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In This Chapter

▶ Using the scroll bars

▶ Moving the insertion pointer

▶ Getting around with keyboard shortcuts

▶ Getting lost and getting back

▶ Using the Go To command

A computer screen is only so big. Your Word document can be much larger, perhaps requiring several monitors all stacked atop each other so that you could view it all at once. That somehow seems impractical. Therefore, Word offers techniques to let you hop, skip, and jump around your document, hither, thither, and yon.

Document Scrolling

It’s ironic that the word scroll is used when referring to an electronic document. The scroll was the first form of portable recorded text, existing long before bound books. On a computer, scrolling is the process by which you view a little bit of a big document in a tiny window.

Working the vertical scroll bar

The document portion of the Word program window features a vertical scroll bar, illustrated in Figure 3-1. The scroll bar’s operation is similar to the scroll bar in any Windows program. As a review, the figure illustrates the mouse’s effect on parts of the scroll bar.

Figure 3-1: The vertical scroll bar.

A key feature in the scroll bar is the elevator button (refer to Figure 3-1). Use the mouse to drag this button up or down to scroll the document. Its position in the scroll bar reflects the location of the text you see. For example, when the elevator button is at the top of the scroll bar, the window shows text at the start of the document.

✔ As you drag the elevator button up or down, you see a page number displayed, as shown in Figure 3-1. When a document is formatted with heading styles, you also see the heading title below the page number, as shown in the figure.

✔ The vertical scroll bar may disappear at times; move the mouse pointer over your text, and it shows up again.

✔ When the elevator button doesn't show up, or is dimmed, the whole document appears in the window. That means there’s nothing to scroll.

✔ Because the elevator button’s size reflects how much of the document appears in the window, the button grows smaller as your document grows longer.

✔ Using the scroll bar to scroll through your document doesn’t move the insertion pointer. If you start typing, don't be surprised when Word jumps back to where the insertion pointer lurks.

Using the horizontal scroll bar

When your document is wider than can be displayed in the window, a horizontal scroll bar appears. It shows up at the bottom of the document part of the window, just above the status bar. Use the horizontal scroll bar to shift the page back and forth, left and right.

✔ Word automatically slides the document left and right as you type, but that action can be jarring. Instead, try to adjust the horizontal scroll bar to display as much of the text as possible. Or, if you can, make the document window wider.

✔ When the horizontal (left-to-right) shifting bugs you, consider using Word's Zoom tool to adjust the size of your document on the screen. See Chapter 1.

Scrolling with the mouse wheel

If your computer mouse sports a wheel button, you can use that button to scroll through your document. Roll the wheel to scroll up or down; the direction is set in Windows, so I can’t for certain tell you whether rolling the wheel up scrolls your document up or down. Just try it to see how it works.

Some mice let you press the wheel button or tilt it from side to side. If so, press and hold down the wheel button and drag the mouse forward or back to slowly pan your document up or down. Tilt the wheel button from side to side to pan the document left and right.

Unlike using the scroll bars, when you use the mouse wheel to scroll the document, the insertion pointer stays on the page you’re viewing. Use the Shift+F5 keyboard shortcut to return the insertion pointer to its previous spot. See the section, “Go Back to Where You Once Edited.”

Move the Insertion Pointer

The beauty of a word processor is that you can edit any part of your document; you don't always have to work at "the end." The key to pulling off this trick is to know how to move the insertion pointer to the exact spot you want.

✔ Moving the insertion pointer is important! Scientific studies have shown that merely looking at the computer screen does no good.

✔ New text appears only at the insertion pointer. Text is deleted at the insertion pointer’s location. Text is pasted at the insertion pointer. Formatting commands affect text where the insertion pointer lies blinking.

Commanding the insertion pointer

The easiest way to put the insertion pointer exactly where you want it is to click the mouse at that spot in your text. Point. Click. The insertion pointer moves.

Moving in small increments

For short hops, nothing beats using the keyboard’s cursor keys to quickly move the insertion pointer around a document. The four arrow keys move the insertion pointer up, down, right, and left:

Moving the cursor doesn’t erase characters. See Chapter 4 for information on deleting stuff.

