Saving a Document

It is recommended that you save your work every ten minutes or so. Then, if something goes wrong with the computer, you will have only lost the last ten minutes of your work.

The first time you save a document, always choose File/Save As. This allows you to specify where the document will be saved, and what it will be called. After this, to save your file you select File/Save or click on the Save button on the Standard toolbar. You would only use File/Save As again if you wished to save your document under a different name, or in a different location.

• Select File/Save As. The following dialog box will appear.
  

• Look at the bottom of the dialog box. There is a section labeled File name:. This is where you type in the name you want the document to be called.
• Word97 has filled in a name for us - the first few words of the document. In this case it makes sense to call our document The Gingerbread Man, so we will not change this title.
• Underneath this section is a box labeled Save As Type:. This is where you specify what type of file you want to save this document as - a Word97 file, a Text file, a WordPerfect file etc.
• You will usually want to save documents as Word97 files. This box should show Word Document, as it does.
• Click on the black arrow next to the box and scroll through the list of options available to you. When you have finished looking, scroll back to the top and click on the option Word Document to close the list of options and make sure that we are saving this file as a Word97 document.
• Look at the top of the dialog box. There is a section here labeled Save In:. This is where you tell Word97 which folder you want to save your document in.
• At the moment this box shows the folder My Documents. This is the default folder for Word97. If you do not change this folder, all your documents will be saved in the My Documents folder on the C drive (the hard disk) of your computer.

We will now see how you would select a different folder to save your work in.

• Click on the black arrow next to this box. A list of the drives on your computer will appear. You can open drives and folders in this list until you find the folder you want to save your document in.
• Click on the C drive icon. A list of all the folders on the C drive will appear, as shown below.
  

• You could save your document in any of these folders. Double click on the Windows folder.
• The Windows folder will now appear next to Save In:, and a list of the folders in the Windows folder will be displayed.

DO NOT DO THE FOLLOWING INSTRUCTION

If we were to click on the Save button, the document The Gingerbread Man would be saved as a Word file in the Windows folder.

We want to save the document in the My Documents folder.

• Click on the arrow next to the Save In: box again.
• From the list that appears, click on the C drive.
• Double click on the My Documents folder to open this folder.
• The dialog box should now look like the one below:
  

• Click on the Save button. The dialog box will disappear, and your document will be saved as a Word file called The Gingerbread Man in the My Documents folder.
• Look at the title bar. It should now say Microsoft Word - The Gingerbread Man instead of Microsoft Word - Document 1.
• Type the following text after a blank line in your document.

The Gingerbread Man ran down the road until he came to a cow. The cow called out to him

• We now want to save the document again to include these lines in it. At the moment, the saved copy of The Gingerbread Man does not include the lines above.

Select File/Save. This will replace the previous copy of The Gingerbread Man with a new copy, which includes the lines you just typed in