Lesson 2c: Word Processing Basics - Interface part 3

Now that you are familiar with the way Google Docs does the basic tasks of Word Processing (set fonts, set formatting, save/print documents, etc.), we'll go over the way to do those things in both Microsoft Word and in Open Office.

MS Word 2003




Word's interface (from the 2003 version, the 2007 version will look quite a bit different) is the standard among desktop word processing programs. Most will look something like what you see in the image above. You will notice that there are quite a few more options available via the desktop word processors than there are via the online applications - but most people don't ever use 90% of the features a program like MS Word offers.
The basics are the same. There is a file menu, which allows you to open, save (in multiple formats) and print your documents. There is an Edit menu which contains the copy/cut/paste commands and the find/replace commands that are on the File menu in Google Docs. The View menu gives you multiple ways to view your documents and has no equivalent in Google Docs. The Insert menu is similar to Google's Insert menu, though. You can insert pictures, comments, symbols and many other items - up to and including whole documents - via this menu. The Format menu contains the features that Google puts in its Edit menu (font and paragraph controls, plus more). The rest of the menu items (Tools, Table, Window & Help) offer other options that can - for the most part - be found in File and Edit menus on Google Docs.
The toolbars below the menu bar contain graphical representations of the most commonly used features (as of Word 2003 - your most commonly used features) from the menu bar. Every feature available in Word is in the menu bar, the most common ones, though, are also represented in the toolbars below.


Open Office 2.2




As you can see, Open Office has the same menubar that Word has, and each menu item does essentially the same things. The toolbars below the menu items are just slightly different - some of the icons look a bit different than the ones in the Word toolbars, but they do the exact same things.