If you press and hold down the Ctrl (Control) key and then press an arrow key, the insertion pointer moves in larger increments. The invigorated insertion pointer leaps desperately in all four directions:

You can use either set of arrow keys on the computer keyboard, but when using the numeric keypad, ensure that the Num Lock light is off, (If it's on, press the Num Lock key.) If you don’t, you see numbers in your text rather than the insertion pointer dancing all over – like444this.

Moving from beginning to end

The insertion pointer also bows to pressure from those cursor keys without arrows on them. The first couple consists of End and Home, which move the insertion pointer to the start or end of something, depending on how End and Home are used:

The remaining cursor keys are the Page Up, or PgUp, key and the Page Down, or PgDn, key. As you might suspect, using these keys doesn't move up or down a page in your document. Nope. Instead, they slide through your document one screen at a time. Here’s the roundup:

The key combinations to move to the top or bottom of the current screen are Ctrl+Alt+PgUp and Ctrl+Alt+PgDn, respectively. That’s Ctrl+Alt, not just the Ctrl key. And yes, few people use these commands.

What about Ctrl+PgUp and Ctrl+PgDn?

The Ctrl+PgUp and Ctrl+PgDn keyboard shortcuts are the Browse Previous and Browse Next commands, respectively. Their function changes based on what you’ve recently done in Word.

For example, the Ctrl+PgDn keyboard shortcut repeats the Find Next command. It might also repeat the Go To command, or a number of other Word commands that move the insertion pointer.

Because of their changing behavior, I don’t recommend using Ctrl+PgUp or Ctrl+PgDn as a consistent way to move the insertion pointer.

Go Back to Where You Once Edited

Considering all the various commands for moving the insertion pointer, it's quite possible to make a mistake and not know where you are in a document. Yea, verily, the insertion pointer has gone where no insertion pointer has gone before.

Rather than click your heels together three times and try to get back the wishful way, just remember this keyboard combination:

Shift+F5

Pressing the Shift+F5 keyboard shortcut forces Word to return you to the last spot you edited. You can use this keyboard shortcut as many as three times before the cycle repeats. But the first time should get you back to where you were before you got lost.

Sadly, the Shift+F5 keyboard shortcut works only in Word; you can’t use this command in real life.

Go to Wherever with the Go To Command

Word's Go To command allows you to send the insertion pointer to a specific page or line or to the location of a number of interesting items that Word can potentially cram into your document. The Go To command is your word-processing teleporter to anywhere.

To use the Go To command, follow these steps:

1. Click the Home tab.

2. In the Editing group, choose the Go To command.

The Find and Replace dialog box appears with the Go To tab forward, as shown in Figure 3-2.

Figure 3-2: Telling Word to Go To you-know-where.

And now the shortcut: Press Ctrl+G to quickly summon the Find and Replace dialog box's Go To tab.

To whisk the insertion pointer to a specific location, choose it from the Go to What list. For example, choose Page to visit a specific page. Type the page number in the Enter Page Number box, and then click the Go To button to go to that page in your document.

✔ The Enter Page Number box also accepts relative pages as input. For example, to go three pages forward, type +3. To go 12 pages backward, type -12 in the box.

✔ The last item you chose from the Go to What list affects the behavior of the Ctrl+PgUp and Ctrl+PgDn keyboard shortcuts. For example, if you choose Page and click the Go To button, the Ctrl+PgUp and Ctrl+PgDn keyboard shortcuts navigate through your document a page at a time.

In This Chapter

▶ Deleting characters

▶ Deleting lines, sentences, and more

▶ Splitting and joining paragraphs

▶ Understanding hard and soft returns

▶ Undoing your mistakes

▶ Using the Redo (Undo-Undo) command

Writing is about creating text. Part of the process also includes reviewing and editing your words. My advice is to concentrate first on writing. In fact, one of the reasons people get stuck is that they spend more time editing than writing.

To accommodate your text-editing desires, Word comes with a host of commands to chop, slice, stitch, and otherwise decimate your text. The commands are a necessary part of the writing process, but they work best when you have oodles of text to edit. So, again, write first and edit second.