Description of microsoft word

You also have the ability to apply headers and footers to all pages except the first page of your document.

To learn more about using headers and footers in Word for the web, see What's New in Word for the web. With Word for the web, you can easily create links to bookmarks within a document, and set a screen tip that displays when the cursor points to the link.

Learn more about hyperlinks in Word for the web. An index lists the terms and topics that are discussed in a document, along with the pages that they appear on.

To create an index, you mark the index entries by providing the name of the main entry and the cross-reference in your document, and then you build the index. With Word for the web, you can insert a picture from a file saved on your local hard drive or from Bing Images.

However, these documents can't be edited in the browser, and you can't create IRM-protected documents in Word for the web. Word for the web can't open documents that are encrypted with a password. Advanced document protection features, such as creating IRM-protected documents and applying password protection, are only available in the Word desktop app. Learning Tools are designed to help you improve your reading skills by boosting your ability to pronounce words correctly, to read quickly and accurately, and to understand what you read.

In Word for the web, start typing directly below an existing numbered list and your next line automatically becomes part of the list. Learn more about creating a list in Word for the web. Advanced data integration features, such as mail merge using an Excel spreadsheet, is only available in the Word desktop app.

Office for the web requires an internet connection and an internet browser. You need the Word desktop app installed on your computer to view and edit a document while disconnected from the internet or from your organization's on-premises Office Web Apps Server. If you have the Word desktop app installed, you can use the full functionality of Word to view and edit your document.

When you save, the online document is updated with your changes. You can also download and save-as an offline copy of the document, but it will not be in sync with the online version. Learn more about Office Web Apps Server. With Word for the web, you can adjust margins, size of paper, and whether the page is laid out vertically or horizontally in your documents.

Word for the web does not display rulers and gridlines. Learn how to Delete a blank page in Word for the web. Advanced page layout features, such as page borders and line numbers, are only available in the Word desktop app. Insert page numbers to your document in both Word for the web and the Word desktop app. You also have the ability to apply page numbers to all pages except the first page of your document. To learn more about using page numbers in Word for the web, see What's new in Word for the web.

With Word for the web, you can align paragraphs left, right, or centered; run text right-to-left; increase or decrease indentation; and format paragraphs as a bulleted or numbered list.

You can also clear formatting. You can't adjust line spacing in Word for the web. With Word for the web, you can resize pictures and add alternative text in your document. You can use themes to simplify the process of creating matching, professional-looking documents.

Themes can be applied to tables, charts, shapes and diagrams to provide consistent fonts, effects, and color schemes. With Word desktop app, you can use Office Presentation Service or Skype for Business Online to display a document during an online meeting so that colleagues can follow a link to watch as you page through the document.

With Word for the web, you get a one-click process for generating a PDF and displaying the Print dialog box. Learn more about printing a document in Word for the web. Advanced printing features, such as printing markups and document properties, are only available in the Word desktop app. Word for the web automatically checks spelling as you type and applies a wavy red underline to misspelled text. Common AutoCorrect actions are included, such as correcting routine misspellings or converting characters to symbols.

Additionally, you can set the proofing language or turn off the spelling checker for selected text. Advanced proofing tools, such as adding new words to the spell check dictionary, applying a custom dictionary, and language and translation tools, are only available in the Word desktop app. More than one person can work simultaneously in a document. In Word for the web and Word , real-time presence helps you see where your co-authors are working in the document so that you don't create conflicts as you edit, and you can see changes as they're being made.

Word supports simultaneous editing, but there is no presence indication, and changes can't be seen by multiple authors until the document is saved. To learn more about real-time co-authoring, see What's new in Word for the web and Collaborate on Word documents with real-time co-authoring. Bibliography, table of contents, and index features display in the document as expected in View mode. In Edit mode, they appear as placeholders that you can delete but not edit or update.

Advanced reference tools, such as creating a bibliography, table of contents, index, or table of authorities, are only available in the Word desktop app. Microsoft Word is a widely used commercial word processor designed by Microsoft. Microsoft Word is a component of the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software, but can also be purchased as a stand-alone product.

Microsoft Word was initially launched in , and has since been revised numerous times. It is available for both Windows and Apple operating systems. In , Microsoft hired Charles Simonyi to develop a word-processing application. The first version was released in Initially, MS Word was not very popular, owing to its radically different look compared to WordPerfect, the leading word processor at that time.

However, Microsoft improved Word continually over the years, including a version that could run on a Mac. The second major release of Word, in , included an upgrade of major features, in addition to new functionalities such as support for rich text format RTF. In , Microsoft increased its market share in the word processor business with the release of Windows 95 and Office 95, which offered a bundled set of office productivity software.

Some features that have made MS Word useful include a WYSIWYG what-you-see-is-what-you-get display: this design ensures that everything displayed on screen appears the same way when printed or moved to another format or program. The ability of users to copy and paste MS Word content into many other platforms without significant formatting loss is one reason the software has stayed so popular in the last two decades. In addition, MS Word has a built-in dictionary for spell checking; misspelled words are marked with a red squiggly underline.

MS Word offers text-level features such as bold, underline, italic and strike-through, and page-level features such as indentation, paragraphing and justification. Word is compatible with many other programs, the most common being the other members of the Office suite.

We created a Microsoft Word document that you can download and open in most word processor programs, including Microsoft Word. Click the link below to download the example Word document and experiment more with a word processing document. Microsoft Word offers many features not found in a traditional text editor or a plain-text file.

Some advantages include changing the formatting e. The features above are also available in a rich-text editor, such as WordPad , which is included with Microsoft Windows. A rich-text editor , like WordPad , offers many of the same basic features as Microsoft Word.

Where Microsoft Word differs is the ability to do more advanced features. Microsoft Word has had several versions throughout its history. The different releases with release dates are listed below. What is Microsoft Word used for? What does the Microsoft Word editor look like? Where do you find or start Microsoft Word? How many lines are there on a page in Microsoft Word? What type of files can Microsoft Word create and use?