Basic Computer Concepts

Unit 3: Office 97 Application Suite

Lesson 1: Common Office Functions

How do you open an existing document?

Because Microsoft Office is an integrated suite of applications, the same basic procedure is used to open a document regardless of its type (word processing, spreadsheet, or database).

The most general way to open a document is with the Open... command from the File menu. (You can also select the icon from the standard toolbar.) The Open command will bring up the Open dialog box. If you have worked with other documents under Windows, the Open dialog box should look familiar. To reduce the amount of time it takes to learn an application, most programs written for the Windows operating system are designed to use the same style of dialog box for opening a file. (You will notice other common dialog boxes too, such as those for Print and Save.) The avi movie below shows an example of opening a file using the Open command.

Many of the files you will open are files you have recently used. At the bottom of the File menu is a list of the most recently used files. If the file you want to open is on this list you can quickly open the file.

The avi movie below shows an example of opening a file on the recently used list.

(Note: The number of files to keep on the recently used files list is a parameter you can control. To change the value, select Tools/Options... and then the General tab.)