10 Minute Guide to Word for Windows 95

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Controlling the Screen Display

In this lesson, you'll learn how to control the Word for Windows screen display to suit your working style.

Document Display Modes

Word for Windows offers four different views in which you can display your document.

Normal Mode

You'll probably want to work most often in Normal mode. This is the Word for Windows default display. Figure 5.1 shows a document in Normal view. As you can see, all special formatting is visible on-screen. Different font sizes, italics, boldface, and other enhancements display on the screen very much as they will appear on the printed page. Certain aspects of the page layout, however, are not displayed in order to speed editing; for example, you do not see headers and footers. Normal mode is fine for most editing tasks.

Figure 5.1
A document displayed in Normal mode.


To select or change your view to Normal, select View Normal or click the Normal View button at the left end of the horizontal scroll bar. In the View menu, the currently selected mode has a dot displayed next to it.

Outline Mode

Use Outline mode to create outlines and to examine the structure of a document. Figure 5.2 shows the sample document in Outline mode. Here you can choose to view only your document headings--hiding all subordinate text. You can quickly promote, demote, or move document headings--along with subordinate text--to a new location. For this to be useful, you need to assign heading styles to the document headings, a technique you'll learn more about in Lesson 24.

Select View Outline to switch to Outline view, or click the Outline View button at the left end of the horizontal scroll bar.

Figure 5.2
A document displayed in Outline mode.

Page Layout Mode

Page Layout mode displays your document exactly as it will print. Headers, footers, and all the details of page layout appear on the screen. You can edit in Page Layout mode; this mode is ideal when you are fine-tuning the details of page composition. Be aware, however, that the additional computer processing required makes display changes relatively slow in Page Layout mode, particularly when you have a complex page layout. Figure 5.3 shows the sample document in Page Layout mode.


Timesaver Tip: Sneak Preview Use Page Layout mode to see what your printed document will look like before you actually print.

Figure 5.3
A document displayed in Page Layout mode.


Select View Page Layout, or click the Page Layout View button, to switch to Page Layout view.

Draft Font Mode

Draft Font mode is a display option that you can apply in both Normal and Outline views. As Figure 5.4 illustrates, a single generic font appears on-screen and special formatting such as italics and boldface are indicated by underlining. Draft Font mode provides the fastest editing and screen display. This component is ideal when you're concentrating on the contents of your document rather than its appearance.

To turn Draft Font mode on or off:

1. Select Tools Options to display the Options dialog box.

2. If necessary, click the View tab to display the View options.

3. Select the Draft Font option to turn it on or off.

4. Select OK.

Figure 5.4
A document displayed in Draft mode.

Full Screen Display

To see the maximum amount of text on the screen, select View Full Screen. In Full Screen mode, the title bar, menu, toolbars, status line, and all other Word elements are hidden, and you can use the full screen for your text. You can enter and edit text in this mode and select from the menus using the usual keyboard commands. To turn off Full Screen mode, select View Full Screen again, or click the Full Screen icon that appears in the lower right corner of the screen.

Ruler and Toolbar Display

The Word for Windows default is to display the ruler, Standard toolbar, and Formatting toolbar at the top of the editing screen. The TipWizard usually appears, too. At times, you may want to hide one or more of these items to give yourself a larger work area and a less-cluttered screen. Of course, you will not have access to the editing features of the item(s) you have hidden.

To control the screen display of the ruler, select View to display the View menu, and then select Ruler to toggle the ruler display between on and off. To control the toolbars and the TipWizard, select View Toolbars to display the Toolbars dialog box. Turn the Standard, Formatting, and TipWizard options on or off as desired, then select OK.


Timesaver Tip: Put 'em Away Hide the ruler and toolbars when you need maximum text displayed but don't want to use Full Screen mode.

Zooming the Screen

The View Zoom command lets you control the size of your document as displayed on the screen. You can enlarge it to facilitate reading small fonts or decrease the size to view an entire page at one time. When you select View Zoom, the Zoom dialog box appears (see Figure 5.5).

Figure 5.5
The Zoom dialog box.


In the Zoom dialog box, you have the following options. As you make selections, the Preview section of the dialog box shows you what the selected zoom setting will look like.

Note that the Whole Page and Many Pages options are available only if you are viewing the document in Page Layout mode.

In this lesson, you learned how to control the Word for Windows screen display. In the next lesson, you'll learn how to save documents.


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