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With the basics of starting a document behind us, let’s look at how to navigate through a document.
When in a document, there is always exactly one active position where you can change it by inserting or deleting text. This position is marked by a blinking bar named cursor or insertion mark. The easiest way to move the cursor is with the simple keyboard shortcut keys. To exercise the cursor movements in Word, open the file "Moving around.doc" in the Microsoft Word subfolder of the Accelerate folder.
Note: Don't exit Internet Explorer to open a Word document. Windows can do it simultaneously. You know how to switch between active applications.
Most people are accustomed to using LEFT and RIGHT ARROW simply to move back or forward one letter, which is incredibly ineffective.
Here are some more keys and shortcuts.
Press following single keys:
To move faster - that means, to jump over bigger distances in the text - hold down the CONTROL key and press
This is a quick way to dash through a document while skimming for some word or phrase.
Repeat at this place the Speech commands!
Using the scroll bar more effectively can greatly increase your ability to move through a document, especially a long one. The scroll bar, typically located on the left of any open window, is a shaded area that tells you approximately where you are in a document with a darkly shaded block. This block will move in relation to where you are viewing in the document and will change according to how long the document is. As you type more, the shaded bar becomes smaller, since this bar represents a percentage of the whole document. You can move this bar by either clicking and holding on it, or by pressing the arrows at the top or bottom of the scroll bar (depending on which way you want to go). There are double arrowed buttons, which allow quick movement page by page through a document. There is also a button in-between the double arrows that is beyond the scope of this article, but if you feel like experimenting, allows one to quickly move through defined portions of a document (for example, skip to the next table or graphic).
There is an addition to the Word 97 software called Document Map that provides a way to immediately move to sections of your document. This tool is found on the normal toolbar and looks like a magnifying glass over a piece of paper, or can be selected from the Menu VIEW by choosing Document Map option.
Once selected, Word will generate an "outline" of your file by guessing the key paragraphs and headers that you are using. This option lists the names of these paragraphs on the side of your document, and moving between these sections is as simple as selecting the paragraph title. This works well for long documents and especially if common formatting is used, such as Heading styles (which we will talk about later). We will revisit Document Map as we discuss other features of the program that allow greater functionality of this Word option.
Scroll bars cannot be properly used by screen reader programs. Instead of using vertical scroll bar use PAGE UP and PAGE DOWN to scroll screen by screen.
You should assure that there are no invisible parts of your document which you can achieve only by using the horizontal scroll bar. If your Word settings are not yet adapted according to our Accessibility Settings Proposal, make now the following changes:
It is also important to always maximize document windows. Use the toggle shortcut CONTROL+F10 to do it.
It is not really all done with straight forward writing. Sometimes you have to correct some mistakes, to remove or replace some parts of text or to copy the contents of one document into another.
All these operations take 2 or 3 steps:
For convenience you can have more documents open simultaneously. Open them simply after each other. To move forth and back between Word documents use CONTROL+F6 and CONTROL+SHIFT+F6, respectively.
The new Word 2000 clipboard could also be an accessibility obstacle with its unpredictable toolbar appearing anywhere on the screen. The best idea is to switch this clipboard toolbar off. Refer to Accessibility Settings to see how to do it!
Open the file "Text operations.doc" in the Accelerate folder to exercise commands from this tutorial section. Open in addition a new file and save it under some name of your choice.
The first step with all operations on a piece of text is to mark or select it. It is necessary to do this because only this way Word knows to which piece of text the next command should be applied. You can select text with selection keyboard shortcuts. You find all these shortcuts also in the exercise file mentioned above.
After you have selected a piece of text, Word is ready to execute one or more commands which will be applied to the selection.
Warning: Don't press any key after you made a selection. Pressing a movement key will remove the selection from the text; Pressing a literal key will replace the selected text with the letter inserted and remove selection. If you lose a piece of text this way, press immediately afterwards CONTROL+Z to undo the deletion, and your text will be restored.
The four most important text operations and their shortcuts are: