Open An Existing Document

Opening an existing document to edit with Word is simple. You tell Word you want to open a document file and then locate the file, and Word loads the document in the editing area. One important Word feature is its capability to open documents you create in other word processing programs. Word 2007 can open Microsoft Word documents created with earlier Word releases, as well as Microsoft Works, WordPerfect, and several other document file formats including RTF (Rich Text Format).

Request a Document
Click the Office button and select Open. You can also follow previous Word versions’ menu command structure and select File, Open to display the Open dialog box.

Navigate to the Document’s Location
The document you want to open might not appear at the default location shown in the Open dialog box, so navigate to the folder in which the document you’re looking for resides using the Windows navigation links.

Open the File
When you locate the folder that holds the document file, select the file you want to open. Then click the Open button to open the selected file in Word’s editing workspace.

Return to the Most Recent Edit
When you open an existing Word document to edit or to add to, the F5 key takes you to the place inside the document where you last edited. If you worked on a lengthy document last week, for example, as soon as you open the document today, if you press F5 then Word takes you right to that page you were last editing.

Change the Document View
Word offers five views of your document:

• Print Layout: This is the view Word users generally stay in during most of the editing session. The Print Layout view displays your document exactly as it will appear on the printed page when you print the document. By editing in the Print Layout view, you can more accurately see how those changes will affect the final printed document.

• Full Screen Reading: This is the clear view, using a highly readable font useful for reading (but not editing) Word-compatible documents on your screen. Very little space is devoted by menus and toolbars; the majority of your screen is taken up by the text itself. The pagination of the Full Screen Reading view doesn’t necessarily match that of your printed documents because the Full Screen Reading view’s goal is to format your document to make it as readable as possible.

• Web Layout: This view is useful for editing web pages inside Word. Due to Word’s support for graphics and charts, and due to Word’s capability to understand HTML, you can create and edit web pages from Word. The Web Layout view is the view best equipped to retain and respect your web page’s boundaries and capabilities.

• Outline: The Outline view button enables you to manage outlines you create in Word.

• Draft: The Draft view hides all pagination, margins, pictures, headers, and footers from your document so that you can see and edit severely inside the text.

Zoom In or Out
Drag the Zoom slider left or right to adjust the amount of document text you see in your Word editing window. You can also click the percentage number to the left of the Zoom slider to select or type a specific zoom-percentage value into the Zoom dialog box. If your text is too small to read inside Word, adjust the Zoom slider to your liking.

Edit and Save the Document
Make changes to your document. After you have the document the way you want it for now, select File, Save (or just click the Save button in the Customize Quick Access toolbar above your document or to the right of your Office button to save your document’s most recent edits to disk. You can also select File, Save As if you want to change the name of the edited document from the one you started with.