Unit -3 Digital Documentation

Document:
A document is a paper with written contents for example letters, reports, thesis,
manuscripts, legal documents, books etc.

Documentation:
The process of preparing a document is called documentation. It is required to
preserve the contents for a longer period or to be used as evidence.

Word processing:
Word processing is the use of computer software to enter, edit, format, store,
retrieve and print the document. The document can be a letter, notice, report,
business correspondence, etc.

Word Processor:
A word processor is a computer application used for the production of printable
material. In the beginning WordStar was the most widely used word processor.

Limitations of using typewriter

1. If there is any typing error, then the whole document should be

replaced.
2. Difficult to send the same letter to multiple persons using a
typewriter.
3. Typewriter does not have all the required characters or symbols.
4. It is not possible to produce a document in the desired format using
a typewriter.
Difference between manual typewriter and electronic typewriter

Electronic Typewriter Manual Typewriter

It is faster than electronic typewriter Manual typewriter is slow

It is possible to make changes Not possible to make changes

It has a screen don’t have screen

First commercially word processing software

WordStar was the first commercially word processing software and in

beginning WordStar was the most widely used in computer.

Some of the features provided by popular word processors are as listed

below.

• Create, edit, save, retrieve and print the document

• Select, copy and move the text from one place to another in the
document.
• Change the font size, font style of the text in the document
• Check spelling and grammar
• Create table, modify the size of the selected rows, columns or cells
• Combine one or more documents
• Insert pictures or graphs within the document
• Print the selected text or selected pages of the document

What is LibreOffice?

LibreOffice is a free and open-source software(FOSS) which provide fully

featured office productivity suite like LibreOffice Writer, LibreOffice Calc,
LibreOffice Impress and LibreOffice Base. Currently the version of
LibreOffice is 6.0 and above are available.
Starting LibreOffice Writer

There is three different ways to open LibreOffice Writer –

• To start LibreOffice Writer in Windows, double click LibreOffice

Writer shortcut, which is usually found on the computer desktop
• To start LibreOffice Writer, click on the Start or Windows button,
select LibreOffice → LibreOffice Writer from application window.
• LibreOffice Writer, click on start and type the text “Writer” in the
search field and select LibreOffice Writer.

Create a document: Steps to create a new document

• Keyboard shortcut : Ctrl + N
• Mouse options: File → New → Text Document
Save a Document: steps:
1. Select File →Save
2. Select the location on disk to save the file
3. Type a suitable name for the document
4. Click on Save button
To save a document using password:
1. Select File → Save
2. Select the location on disk to save the file
3. Type a suitable name for the document
4. Put a tick on the checkbox Save with a password
5. Type the password to open the file in Set password
dialog box
6. Type the same password in the second box and click
OK button.
Parts of the Writer window

The various parts of the Writer window are –

• Title bar: Title bar is located on the top of Writer window. It

shows the title of the currently opened document.
• Menu bar: It appears below the Title Bar. It shows the menu items
File, Edit,
View, Insert, Format, Tables, Tools, Window and Help.
• Toolbars: The tool bar appears below Menu Bar. By default, the
Standard Tool Bar and Formatting Tool Bar will appear.
• Standard toolbar: It contains commands in the form of icons.
• Formatting toolbar: It contains the various options for formatting
a document.
• Status bar: This is positioned at the left bottom of the Writer
window and displays the number of pages, words, the language
used, zooming, etc.
• Scroll button and scroll bar: It is used to scroll the document.
 • Zoom: It allows to change the scale of the text and pictures in the
document only for view.

Cursor movement

(a) Text Cursor Movement

There are two keys control the movement of cursor Home and End.

• Home key can jump to the beginning of the line.

• End key jump to end of the line.
• To jump to the beginning of a document (top of the page) press
Ctrl + Home.
• To jump to the end of a document (end of the page) press
Ctrl+End.

Editing the document

(a) Undo and Redo

•In document if you have made some changes and now you want to
erase the last change done, then use the Undo option.
• After undo command, again if you want to go back then use the
Redo option.
(b) Moving and copying text

1. Cut and Paste: It is used to move a selected text from one place to another.

•Select the text and click on Edit → Cut option or press CTRL+X
for cut.
• Click on Edit → Paste option or press CTRL+V for paste.
2. Copy and Paste

Copy used to make a duplicate copy of selected text.

• Click on Edit→ Copy option or press CTRL+C for copy.

• Click on Edit→Paste option or press CTRL+V for paste.

