How to Create, Save and Open a Word Document (Lesson 1.1)

Basics, Word
Before we can start creating text documents in Word, we have to get to know the basics. Watch the video, to learn how to create, save and open a Word document.

Note: Under the video, you will find a written step-by-step solution.

Video instructions

In this video you will learn how to create new documents and how to open existing documents.

When you first start Word, you will see this window and in the top area you will find a button for creating a blank new document. Word of course also offers templates, so if you want you can choose one of these templates and you can also click on “More templates” to find other design ideas. You can, for example, search for resume designs. So just type in “resume”, hit the search button and Word will offer you the most relevant templates. Note, that you will need an internet connection to perform this search. But we will start with a blank document now, so we go back to the home tab and then click on “Blank document”.

Now I am just going to insert a sample text, so that we can recognize the document later. Let’s save this document now. So, we go to the “File” tab and then click on “Save As”. And when we click on browse, we can choose where we want to save the document. In this window you can also set the name for the document. Then simply hit save and the document will be saved.

Now I want to show you how you can open an existing document. So, I closed the current document and started Word again. To open a Word document, the easiest way is to find the file on your device and then just double click on it. Another way is to open Word and then you will see a tab called “Recent” in which all the lately used files are listed. From here you can also open a document. And for the last method that I am going to show you, you again need to open Word, then click on “Open” and then on “Browse”. Now, simply select the file that you want to open and confirm this process by clicking on “Open” once again.

For the end of this video I want to give you a very important information. When you are editing a Word document, make sure that you regularly save the document by hitting the “Save” button in the toolbar at the top of the program. Sometimes it can happen that your computer crashes and then you will be happy if you didn’t lose an hour of work.

And that’s it! Now you know how to create a new Word document, how to save it and how to open an existing document.

Text instructions

How to Create a Word Document:

  1. Open Word
  2. Click Blank document or select a template

Tip: When you click on More templates, you will find a huge variety of document templates. Use the search function on that page (e.g.: search for “Resume”) to find the templates that you need.

How to Save a Word Document:

  1. Under File > Save As, click on Browse
  2. In the dialog window, select your desired storage path
  3. In the field File name, type in the name for your document
  4. Click on Save

Tip: Create a naming convention for your documents and be consistent with it. Here is an example for a good naming convention for invoices: 2030_01_17_Amazon_vacuum_cleaner (year_month_day_company_product). With this naming convention you can immediately find invoices by their date and you also know who issued the invoice and what it is for.

Tip: Save your documents regularly to not lose huge amounts of work in case of a system error.

How to Open a Word Document:

  1. Locate the file on your computer
  2. Double-click on it