ECDL Module 3: Wordprocessing

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Jaws and Windows Keystrokes and Keyboard Shortcuts for ECDL Module 3: Wordprocessing using Microsoft Word

The Wordprocessing module covers all the skills and Windows keyboard shortcuts and Jaws keystrokes you will need to successfully complete the module. When the tutorial was written my student was using Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Word and Jaws 7.0   The majority of the keyboard shortcuts are Microsoft Office shortcuts so users of other screenreaders will not be disadvantaged.  To access this tutorial follow numbered instructions below.

I particularly like Jaws because the help files for it are excellent, if you get stuck and cannot remember a keyboard shortcut to do a particular job, then hitting “Insert + H” will give you application specific keystrokes.
The tutorial is based upon the ECDL practice tasks from ZigZag education, so if your school or college is using these resources then following this tutorial will give you the necessary skills to pass the wordprocessing module. If you need further help then you can contact me via the About Me page.
 
 

1. Open a document and save it to disk with a new filename.

First hit the “Windows” key and Jaws will respond “Start Menu”, now hit “P” for programs and then keep tapping “M” for Microsoft until you get to Microsoft Word. Now hit the “Enter” key and Microsoft Word will open, giving a new document upon which you can type. However we do not want this document, so close it by hitting “Ctrl + W”
Locate the document to open, generally in your home directory called “My Documents”. To open the file, hit “Ctrl + O”, to locate the “My documents” directory hit “Alt + I” and then use the “up” and “down” arrows to find “My documents”, once you have located it hit “Enter”. To find the file keep hitting “Tab” until Jaws says “List view”, then either use the up and down arrows to locate the file or hit the first letter of the filename until Jaws responds with the correct file name and then hit “Enter”.

2. Change the orientation of the document so that it is in either Portrait or Landscape format.

Tap “Alt” to go to the “File” menu. Down arrow to go to “Page Setup” and then “tab” again to go to “Orientation”, Use the arrow keys to change the orientation and then hit “Enter”. Save your changes using “Ctrl + S”.

3. Change the font type of all the text in the document to a named font.

 Go to the top of the document by doing “Ctrl + Home”, now use “Ctrl + A” to select all of the text. Do “Alt + O” to select format menu and then the down arrow to select “Font” and then tab to the Font list box and use the up arrow keys to select the required font. Finally hit “Enter”.

4. Change the font of all the text in the document to a particular size.

Go to the top of the document by doing “Ctrl + Home”, now use “Ctrl + A” to select all of the text. Do “Alt + O” to select format menu and then the down arrow to select “Font” and then tab to “Size” and use the up or down arrow keys to select the required size. Finally hit “Enter”.

5. Apply a built in style eg: Heading 1 to a title.

Go to the top of the document with “Ctrl + Home” if it is the title select it word by word using “Ctrl + Shift + Right arrow”. Then select the “Format” menu using “Alt + O” and down arrow to “Styles and Formatting” followed by “Enter”. A styles pane will appear on the side of the page, access this by hitting the “F6” key.
Now use the up or down arrow keys to select the style required followed by “Enter”. Swap back to the page pane by hitting “F6” again. Now hit any of the arrow keys to deselect the heading.

6. Apply a particular bullet type to a list.

 Go to the block of text that needs to have the bullets applied to it and select it using either word by word using “Shift + Ctrl + Right arrow”, or line by line “Ctrl + Shift + Down arrow” now hit the “Right mouse button” key and use up or down arrows to go to “Bullets and numbering”, followed by “Enter”, now use the right arrow key to select the type of bullets required and hit “Enter”. Hit “Escape” once you have made your changes.

7. Indent a bulleted list to a given value.

Go to the block of text that needs to have the bullets applied to it and select it either word by word using “Shift + Ctrl + Right arrow”, or line by line “Ctrl + Shift + Down arrow” now hit the “Right mouse button” key and use up or down arrows to go to “Paragraph”, followed by “Enter”, now tab round to “Indentation” when you reach the “Left Align” spin box either type in the required value followed by the units ,or use the up and down arrow keys to adjust the value followed by “Enter”. Finally to avoid any disasters hit any of your arrow keys to unselect the text.
  

8. Change the colour of the bulleted list items.

Go to the block of text that needs to have the bullets applied to it and select it using “Shift + Ctrl + Right arrow”, now access the Format menu by doing “Alt + O”, and then down arrow to “Font” followed by “Enter”, now tab around until you reach “Colour” and tap the down arrow and left and right arrows to go through the colour list. When you reach the required colour hit “Enter” and then tab round to the “OK button” and hit “Enter”. Finally to avoid any disasters hit any of your arrow keys to unselect the text.
 

