Learn MS Word 2013 Tutorial

What’s new in Word 2013

If you’ve used Word 2010, much of Word 2013 will feel familiar. Most of the commands on the ribbon are in the same places, and many of the dialog boxes haven’t changed. A major focus of this version is on making the process of reading and editing docu- ments smoother, with fewer diversions. The icons are simpler, and everything outside the document itself is less attention-grabbing. Of course, there are also new features and new ways of using older features.

When you need to read a document rather than edit it, the new Read Mode is a clean, distraction-free environment. It automat- ically adapts the width of its columns to the size of your display, which is great if you’re using a tablet. You can quickly zoom in on pictures, charts, and tables, or display comments.

What do you want to do?

Among the millions of people who use Word every day, there are beginners and experts, users at home and at school, and in businesses small and large. The work we do, the sources of our information, and the formats of our documents are unimaginably varied.

If you’re creating a shopping list, a memo, a court pleading, or a novel, your main interest will likely be in Word’s text tools. You might need the ability to write a draft; to reor- ganize and revise, and to check spelling and grammar; to show the document to others for review, and to act on their suggestions; and to make the document available in one or many formats.

Maybe you design magazine articles, advertisements, news- letters, or posters—documents that depend on illustrations, complex layouts, and eye-catching formatting to give them impact. In addition to Word’s text tools, you’ll be using its graphics capabilities, building tables to control layout, and working with its special text effects.

Business documents often have unique requirements. They might need to conform to your organization’s formatting standards, which should be contained in templates with well-designed styles. They might draw information from spreadsheets or databases through tools such as fields or mail merge. Portions of documents might be used to create other documents. Instruction manuals and policy statements could have very long lives and be revised many times, so you need a way to mark up these documents to show the changes made from one version to the next.