CHAPTER 7- INTRODUCTION TO WORD PROCESSING AND
SPREADSHEETS
Section 1 - Word Processing
Today’s sophisticated word processing software packages do much more than textoriented word processing. For example, most packages let you integrate images with text and
some let you integrate audio, such as voice annotations, within your on-screen word
processing document.
7.1.1. Creating a Document
The term document is a generic reference to whatever is currently in the processing
work area (text and/ or images) or to a file containing stored text and/ or images (perhaps a
report or an outline). When you recall a document from disk storage, you can edit (revise) it,
then save the revised version of the document to disk storage. Once you are satisfied with the
content and appearance of the document, you can print it.
Word processors are application programs used for creating, editing, printing and saving
documents. By
using a word processor it is possible to prepare reports, announcements, journals, books, etc.
7.1.2. Introduction to Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is the most popular word processor of nowadays computer world. This
product has so many features that it is not possible to learn all in one experiment, nevertheless
after completing this experiment you will not only be able to do a lot of these things, but also
learn how to learn the other features by yourself, using the Help Menu.
Typing Text:
When you start Word, a new, empty document file is automatically created, so you face an
empty page. You
can start typing anything you like. They will be seen on the screen. Use the Enter key only at
the end of
Paragraphs! (Not at the end of each sentence or line.)
Using the Menus:
On the top of the screen there is a bar which contains many drop-down menus (File, Edit,
View, etc). If you
want to reach the menu bar with your keyboard, you can use the Alt key. Lots of operations
are offered in
these menus, and you can select any of them to do the corresponding operation, without
having to write any
commands. It is not possible to explore all the menu items in one experiment, however you
can learn them in time, easily, by yourself. For this purpose, you may find the Help menu
very helpful. Just use it. It is for you!
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• File Menu: The items on this menu are related with file operations. The default file
type created with Word is document type (*.doc). New creates a new, empty document, Open
opens a document which
was created and saved before, Save saves the document to a disk (permanent storage device),
Save as is
used to save another (one more) copy of a file, with a different name, Print is used to take a
print-out of
the document, Close closes the currently open, active document, Exit is used to quit from
Word.
• Edit Menu: Undo is used to cancel the last action (operation) you have made,
Repeat is used to do a cancelled action once again, Find is used to search for some word or
sentence in your document. Cut and Copy should be used together with Paste. Cut ~ Paste
combination is used to change the place of a
selected text by moving it into another part of your document. Copy ~ Paste is used to put an
extra copy
of a selected text into another part of the document. Please refer to “Selecting Text” part.
Changing Font Size & Font Type:
By default, the font size is usually 12. You can select any other value from the corresponding
combo box.
Larger the value, larger the size of the font.
This sentence is written with size 20.
Ex: This sentence is written with size 9.
By default, the font type is usually Times New Roman. You can select any other type.
Ex: This sentence is written using “Times New Roman” type.
This sentence is written using “Courier New” type.
This sentence is written using “Arial” type.
Bold, Italic and Underlined Texts:
You can find the buttons for these tree styles (B I U ) on top of your screen. You can use any
combination of
them to write Bold, Italic and Underlined texts.
Ex: This is an italic sentence. This is a bold sentence. This is an underlined sentence.
This is both italic and underlined. This is underlined and bold. This is italic & underlined
& bold.
Line Spacing:
You can change easily line spacing.
Ex: This line spacing is 2.
This line spacing is 2.
Selecting Text:
• With mouse
1. Move your mouse pointer to the beginning of the text you want to select
2. Click and hold the left mouse button
3. Move the mouse to the end of the text you want to select.
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4. Release the mouse button.
• With keyboard
1. Move the blinking cursor, by using the arrow keys, to the beginning of the text you want to
select
2. Press and hold the shift button
3. Move the cursor to the end of the text that you want to select
4. Release the shift button
When a text is selected, you see it highlighted. Now, you can do many operations on the
selected text. (ex:
move (cut~paste), copy (copy~paste), underline, change size, type, color, etc)
Copying or Moving a selected text:
To copy or move a text the first thing you have to do is to select it. Then click the Copy or
Cut item from the
Edit menu depending on what you want to do. (Cut is used to move). Move the cursor to the
position that
you want to insert the selected text. Click Paste in the Edit menu.
Using Shortcuts and Access Keys:
• Many items in the menus have shortcuts that can be accessed by keyboard. Instead of
clicking these
items with your mouse, sometimes you may prefer to use the shortcuts. For example the
shortcut for Save
is Ctrl + S. Instead of clicking File and then Save, you can hold down Ctrl key and press S.