(c) Selecting text

Click where you want to begin the selection, hold down the left mouse button,
then drag the pointer over the text that you want to select. The selected text will
be highlighted.
(d) Selecting criteria: There are several selection tricks to speed up the
selection process as below.

To select a letter or letters Drag the Mouse across the letter(s)

To select a single word at a time Double click in the word

To select a complete sentence at a time Triple click anywhere in the sentence

To select a complete paragraph at a time Quadruple click anywhere in the paragraph

A document Press Ctrl + A on the key board

(e) Selecting non-consecutive text items

Writer provides a way to select the non-continuous text using the keyboard and
mouse. To select non-consecutive text, press the Ctrl key and select a separate
word using the mouse.

(f) Selecting a vertical block of text

In LibreOffice Writer you can select vertical text using vertical block. Click on
Edit > Selection Mode > Block Area and then click and drag your mouse
vertically over the desired text area.
(g) Find and Replace

This feature is used to search for a text and replace it with other text.
Click on Edit → “Find & Replace” dialog box to replace the text.

(h) Jumping to the page number

Some time we require to jump to a particular page number. It becomes difficult

to scroll down if it is a large document with several pages.
Click on Edit Menu→ Go to Page (Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + G).

(i) Non-printing characters

There are some character which does not appear in the screen is known as non-
printing character, for example, Enter, the Space Bar, and the Tab key. To
display the non-printing character, press the toggle
formatting mark (¶) or use keyboard shortcut Ctrl+F10. The tab space is shown
by → sign and spacebar is shown by dot (.)

(j) Checking spelling and grammar

The LibreOffice Writer helps us to correct the spelling and grammar. It can be
used separately or in combination with the spelling checker. Click on Tools →
Spelling and Grammar, or click the Spelling and Grammar button on the
Standard toolbar, or press the keyboard key F7.

(k) Using synonyms and the thesaurus

A word processor helps to look up synonyms (different words with the same
meaning) and antonyms (words with the opposite meaning) in the
thesaurus. Right-click on a word and point to Synonyms on the context
menu. A submenu of alternative words and phrases are displayed.

Page Style

You can select paper size and format (A4, A5, B4, Letter). User can adjust
‘Orientation’ as Portrait or Landscape. The user can set the Margins (Left,
Right, Top, Down).

Formatting a document

Formatting Text refers to the formatting of paragraphs and characters. To do the

formatting, first select the text and then apply the required text formatting
features.

(a) Removing manual formatting

To remove manual formatting. For this, select the text and choose Format →
Clear Direct Formatting from the Menu bar, or click the Clear Direct
Formatting button on the Formatting toolbar, or use Ctrl+M from the keyboard.
(b) Common text formatting

Some of the common text formatting features are:

1. Changing font size – by selecting font size.

2. Changing font style – bold, italic, underline
3. Changing font type – by selecting font drop down.
4. Changing font colour – by selecting font colour icon.
(c) Changing text case

It is possible to change the case of the text. There are 6 Change Case options in
LibreOffice Writer. Click on Format > Text > Lowercase, Uppercase, Sentence
Case, Capitalize Each Word, or tOGGLE cASE.

• UPPER CASE
• lower case
• Cycle Case
• Sentence case
• Capitalize Every Word
• tOGGLE cASE

(d) Superscript and Subscript

• To apply superscript: Select the text and select Format → Text →

Superscript
• To apply subscript: Select the text and select Format → Text →
Subscript

Paragraph style

A paragraph in a document can have several sentences or a single sentence.

Every paragraph in a LibreOffice Writer document has a paragraph style.

(a) Indenting paragraphs

Indenting paragraphs adds a blank space at the beginning of the paragraph or
shifts the paragraphs to the right side or left side. There are two types of indent:
increase indent and decrease indent.

(b) Aligning paragraphs

The paragraph can be aligned as Left, Right, Center and Justify. To align the
paragraph, place the text cursor in the title paragraph, select the appropriate tool
(Left, Right, Center or Justify) from the Format Toolbar. If you align Left
(Ctrl+L), Center Horizontally (Ctrl+E), Aligned Right (Ctrl+R) and Justified
(Ctrl+J).

(c) Font colour, highlighting, and background colour

There are three more tools—Font Color, Highlighting, and Background tools on
the Format Toolbar.

(d) Using the bullets and numbering

You can assign the bullets or numbering to the list items in the document by
using the options on the Bullets and Numbering toolbar. Bullets starts form
expression that include characters and numbering starts form numbers or
characters.

