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The Page
Layout Tab lets you control the look and feel of your document
in Microsoft Word 2007. You can apply a global design to your
document by using one of the available themes and color
schemes. You can also change the document orientation, page
size, margins, indentation, line spacing and paragraph
settings.
When you click on the Page Layout tab, this is similar
to what you would see.
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The first thing we are going to
discuss is working with Themes. Themes are pre-defined
and let you change the entire design using a combination
of colors, font styles and formatting effects. Themes
in Microsoft Word 2007 won't apply to the text if you don't have
a style in place.
First you will
need to use the Home tab to pick one of the Styles options.
You can also click Change Styles and select a Style Set
for the whole document. Since themes are set to work with the
styles used in a document, you need to choose a style for all
your headings, sub headings, and so forth.
Using this feature I was able to change
my entire document to "Metro" theme. As I hovered over it, I
was able to see a "Live Preview" on the right side. Note that
the changes were only applied to the Header section and
section headings. This is shown in the screen shot below:
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The Theme
did not affect my document text as it did not have a
style applied to it. When I selected the heading, "Description
of Organization" and browsed to the Home Tab, I did see that
Heading 1 style had been applied to it.
This is shown
as follows.
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I don't know about you,
but I am not a big fan of the bright green color for my headings.
I can easily switch this by using the Built-In font colors
under the Themes group. After you select this command, you
will get a drop down list of several choices. I am going
to select the Office color scheme which will switch the heading
to blue. This is a fine color choice.
This step is
shown in the screen capture below.
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The last change
I am going to make is to apply one of the Theme Fonts.
This will leave the color scheme in place and just change the
fonts. I will switch from Metro (blue rectangle) to Concourse
(red rectangle) as shown in the next figure.
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Next we will
move on to the
Page Setup group under the Page Layout Tab in Microsoft Word 2007.
Using this tab, we can modify the structure layout of our
document with details like margins, page size, orientation, line
numbers etc.
I would like to
modify the Definition Assignment document to use the Narrow
margins instead of the Normal one. This will use more
real estate on the page and trim 0.5 inch around all the
borders. Here are the necessary steps shown by red
rectangles.
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When I did
this, my document was updated using the Narrow margins. Here
is the output from the action. I like the changes I have made so far
so I will go ahead and Save the document. Like
they say, "Save early, save often!"
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Next what if
you were trying to print address labels and needed to select a
different paper size? No problem. From the Page setup group
under the Page Layout tab, select Size and then Envelope #10. Caution:
remember to feed the proper paper size in the Printer as well for
this to work correctly in Microsoft Word 2007.
Here is
a
screen shot of
what this should look like on your computer.
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I really like this next feature. Currently I have
a report that I am working on, but what if I was actually working
on a newsletter or flier? In that case maybe I would want
to split the text into two or more columns. Using the
columns option in Page Setup group, you can do just that. Select
Columns command and then choose
Two.
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After you have
made the above selection, Microsoft Word 2007 will split the
text in the report to two columns. It takes care of the formatting,
margins, spacing and everything else automatically!!
The image below shows an output from this
command of splitting a document into two columns.
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Another
common task is to use hyphens in your document. This conserves
space and gives the document a more professional look. You can
enable this automatically by using Hyphenation command under
the Page Layout Tab.
A
screen
shot is as follows. Notice I have also shown
you how to insert continuous line numbers here. This command is right above the Hyphenation button. This functionality could be useful
if you are working on a legal document.
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The
hyphenation will split long words into two lines as shown below
in the right colored rectangles
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Let's move on to
the next group, which is the Page Background. Here you can
select Watermarks, Page Colors and Borders. For
confidential or privacy type documents, you may want to
use a Watermark. You can achieve this by
selecting Watermark and picking one of the menu choices as shown
below. Microsoft Word 2007 makes this a breeze by providing you
Built-In options to do this task.
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What if you wanted
to add a little color to my document? You can select Page Color option under the Page Background group. How about
bright Green, a little too bright I think!
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The Page
Layout Tab lets you also control indentation in your document.
Indentation determines the distance of the paragraph from
either the left or the right margin. I found a quotation in my
document and this is a perfect candidate for indentation.
I am going to use 0.5 inch indent from the left and right side. Here
is a screen shot of this action in red arrows.
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The last
option I want to
discuss is the Spacing before and after paragraphs. We will use
the same text as the previous example. The quote seems to
be a little too close to the regular document text. I would
like to add 18 pt (point) spacing to the top
and bottom of this quote. I can easily do this
by using the Spacing option under the Paragraph group in Microsoft
Word 2007.
Shown below in
red arrows is the affect of making
this change.
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This
concludes the lesson on Page Layout Tab in Microsoft Word
2007.
If you are unable to find the information you
are looking for, please visit Microsoft's Word home
page
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