This will do
the same thing.
• Each menu item has one letter underlined. This is the access key of the item. If you get
bored of using
mouse, just hold down the Alt key and press the corresponding letters to travel in the menus.
Paragraph Alignment:
You can arrange the paragraphs as left aligned, right aligned, centered and justified (i.e.
aligned from both left and right margins) by clicking one of the corresponding buttons shown
above.
Ex: The first paragraph in the “Preliminary Explanations” part is left aligned. The second one
is right
aligned, and the third one is centered. All the other paragraphs in the rest of the lab sheet are
justified.
Creating a large Dropped Initial Capital Letter
You can insert a large capital letter in the beginning of a paragraph, as illustrated in the first
paragraph of the “preliminary explanations” section, by clicking Drop Cap… item in the
Format menu.
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Dividing a paragraph into columns:
This paragraph is divided into three (equal
width) columns.To divide a paragraph into
columns, first select all the paragraph, then
click Columns item in the Format menu,
choose the “Number of columns” that you
want to divide the selected text into, click
the “Line between” check box to put a tick
and make it checked if you want to have a
lines between these columns. It is also
possible to have columns with different
widths and arrange the space between the
columns as you like
Inserting Tables into your document:
To insert a table into your document, click the Insert table item in the Table menu, enter the
number of rows and columns and click OK. Here is a table with 8 rows and 5 columns:
ID
860815
882345
886374
898123
901573
910723
934117
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Name
Katarína
Gino Yman
Adrian
Blanca Faci
Тарас
Betty
Oltean
Surname
Kovalčíková
Aguilar
Valderrama
Jiménez
Гордіемко
Clichet
Yannina
City
Dolný Kubín
Country
Slovakia
Cercado de Lima
Peru
Zaragoza
Kiev
Buzy
Deva,Hunedoara
Spain
Ukraine
France
Romania
Designing borders and shading of the table: Select the part of the table on which
you want to do modifications, click Borders and Shading item in the Format menu,
click the Borders tab or the shading tab and choose the line style and shading color
that you like.
Merging Cells: You can understand from the table that Gino and Adrian are both
from the same city and country. So, it was not necessary to repeat the same
information twice. Instead of that, the two cells for the city, and separately the two
cells for the country, have been merged together. You can do this by selecting the cells
that you would like to merge and clicking the Merge Cells item in the Table menu.
Inserting WordArt into your documents:
You may want to have text with 3D effects in your documents, to make them more attractive
to the readers. You can do this by clicking the WordArt... item in the Picture submenu of
Insert menu. After you insert some text, you may change its appearance any time, as you like,
by using the WordArt toolbar.
Ex:
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Inserting Pictures into your documents:
You may want to insert pictures into your document, like the EMU logo on top of the first
page of this experiment. You can do this by clicking the From File… item in the Picture
submenu of Insert menu.
Of course, you will have to browse and find the path of the image that you want to insert…
Inserting Page Numbers into your documents:
To insert a page numbers into a document, click the Page Numbers menu item in the Insert
menu.
Inserting Symbol into your documents:
To insert symbols into a document, click the Symbol menu item in the Insert menu. For
example:
X², ≥ , ☻ , ∞
Bullets and Numbering
To add bullets and numbering into a document, click the Bullets and Numbering menu
item in the Format menu.
View Header and Footer
To display Header and Footer in document, click Header and Footer menu item in the
View menu.
Section 2 - Spreadsheets
Basic Idea. A spreadsheet is a convenient, interactive, visual system for representing and
manipulating tabular data.
Used for what? Financial data and reports, budgeting, keeping track of grades, etc. Any time
you have rows and columns of data, and need to compute functions of those rows and/or
columns, a spreadsheet is probably useful.
Famous examples: VisiCalc, Supercalc, Lotus 1-2-3, Excel.
7.2.1. A Few Details
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Each cell in a spreadsheet may contain text, numeric data, or a function whose value
depends on the contents of other cells.
Spreadsheets may be able to do goal seeking; the system will try to find a value for
one cell that makes another cell equal to some specified value.
Spreadsheets may allow macro definitions. A macro is a sequence of operations
grouped together and given a single name.
Modern spreadsheets include lots of extras to do charting and report preparation.
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7.2.2. Computer Science Issues
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A spreadsheet is really just a very high level, problem-specific, programming
environment.
A user "programs" interactively by entering text or data in cells, defining functions,
and performing other operations. Each user action (event) generates an immediate
response from the spreadsheet program.