(e) Assigning colour, border and background

To assign border to the paragraph, select the paragraph, then select Format →
Paragraph → Borders → Select Line – Style, Width, Colour.

Page Formatting

(a) Setting up basic page layout using styles

Page styles define the basic layout of all pages in the document. It includes page
size, margins, header and footer, border and background, number of columns,
etc.

(b) Inserting a page break

To break the current page and start the new page

select Insert → Page Break from the Menu bar or use the keyboard command
(Ctrl + Return).
(c) Creating header/footer and page numbers

• To insert header in the document, select Insert → Header and

Footer → Header
• To insert footer in the document, select Insert →Header and
Footer → Footer
(d) Defining borders and backgrounds

• Adding border: It is possible to apply the border, either to

individual characters or to selected text.
• Adding background colour: To add background colour to the
paragraph, select the paragraph and add the colour from the colour
grid.
(e) Inserting images, characters in a document

• Inserting image: To insert an image in your document, position

the cursor where you want to insert the file, select Insert → Image.
• Inserting special characters: We may require entering the special
character, such as ¶, ©, §, √ etc. To do this click on Insert →
Special Character.
• Inserting shapes: The variety of shapes consists of Lines,
Arrows, Symbols, Stars, Callouts, Flowcharts. To add the shape
click on Insert → Shape.
(f) Dividing the document page into column

To divide the page into columns, select Format → Column.

A Column dialogue box will appear. Enter the no. of columns in the column
entry box. Give the value for spacing between the column and click OK.

(g) Formatting the shape or image

User can format the shape or image inserted in the document. For example, user
can change its size, colour, add borders, change its position, etc.

Creating and managing tables

The representation of data in a tabular format is called as table. In a document it

is normally seen that some data are represented in tabular form. example of
representing your school timetable, your marksheet, your teachers teaching

various subjects. To represent such data, you have to create a table.

(a) Creating a table

The simplest way to create a table is, click the Table icon on the Standard
toolbar or Select Table → Insert Table from the Menu bar or Press Ctrl+F12.

(b) Inserting rows and columns

To insert one row or column in the table:

1. Place the cursor in row or column before or after which you want to add
new rows or columns.
2. Choose Insert → Rows Above/Below or
3. Insert → Columns Above/Below.
Set number to define the number of rows or columns to be inserted and
select the Position as Before or After.

(c) Deleting rows and columns

To delete one or more rows or columns, place the cursor in the row or column
you want to delete and do one of the following:

• Click on the Rows or Columns icons on the Table Toolbar.

• Right-click and choose Delete → Rows or Delete → Columns

(d) Splitting tables

One table can be split into two tables, and two tables can be merged into a
single table. Tables can only be split horizontally.

• Place the cursor in a cell(table splits immediately above the cursor)

• Choose Table → Split Table from the Menu bar.
• A split table dialog opens
• Click OK

(d) Merging two tables

• Delete the blank paragraph between the tables.
• Select any cell in one of the tables.
• Choose Table and click on Table → Merge Table from the Menu
bar.

(e) Deleting a table

 1. Click anywhere in the table.
2. Choose Table → Delete Table from the Menu bar.

(f) Copying a table

1. Click anywhere on the table.

2. Click on Menu bar, choose Table → Select → Table
3. press Ctrl + C
4. Move the cursor to the target position
5. Press Ctrl + V

(g) Moving a table

1. Click anywhere in the table.

2. click on Menu bar, choose Table → Select Table.
3. press Ctrl + X
4. Move the cursor to the target position
5. Press Ctrl + V

Printing a document

To quickly print the document without any option, Click the Print icon. The
entire document will be sent to the default printer defined for your computer.
• Print preview – Print Preview is useful to check the document
before printing.
• Controlling printing – To print the document with certain options,
use the Print dialog (File → Print or Ctrl + P).
Printing all pages, single and multiple pages
There are three options to print the number of pages in a document.

• To print all the pages in sequence, choose the option All pages.
• To print a single page, or number of non-consecutive pages give
the range of pages first and last page.
• To print only the selected text, choose the option, Selection.
Mail Merge

Mail Merge is a very important feature of word processor. It is used to create a

series of same documents with multiple addresses. Mail merge is the process of
merging the main document (letter or certificates) with the mailing address of
various persons. A data source is a set of mailing addresses in the form of a
rows and columns generally called database.