9. Insert a header into the document.

Access the “View” menu by executing the command “Alt + V”, and then using the down arrow key go down to “Headers and Footers” and hit “Enter”. You are automatically taken to the document header, now type in what is required. To swap back to the document do “Alt + V” again and down arrow to “Normal”.
 

10. Apply centre aligned page numbers to the bottom of the document.

Access the “View” menu by executing the command “Alt + V”, and then using the down arrow key go to “Headers and Footers” and hit “Enter”. You are automatically taken to the document header, tap the “down” arrow once and you are taken to the document footer. You now need to access the “Insert” menu, do this with the command “Alt + I”, and use the “down” arrow again to go down to the “Page Numbers” now tab to the “Alignment” spin box and set the required value using the up and down arrow keys. Next “tab” to the “OK button” and hit “Enter” You now need to come out of Header and Footer view by accessing the “View” menu; Do this by executing the command “Alt + V”, and then go down to “Header and Footer” using the “down” arrow and then hitting “Enter” to return to normal view.
 

11. Locate and insert a row at the bottom of a table. Insert the text into the first and second columns.

Once you have located your table, use the “tab” key to move between the cells in the table. Once you reach the last cell in the table you can add a row by hitting the “tab” key again. Move back through the table by doing “Shift + tab”. Add your text into the appropriate cells, but remember once you reach the last cell in the table, pressing tab will add another row.

12. Set the width of a column in a table to a specific value.

Go anywhere in the column to be adjusted and hit the “Right Mouse button” key then use up or down arrow to go to “Table Properties” followed by “Enter”. A table properties dialogue box will open, use “Ctrl + Tab” to go to the “Column” page and then “tab” to the “Preferred Width” spin box, adjust the width of the column using either the up and down arrow keys or by typing the value followed by the units. Finally hit “Enter”.

13. Amend the colour of the table border to a specified colour.

Go to any cell in the table, and hit the “Right Mouse Button” key, now use the up or down arrows to go to “Table Properties” and hit “Enter”, next do “Ctrl + tab” to go to the “Table” page and “tab” round until you get to the “Borders and Shading” button and hit “Enter”. Now use the “Up and Down” arrows to go to the “Box” button, then hit “tab” again to go to the “Colour” spin box, now hit the “Down arrow” to bring up the list of colours and go through the colours using the “Right and Left” arrow keys, followed by “Enter”. Start tapping the “tab” key again to go to the “OK” button, followed by “Enter”, which will bring you back to the “Table Properties” dialogue box, and hit “Enter” again to bring you back to the table contents. Note if you are required to shade one column or row only then select the row or column using the “Shift + arrow key” and then hit the “Right Mouse Button” key to go to “Borders and shading” followed by “Enter”. Proceed as above to get the desired effect.
 

14. Apply superscript to a portion of text within the table.

Find the portion of text to be superscripted by doing “Ctrl + F” for “Find” and then typing in the required text followed by “Enter”. Hit the “Escape” key to come out of the “Find” feature. If you have a Braille display you will find that the searched for text has been highlighted so now you can do “Ctrl + O” to access the “Format” menu, and tab round until you reach “Superscript” check box. Highlight the checkbox by hitting the “Spacebar” and then tab round to the “OK” button followed by “Enter”.
 You can check the status of your text by doing the Jaws key “Insert + F” so that Jaws will read you the font attributes of the page.

15. Insert an image from a file in the top left corner of the document. Resize the image to a specified width and height.

Go to the top of the document using the keystroke “Ctrl + Home”, now if you need to put the image above the first line of text in the document, hit the “Enter” key a couple of times and then do “Ctrl + Home” again to go above the first line. Now access the “Insert” menu with “Alt + I” and use the down arrow to go to “Picture”, hit “Enter” and then do down arrow again to go to “From File” followed by “Enter”. The “Insert Picture” dialogue box will open, do “Alt + I” to access “Look in directory” and then either use the up and down arrow keys or if you know the first letter of the drive you are looking for hit that.
 Now “tab” to “List” view and again either hit the first letter of the required file or use the arrow keys to select the file followed by “Enter”. Your picture should now be inserted at the top of the document. Select it using the Find command “Ctrl + F”. To select a graphic you need to type “^g” this is usually achieved with a UK keyboard layout by doing “Shift + 6” followed by “G”. Your picture should now be selected so you can change its size by hitting the “Right mouse button” key and using up or down arrow keys to select “Format Picture” followed by “Enter”. The format picture dialogue box will open, select the “Size” page by doing “Ctrl + tab”, now “tab” round to the “Height” spin box and type in the required value. “Tab” again till you reach “Width” and type in the value followed by the units.
 Finally “tab” round to the "OK" button and hit “Enter”, your picture should now be resized. You can now hit any of the arrow keys to unselect the image.

