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Microsoft Word Advanced 📝

Professional Document Skills

Session 9: Essential Office Skills

Why Word Matters 💼

Microsoft Word is the most common tool for writing essays, reports, and professional documents. Learning advanced skills will improve your grades and job readiness!

Skills You'll Learn:

  • Using Styles for consistent formatting
  • Automatic Table of Contents generation
  • Headers and Footers for page numbers
  • Inserting and formatting tables
  • Citations and footnotes for research

What Are Styles? 🎨

Styles are pre-formatted text templates that keep your document consistent. Instead of manually formatting each heading, use the Heading 1 style.

Built-in Styles:

  • Heading 1: Main title (largest)
  • Heading 2: Subtitles (medium)
  • Heading 3: Sub-subtitles (smaller)
  • Normal: Body text
  • Quote: Indented quoted text

How to Use Styles 🖱️

Steps:

  1. Highlight your text (your heading)
  2. Go to Home tab in Word
  3. Click the style you want from the Styles panel
  4. All text with that style formats automatically and consistently
  5. Change the style later? All instances update!

Benefit: If your teacher asks to make all headings bigger, one change updates everywhere!

Table of Contents (TOC) 📚

A Table of Contents automatically lists all your headings with page numbers. Professional reports always have one!

How to Create a TOC:

  1. Use Heading 1, 2, 3 styles for your sections
  2. Place cursor where you want the TOC
  3. Go to References tab → Table of Contents
  4. Click the style you like
  5. Word automatically pulls all headings!
  6. If you add/remove headings, right-click TOC and Update

Headers & Footers 📄

Headers appear at the top of every page. Footers appear at the bottom. Common use: page numbers!

How to Add Page Numbers:

  1. Go to Insert tab
  2. Click Header or Footer
  3. Choose a style
  4. Word opens the footer for editing
  5. Click "#" to insert page numbers
  6. Click "Close Header and Footer" when done
  7. Page numbers appear on every page!

Advanced Header/Footer Tips 💡

Pro Tricks:

  • Different first page: Hide page number on title page
  • Document name: Insert filename (updates automatically)
  • Date/Time: Automatically updates when opened
  • Section breaks: Different headers in different parts of document

Tables for Data 📊

Tables organize information. Great for comparisons, data, and keeping content neat.

Inserting Tables:

  1. Go to Insert tab
  2. Click Table
  3. Choose grid size (columns × rows)
  4. Type your data
  5. Right-click for more options (add rows, borders, shading)

Tip: Use tables instead of spacing with Enter and Tab - much cleaner!

Citations & Footnotes 📖

When you use someone else's ideas or words, you must cite them. Word makes this easy!

Citation Styles:

  • MLA: Common for high school essays
  • APA: Used in science and psychology
  • Chicago: Used for historical papers

How to Add Citations:

  1. Go to References tab
  2. Click "Insert Citation"
  3. Enter author, title, publication info
  4. Word formats it correctly!

Formatting Best Practices ✅

Professional Document Tips:

  • Font: Use Times New Roman or Calibri (12pt)
  • Margins: 1 inch on all sides (default)
  • Line spacing: Double-spaced for essays
  • Alignment: Left-aligned body text
  • No extra spaces: One space after periods (not two!)
  • Consistent formatting: Use styles throughout

Reviewing Tools 🔍

Word has built-in tools to check your writing:

Review Features:

  • Spelling & Grammar: Catches most errors (not all!)
  • Thesaurus: Right-click words for synonyms
  • Word Count: Reveals how many words you wrote
  • Track Changes: Shows what was edited (for collaboration)
  • Comments: Teachers can add feedback

Common Mistakes to Avoid ❌

Student Errors:

  • Don't use ALL CAPS for emphasis - use bold or italics
  • Don't leave multiple spaces between words
  • Don't manually number pages - use headers/footers
  • Don't format title page same as body pages
  • Don't forget to cite sources!
  • Don't change fonts multiple times in one document

What We Learned 🎓

  • Styles keep documents consistent and updatable
  • Table of Contents automatically lists sections with page numbers
  • Headers/Footers add page numbers to every page
  • Tables organize data neatly
  • Citations properly credit sources (MLA, APA, Chicago)
  • Professional formatting improves document quality
  • These skills improve grades and prepare you for work!

Word Skills Mastered! 🎉

You now have professional document creation skills

Final Session: Assessment & Review