The user also "programs" at a lower level by defining complicated functions for a
particular cell, or defining macros.
The user's instructions are interpreted (rather than compiled) by the spreadsheet
program.
What algorithms lie under the surface of a spreadsheet?
Algorithms needed to implement a spreadsheet application include searching, sorting,
findmax, summing, statistical functions, root finding (for goal seeking), and most of what a
compiler does (in order to interpret macros and complicated function definitions).
Compare/contrast spreadsheets with databases:
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
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The visual nature of spreadsheets does not scale easily to thousands and thousands of
data items.
The types of questions we can answer with a spreadsheet are pretty limited.
We cannot easily relate one spreadsheet to another usually.
7.2.3. Introduction to Microsoft Excel
When you start Excel, you will see a worksheet (tables) in which you can write text,
numbers or formulas. Texts can be used to create titles or labels, numbers are the data that
we obtain from somewhere, and formulas are used to do some operations or calculations on
these numbers.
Tables are formed of columns and rows. Each box in a table (the intersection of a row and a
column) is called a cell. Columns are named as A, B, C, D, etc, and rows are named as 1, 2, 3,
4, etc… Cells are named as A1, A2,…, B1, B2,…,…, Z1, Z2,… depending on the location
they are found.
Ranges:
In an Excel Worksheet there are 16384 rows and 256 columns. Range is a group (rectangular
block) of cells. A column or a row, for example, is a range, part of a column or a row is also a
range. Ranges are represented with two cells: The first and the last.
Ex: A1:A5 is a range of 5 cells in the A column. More strictly, A1, A2, A3, A4, A5
B2:E4 is a range of 12 cells. The cells are B2, B3, B4, C2, C3, C4, D2, D3, D4, E2, E3,
E4.
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Formulas:
In Excel, you can write formulas to do some calculations on cells or ranges of cells. For
example, you can add the values in F1 and F2, and write the result into F3, by writing
=F1+F2 into F3.
Functions:
In these formulas you can also use some functions like SUM(), PRODUCT(), MIN(), MAX(),
AVERAGE(), COUNTIF(), SIN(), etc. For example, instead of =F1+F2, you may use
=SUM(F1:F2). Of course for adding only two numbers it may not be a very bright idea to use
the function SUM(), but if you have many numbers to add, a hundred numbers for example, it
will certainly be very useful!
Writing Formulas:
To write a formula into a cell, you should first put an equal sign (=) and then write the
corresponding formula.
Ex: Write 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 into A1, A2, A3, A4 and A5 respectively. Then write =SUM(A1:A5)
into the cell A6.
Do you see the result 15 in A6? Now change the number in any of the cells in range
A1:A5 and see that the value of A6 is automatically recalculated.
Copying a formula to other cells:
Suppose you want to add the numbers in B1:B5, also. Instead of writing =SUM(B1:B5) into
B6, you can just copy A6 to B6. You know that the formula in A6 was =SUM(A1:A5) but it
will be automatically turned to =SUM(B1:B5) during the copy operation.
Constant Addressing vs Relative Addressing:
As you see in the section above, when you copy some formula to another cell, the range in it
automatically changes. This is because there is relative addressing. To prevent this, you can
use the $ sign in front of the cell addresses. Suppose that you write =SUM($A$1:$A$5) in
A6. When you copy it to B6, the formula will remain exactly the same, and you will see 15 in
both A6 and B6.
Using the Help Menu:
Sometimes, you may forget how to do something, or you may want to learn something new
which would be very useful for what you are intending to do. In these cases, you can just refer
to the Help menu. Try it! It is like a teacher who is always ready to answer your questions and
solve your problems.
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Sorting a column:
You can sort some rows (or some range of cells) in the table, by any column, in ascending or
descending order. To do this, just select a range of cells, click the Sort item in the Data menu,
and select the columns by which you want to do the sort. It is so simple!
Inserting Charts into your worksheet:
Charts (graphs) are visual representations of numbers. Instead of seeing many numbers all
together, we usually prefer to see a chart which represents everything visually.
Whenever there is an election, for example, all the TV channels show the results by using
some kind of graphs. It is more easily understandable to human beings. To insert a chart, just
select the corresponding columns (or ranges), and click Chart… item in the Insert menu.
Then select the chart type that you want to use and click Next two times. Now enter the
Chart title, and select a data label style, if you want, and click Next again. Be sure that “As
object in: Sheet 1” is selected and click Finish. Now the chart is inserted into your worksheet.
Change the values in some of the cells of the range that was used to prepare the chart. Realize
that the chart is automatically updated to reflect these changes.
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