16. Copy the resized image to the bottom of the last page.

Select the image either using the “Shift + Up / Down Arrow” key or using the find feature with “Ctrl + F” followed by the text string “^g”. Once the picture is selected, use the keystroke “Ctrl + C” to copy the image, then move to the bottom of the document using the “Ctrl + End” key where the image is to go and drop it into place with the command “Ctrl + V”. An aid to remembering this is that the letter V is pointed like the end of a tube of glue.

17. Tabulate a specific block of text to a set value in cm.

Select the block of text to be tabulated using the keystrokes “Shift + Ctrl + Right arrow”, then go to the “Format” menu with the command “Ctrl + O” and then “Down Arrow” to go to “Tabs”. A tabs dialogue box will open, hit the “tab” key until you reach the “Tabs stop Position” box, type in the required value, followed by the units. Next tab around to the “Set” button and hit “Enter”, now tab to the “OK” button and hit “Enter” again. You now have to apply these tabs to the required text blocks, do this by going to the start of the text blocks using the arrow keys and then hitting the tab key, Jaws users will be told the tab stop positions, do not worry if they are not exactly what you have set them to.

18. Double line spacing should be applied to the tabulated text.

Once the text has been selected, hit the “Right mouse button key” and use the up or down arrow keys to select “Paragraph” followed by “Enter”. A paragraph dialogue box will open, tab round until you reach the “Line Spacing” spin box, now use the up or down arrow keys to select the desired line spacing followed by “Enter”. De select the text by hitting any of the arrow keys.

19. Replace several occurrences of a specified word with another word chosen by the examiner.

Access the “Find and Replace” feature using the keystroke “Ctrl + F”, a “Find” dialogue box will open, access the “Find and Replace” page using the shortcut “Alt + P” and type in the word which needs to be found. Now hit the tab key to go to the replace box and type in the word chosen by the examiner. Hit “tab” again to go to the “Replace All” button and hit “Enter” again. You should now be told how many times your word has been replaced. Finally hit “Escape” to come out of the find and replace dialogue box.

20. Change the top margin of the document to 2cm.

Access the “File” menu by hitting the “Alt” key. Use down arrow to go to “Page Setup” and then “tab” round to top margin spin box and either type the value followed by units or use the up and down arrow keys to adjust it.

21. Move the sample menu table to a new word processing document.

If you are using Jaws you can go straight to the table using “Ctrl + Insert + T”, alternatively use the up and down arrow keys to locate it. Use the “tab” key to determine the extent of the table and the contents of the last cell in the table, you can then go to the first cell in the table and holding down the “Shift” key tap the right arrow to select each cell.
Once you have selected the last cell, do the keystroke “Ctrl + X” to cut the table from the current document. Now create a new document with the command “Ctrl + N” and paste the table into it with the command “Ctrl + V”.

22. Save this new document in an alternative format such as RTF.

Access the “Save As” menu by hitting the “Alt” key and then the down arrow to go to “Save As”, hit the tab key until you reach the “Save as type” list box and then use the down arrow to go to the desired format followed by “Enter”.
 Do “shift + tab” to go back to filename, type in a name and then tab to the “Save” button and hit “Enter”.
  

23. Switch back to the original document and alter the paragraph spacing of the first paragraph on page 1 should be altered to 10pts below.

To swap between open applications and documents hold down “Alt” and tap “tab” until you reach the original document and then release the “Alt” key. Go to the top of the document with “Ctrl + Home”, get to the first paragraph using the keystroke “Ctrl + down arrow”, and select it using “Ctrl + Shift + down arrow”. Now hit the “Right mouse button” key and select “Paragraph" using the up or down arrow keys, a paragraph dialogue box will open, tab round to the Spacing “Before” spin box and use the up or down arrow keys to adjust the value or type the value and the units. Now tab round to the “OK” button and hit “Enter”. Finally deselect the paragraph by hitting any of the arrow keys.

24. Check the spelling in the document, ignoring proper names.

To access the spell checker, hit the “F7” key. By hitting the tab or shift tab keys you can go through the options available, basically the two most important keys are “Ignore” or “Change”, by hitting “Enter” when you reach one of these, changes will be made and you will be prompted for the next word. When you get to the suggestions box, if there is more than one suggestion you can review them using the up and down arrow keys. You will be prompted once the spell check is complete.

