BUS 237 – Lab Unit 2 2017
Efficient use of Word Processing
Software (MS Word 2016)
Microsoft Word
MS Word is the world’s most popular word processing software. Employers now expect all employees
and business students to have excellent knowledge of such fundamental software. Most users falsely
believe that they “know” Word because they can create, edit, and format documents. It is no longer
sufficient to “know” the software. It is now extremely important for users to be efficient with the
software considering that a significant portion of office employees’ (whether a receptionist or senior
manager) time is spent in front of a computer. This brief session offers glimpses of functionality to
improve efficiency and effectiveness of using MS Word. It is strongly encouraged that students explore
additional functionality of the software on their own by simply playing around and experimenting with
the software. These basic skills will be extremely useful during 3rd and 4th years at the university and
well into the student’s professional careers.
You will work with the “Unit_2_Demo.docx” file in this tutorial. You can download it from Canvas found
within week 02 module.
Important Note: You are expected to use functionality discussed during tutorial for all assignment
submissions in this course. A significant percentage of your grade will account for formatting and
structure.
Cover Page
Inserting a cover page using MS Word 2016 is no longer an exercise in “centering”. You can insert
nice looking cover pages using a couple of mouse clicks
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Place your cursor at the top of the document (before the “Central Processing Unit” title)
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Click “Insert”  “Pages”  “Cover Page”. Select a cover page style of your choosing (eg,
“Whisp”)
Formatting
Document presentation has become very important. You may be judged by your professionalism
based on the layout of your document. At SFU business, almost all instructors award a grade on
presentation. Learning how to efficiently and quickly format your document can differentiate your paper
from your peers (provided you have good content, of course).
Paragraph Styles
Paragraph Styles are preconfigured (and custom configured) set of formatting that can be applied to
paragraphs of your choice. This could distinguish section headings from main body. Effective use of
paragraph styles allows you to reformat your lengthy document in a matter of minutes (or even
seconds) instead of hours.
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Available styles are visible on the “Home” tab within the “Styles” group
o You can display the complete “Styles Window” by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S
(simultaneously)
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Beedie School of Business
Simon Fraser University
© Dr. Kamal Masri
BUS 237 – Lab Unit 2 2017
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To apply a style: first, place your cursor within the paragraph you would like to apply the style
to, then select the style from the Styles List.
Exercise:
o
o
o
Apply the “Heading 1” style to all headings in Blue
Apply the “Heading 2” style to all headings in Red
Apply the “Heading 3” style to all headings in Green
Note: You can create your own styles by clicking the “New Style” button at the bottom left corner of the
“Styles Window” (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S)
Additional information: Using Heading Styles allows the user to easily collapse document sections.
This is useful for editing large documents such as term projects for more efficient navigation. To use,
simply move your cursor to the left of the Heading until you see this symbol then click on it. Repeat
this process to expand the section again.
Modify Existing Styles
Quite often, you may wish to change the formatting of applied styles. For example, you find the black
color of the second level headings dull. Do NOT change the color by simply selecting each second
level heading and applying the new color to it. You will have to do this to every heading of interest. A
much faster method is to modify the style. This will apply the changes to any text linked to the style.
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Right Click the “Heading 2” style on the Home tab and select “Modify”
Change the color from “Automatic” to Dark Red. Click OK. Now scroll through the document to
see the change to all Level 2 headings
Note: you can control all aspects of the formatting within a style. To see available options, click on the
“Format” button at the bottom left corner of the “Modify” window.
Exercise:
Modify the “Normal” style format to increase the Font Size to 12 (from 10) and change the
“Before Paragraph Spacing” and “After Paragraph Spacing” to 6 pt each (from Auto).
Learn to use the before and after paragraph spacing so you don’t have to
enter a blank line between paragraphs).
Object Styles
Like Paragraph styles, MS Word 2016 has preconfigured formats (styles) for almost any type of object.
You can fancy up inserted pictures, charts, tables, clipart, etc. Once an object is inserted, you can find
the “style” set within the object’s format tab.
Students are encouraged to experiment with object styles to learn the benefits and drawbacks of this
feature.
Table of Contents
Using paragraph styles is the only way to enable you to quickly and painlessly create a table of
content. Some users create a Table of contents manually by typing each row in the table of contents
page. This is troublesome, frustrating, and often inaccurate as the user will have to manually find the
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Beedie School of Business
Simon Fraser University
© Dr. Kamal Masri
BUS 237 – Lab Unit 2 2017
headings in the document, note the level, and page number. In addition, manual table of contents may
inhibit the user of editing the document for fear of having to verify and manually update the table of
contents.
If you have completed the exercise under “Paragraph Styles” above then you can create a table of
contents automatically and in seconds:
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Place your cursor before the “Central processing Unit” heading on the second page
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Select Reference  Table of contents then select the “Automatic Table 1” option
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Insert a page break (Page Layout  Breaks  Page) before the “Central Processing Unit”
heading to place the Table of contents on its own page.
If you make changes to your document, you can update your Table of
contents by clicking anywhere inside the table of contents then clicking on
“Update Table” on the tab immediately above the table of contents Title.
Citations and Bibliographies
Inevitably, you will be required to cite your work as you complete and submit reports, essays, and
papers at SFU. For longer work, managing the citations can be exhausting and frustrating. Many
academics use third party applications to manage their citations such as Refworks and Endnote. Good
news! You, as a student with a limited budget, don’t have to invest in this type of software as MS Word
has this feature built in.
Managing citations is a three step process:
1. Enter your source reference using MS Word citations features (References  Insert Citation
 Add New Source)
2. Insert the citation within your text. Place your cursor where you want the cite to appear and
select (References  Insert Citation)
3. Create a Reference list at the end of the document (References  Bibliography  Insert
Bibliography)
Using the citations manager in MS Word will save you time and effort over manually managing your
citations list. You will often add and remove citations as you edit your document. Using the manual
process, you’ll to review your entire document to decide if a reference can stay in the list or has to be
removed. In addition, the citation style (ie, using APA style or MLA style) can be easily updated by
simply choosing the style from a list. MS Word will do all the work of converting the formats for you
provided, of course, you enter the source references correctly using the citations manager.
4. To change the citations style select the desired style from the list found at (References 
Style)
5. Finally, you can update a reference by selecting (References  Manage Sources)
Exercise:
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Add a following new references (References  Insert Citation  Add New Source)
o Reference type: Book
o Authors: Hennessy, John A. and Goldberg, David
o Title: Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach.
o Year: 1996
o Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers
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Beedie School of Business
Simon Fraser University
© Dr. Kamal Masri
BUS 237 – Lab Unit 2 2017
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Insert the citation at the end of the document (following the word “pipeline” (but before the
period) on the last page (References  Insert Citation).
Create a reference list (References  Bibliography  References)
Change the reference style to MLA. Note what happens, change it back to APA.
The “Built-in” citations listing creates the heading and the citations list. You
can create your own heading (using a description of your choosing) to match
the style layout for the rest of the document by using the “Insert
Bibliography” function (References  Bibliography  Insert Bibliography).
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Beedie School of Business
Simon Fraser University
© Dr. Kamal Masri