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Without fail, the place to start any program in Windows is at the fabled Start button. It may not be the coolest way to start a program, but it's consistent and reliable — good things to have in a computer.
Follow these steps to give Word a workout:
1. Click the Start button.
Use your computer mouse to click the Start button, which is often found on the left side of the taskbar and at the bottom of the screen, adorned with the Windows logo. Clicking the Start button displays the Start menu.
2. Choose Word from the All Programs menu.
Now, you may be lucky and see the Word program icon on the Start menu. If so, click the Word icon to start Word. If not, you have to click the All Programs menu and look for Word in that vast labyrinth.
The better and best ways to start Word
When you use Word a lot, it helps to have quick access to its icon — that icon is the way you start Word — and then start your work. A better way than keeping Word hidden on the All Programs menu is to create a Word shortcut icon on the desktop.
Follow these steps to create a shortcut to Word:
1. Locate the Word icon on the All Programs menu.
Don't start Word now! Just point the mouse at the Word icon on the Start button's All Programs menu or wherever else it may be found.
2. Right-click the Microsoft Word menu item.
A pop-up menu appears.
3. Choose Send To --> Desktop (Create Shortcut).
You haven't changed anything, but you have added a new icon to the desktop, an icon you can use to start Word, if you like.
4. Click the mouse on the desktop.
The desktop is the background you see when you use Windows. Clicking the desktop hides the Start menu.
5. Locate the Microsoft Word shortcut icon and double-click it.
The best way to start Word is to place the Word icon on the Quick Launch Toolbar. The Quick Launch Toolbar, found right next to the Start button on the taskbar, is a row of icons representing programs, which you can start with a single click of the mouse. And, unlike the desktop, the Quick Launch bar is always handy.
To put the Word icon on the Quick Launch bar, you need to drag and drop, so it helps to have a Word icon already on the desktop, as described in the preceding set of steps. From the desktop, use the mouse to drag the Word icon to the Quick Launch bar, and then release the mouse button to "drop" the icon. To start Word from the Quick Launch bar, just point the mouse at the Word icon and click.
 | Another way to have the Word icon always handy is to pin it to the Start menu directly. In Step 3 (a few paragraphs back), choose the item named Pin to Start Menu. |
Starting Word by opening a document
You can use existing documents to start Word: Opening a Word document causes Word to start and to display that document.
Here's one way you can start Word by opening a document:
1. Open the Documents folder.
The Documents folder, also called My Documents in some versions of Windows, is where Word, as well as other applications, stores the stuff you create. You can find this folder on the desktop, or you can get at it from the Start menu.
The Documents folder opens and displays its content, which is the stuff you've already created and saved to disk.
2. Locate a Word document.
3. Double-click the Word document icon.
You can open any Word document by following these steps. The document can be on the desktop, in the Documents folder, or in any other folder or location where a Word document icon can lurk.
- The document name appears beneath or to the right of the icon. You can use the name to determine the document's contents — as long as the document was properly named when it was saved to disk.
| - If you have one document you open consistently, consider putting a shortcut to that document on the desktop for quick access: Right-click the document's icon and choose Send To --> Desktop (Create Shortcut).
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- Word is capable of opening other types of documents, including documents from previous versions of Word, Rich Text Format documents, and others. Each of these documents has its own icon, though the icon looks similar to the standard Word document icon.
- You can see a list of the recent documents you've worked on by choosing the Recent Items or My Recent Documents submenu from the main Start menu. Choose your document from that list to open it.
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