MS Word 97 - Opening documents

This is  not a course. It is a...

Tip Sheet

Open a new blank document

Word automatically starts with a new blank page. However, you can work with more than one document at a time. While you are working with an existing document you can open a second document (and third and fourth etc) by doing the following:

Open an existing  / saved file

When you save a document to a disk we refer to the saved document as a file. All files that you save should have different names, describing what is in that file. This will help you to find the right document again when you want to open it.

Click on File Click on Open or Click on the Open File icon    You will now see the pop-up screen( a small screen with options) appear on your screen (see below).

This pop-up screen (above) will give you all the information you need to be able to find the file you want to open. The first place to look is in the Look in: line at the top of the screen (circled for  you here). The name of the storage folder should appear there. For instance, if you saved the file in a folder called My Documents you are in the right place. Now you have to look below the Look in: line to see the names of the various sub-folders and files that are in the My Documents folder. In this example we are hoping to open the file called Fractions Test1.

To open the file, click on the file name. It will look like this once you have clicked on it: Fractions Test1
Now click on the Open button on the top right of the pop-up screen.

Closing a document / file

When you attempt to close a document, Word will ask you if you want to save it first (see save file). This is a safety measure so that you do not accidentally close files without saving them. If you want to keep a file, you must save it before closing it.

To close a file (assuming that you have saved it) Click on File Click on Close There is not normally an icon available on the toolbar for this function. The other way in which you can close a file is to use the buttons on the very top right of the screen. Notice that one set of buttons appears in the blue status bar. This is not the set of button that I am referring to (these buttons refer to the whole programme and that X will close the Word programme). The buttons being referring to are the second row of buttons in the grey area. See the circle around the X that we are referring to (above). The second row of buttons refer to the document with which you are working. If you want to close the document, carefully click on that X in the second row.