text you want the search text to be replaced with.
If you want to replace only the first occurrence of the search text with the replace text, press Tab until you reach the “Replace” button, or press Alt + R.
If you want to replace all occurrences of the search text with the replace text, press Tab until you reach the “Replace all” button, or press Alt + A.
If Word cannot find your text, it will display a dialogue box to tell you that no matches were found, and ask you to press the “OK” button, whereupon you will be returned to the document. If Word makes replacements, it will display a dialogue box telling you how many replacements were made, and ask you to press the “OK” button, whereupon you will be returned to the document.

Searching Using Wildcards

Open the “Find and Replace” dialogue box, and press Tab until you reach the “More>>” button.
Press Space, and then Tab several times until you reach the “Use Wild Cards” checkbox, or press Alt + U. By default, this checkbox is unchecked, so check it by pressing Space.
Press Tab again several times until you reach the “Find What” edit box, or press Alt + N.
Type the search text, including any wildcards, and then tab to the “Find Next” button, or press Alt + F.

Notes

In this course, we use two wildcards: the question mark (?) and the asterisk (*). The question mark replaces one letter, and the asterisk replaces many letters.
Remember that all wildcard searches are case sensitive! This means that you should always type the exact word or phrase you want to find, including upper and lower case letters. For example, if you search for the word Hello (with a capital h), Word will not find hello (with a small h). It will only find occurrences of the word Hello (with a capital H).

Examples

To search for all three letter words that start with s and end with t (like sit, sat, or set), type s?t in the “Find What” edit box.
To search for all words that start with a certain number of letters, but have different endings (like interested, interesting, or interestingly), type interest* in the “Find What” edit box.

Using Outline View

Before you can use outline view, you have to turn it on. To do this:

press Alt + W to open the “view” ribbon bar.
Press tab until you reach the “outline” button, and press space to turn on outline view.

You can use the following keyboard commands when you are in Outline View:

Display all headings at a certain level by pressing alt + shift and a number key. For example, to
display all headings from level 1, press alt + shift + 1. To display all headings from level 2, press alt + shift + 2.
Use Up and Down Arrow to move through the list of headings in the document.
Move a heading up toward the top of the document by pressing Alt + Shift + UpArrow, or move it toward the bottom of the document by pressing Alt + Shift + DownArrow.
To make a heading smaller, press Alt + Shift + Rightarrow, or press Alt + Shift + LeftArrow to make it bigger. For example, to change a level 2 heading into a level 3 heading, press Alt + Shift + RightArrow.
To display all of the text (not only the headings), press Alt + Shift + A.

Using the Spelling Checker

To start checking the document for spelling mistakes, go to the “review” ribbon bar by pressing Alt + R. If Word finds a spelling mistake, it will display a dialogue box that tells you the mistake, and shows you a list of possible corrections.
You can repeat the mistake and current suggestion by pressing Jaws Key + F7.
Replace the mistake with the current suggestion by pressing the “Change” button or Alt + C.
Replace all occurrences of the mistake with the current suggestion by pressing the “Change all” button or Alt + L.
If the mistake is actually a person’s name, or a word in your own language, you can tell Word to ignore it once by pressing the “Ignore” button or Alt + I, or ignore all occurrences of the word by pressing the “Ignore all” button or Alt + G.
If the word is one that you use often, like a person’s name, the name of a city, or a word in your own language, you could add it to Word’s dictionary by pressing the “Add to dictionary” button, or Alt + A.

Turning Off the Grammar Checker

It’s a good idea to turn off the grammar checker. It doesn’t work well, and sometimes makes changes that you don’t want. To turn off the grammar checker, press Tab in the spelling checker dialogue box until you reach the “Check grammar” checkbox, and press Space to uncheck it. You could also press Alt + K.

Using the Thesaurus

The thesaurus gives you a list of words that mean the same as a word in your document. To use the thesaurus:

Move to a word.
Select it using Shift + Ctrl + RightArrow.
Press Context Menu, and then DownArrow until you reach the “Synonyms” menu item, or press the letter Y.
If there are any words which mean the same as the selected word, you will be placed on the first word in the list. Use Up and DownArrow to choose a word, and press Enter. The selected word in the document will then be replaced by the word you chose.

Notes

Be careful when using the thesaurus. Not all of the alternatives that it suggests mean exactly the same as the selected word! If you don’t know a word, you shouldn’t use it.

Go back to the Course Notes page.

Making a table of contents

Move to the area of the document where you want to put your table of contents. Usually, a table of contents should be at the top of the document.
Insert a page break so that your table of contents is on the first page, and the rest of the document starts from page 2. You can do this by going to the “insert” tab by pressing alt to open the ribbon bar and right arrow until you hear “Insert,” or you can press alt + n. Next press tab until you reach the “Page break” button and press space. Alternatively, you can press ctrl + enter while you are still inside your document.
Now open the “References” tab on the ribbon bar by pressing alt then right arrow until you reach the “References” tab, or press alt + s.
Press tab until you reach the “Table of contents button,” and press space. You should now see a list of automatic table of contents styles. The first option, “Automatic table 1,” is the most common style, so press enter to choose it.
You will now be returned to your document with the cursor at the end of the new table of contents.

Removing hyperlinks

By default, each entry in the table of contents is a hyperlink. If you click the left mouse button while on a table of contents entry, you will jump to its heading in the document. However, for a visually impaired user, it might be better to remove the hyperlinks as they can look strange in a printed document. To remove them, do the following:

Move to the hyperlink you want to remove
Now press ctrl + shift + f9

The hyperlink will now be removed.
To remove all hyperlinks in a document, do the following:

Press ctrl + a to highlight all text in the document
Now press ctrl + shift + f9

All of the hyperlinks in the document will now be removed.

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