25. Zoom the document to 75% and save.

Access the ”View” menu with “Alt + V” and down arrow to “Zoom”, followed by “Enter”. Now use the up or down arrow keys to select the required value, followed by “Ctrl + S” to save the document.

26. Print 1 copy of page 1.

 Hit “Ctrl + P” to access the “Print” dialogue box. Tab round to “Page Range” and use down arrow to select “Pages”, type in the page number required and then tab round to the “OK” button, followed by “Enter”.

27. Mail merge can be used to create personalised form letters. Do a mail merge operation to insert names and addresses from a data file into the top left hand corner of the document.

Go to the top of the document using the keystroke “Ctrl + Home”. Use the down arrow to locate the point at which you wish to insert the list of addressses. You may have to make sure there is a clear line above and below the insertion point so that the letter does not appear too crowded. Do this by tapping the “Enter” key a coup;le of times and then going back to your insertion point. Access the “Tools” menu with the command “Alt + T”, then “down arrow” to go to “Letters and Mailings” followed by “Enter”, then down arrow again to go to “Mail Merge Wizard” followed by “Enter”.
 
The wizard will open, you can swap from this to the document at any time by hitting the “F6” key. We first have to select the document type, we require the default which is “Letters”, so hit the “tab” key to go to “Next: Starting document” link followed by “Enter”.
 
You now come to “Document select”; we require the “current document” so hit the tab key again to go to “Next: Select Recipients”, followed by “Enter”. You are now brought to the “Select Recipients” section, we are using a ready made list so select it by hitting the “tab” key to go to “Select a list” link followed by “Enter”. Browse for the data file in the usual way, hit “Alt + I” to access the drive or folder which contains the data file, then tab to go to “List view”, followed either by the first letter of the data file name. Once you reach the file, hit “Enter” and a mail recipients dialogue box will open, here you can review your recipients, by default all addresses are selected which is what we require, so simply “tab” around to the “OK” button and hit “Enter”.
 
Hit the “tab” key again to go to the “Next:Write letter” link followed by “Enter”. You will now come to the “Write your letter” section, select the “Address block” menu using the up and down arrow keys and hit “Enter”. An “Insert address block” menu will open, here you can specify the format that you want your addresses to appear in. We will go with the default format, so tab round to “OK” button and hit “Enter”.
 
Hit “tab” again to go to “Next: Preview your letters” link and hit “Enter”. We do not wish to make any further amendments so “tab” around to “Next: Complete the merge” link and hit “Enter”. If you so wish you can now use the up and down arrows to select “Print” and print your merged form letters. Alternatively if you just wish to save your merged document, hit the “F6” key to swap back to document view. You will find that the cursor has been dropped at the end of your merged data field.
If you have been successful you will find that a persons name and address has been inserted from the datafile. Use the up and down arrows to review what has been inserted.
  

28. Save the merged document with a new filename. Save and close all documents.

To save the document with a new file name, hit “Alt” and then down arrow to “Save As”, type in a new filename. To select the directory do “Alt + I” followed by up or down arrows, to select a folder for saving hit “tab” to go to “list view” followed by the first letter of the folder name if you know it. Finally tab round to the “OK” button followed by “Enter”.
 Close all documents with the command “Ctrl + W”.

29. Open a named file and save in template format under a different filename. Close the document and exit Word.

Do “Ctrl + O” to open the file, hopefully you should be in the correct directory, however if you need to locate another directory do "Alt + I" for "Look In" and then up and down arrow keys to locate the correct directory followed by "Enter".  To locate the correct sub directory hit “tab” until you get to list view and then hit the first letter of the filename repeatedly until you reach the required file, now hit “Enter” and the file should open. To save it as a template, hit “Alt” to access the “File” menu and then down arrow to “Save As”, type in a filename for the template and then hit “tab” to go to the “Save as type” list box, use the down arrow to select “Document Template” and hit “Enter”, now “tab” round to the “OK” button and hit “Enter” again. To close the word file, do the keystroke “Ctrl + W”. To exit word do “Alt + F4”.
Open the required file that you want to save as a template.

29B. Alternative suggestion for saving as template

(suggested by Jim Wright)
Press "F12" and type in name of the file to be saved as a template.  Press "tab" to go to the save as type list box.  Now down arrow to "Document Template" and press "enter".  Now tab to hear "Save In" button and arrow up to 3 & a half floppy and press enter.  Now "tab" to hear "save button" and press "spacebar".
You should now hear it being saved on to the floppy.  As it is a template file it will have a file extension of .dot spelt d o t for Tommy.