Insert a Text File into Microsoft Word

There is a file you need for this section. It's is a plain text file. Instead of left clicking the link below, click on the link with your right mouse button. From the menu, Choose either "Save Targe As" (Internet Explorer), or "Save Link As" (Firefox). Save it to your own hard drive. Make a note of the location where the file is being saved to. Here's the file, then:

Right Click here to save to file you need for this section

Insert a text File

To insert a file into your Microsoft Word document, do the following:

From the menu bar, click Insert
From the drop down menu, click "File", as in the image below:

The Insert > File menu

When you click File, the following dialogue box appears:

The Insert > File dialogue box

You now need to search for the Little Thumbs text file you saved earlier. Click the black arrow on the Files of Type drop down list. Select Text Files from the list.

Change the Files of Type to Text Files

If you saved the file to your My Documents folder, you should see the file appaear.

If you didn't save the file to your My Documents folder, click the Look In drop down list at the top of the dialogue box. Search for your saved text file by clicking on a drive letter (probably C:). When you've found your file, do the following:

Select the text file called "Little Thumb" by clicking on it with the left hand mouse button
When it's selected, click the "Insert" button at the bottom
The Little Thumbs text file is inserted onto your page

If you were successful, you should now be looking at a 6 page document in Microsoft Word. The first line will say "Little Thumb, by Charles Perrault".

If you notice the font shortcut boxes on your toolbar, they will probably be this:

(If you can't see those boxes, click View from the menu bar. From the drop down list, select Toolbars. You'll get a sub menu popping up. Make sure there is a tick next to Formatting. If not, click the word "Formatting" with your left mouse button.)

What that is telling us is that our entire text has the font "Courier New", and the size of this Font is 10 points. We can change those two. To change the Font to Times New Roman, do the following:

Click Edit from the menu bar
From the drop down menu, choose "Select All"
Click the black down-pointing arrow just to the right of "Plain Text"
The following drop down list appears

The Styles drop down list

Select "Normal" by clicking it with your left mouse button
Click anywhere on your black highlighted text to deselect it. Now take a look at the font shortcut boxes. They will probably look like this:

The entire text of your document has now changed to Times New Roman, 12 points.

Our heading seems a little small, though. So change it to Arial 16 points. (You should know how to do this by now - Highlight the title, click Format > Font. Or use the shortcut toolbar by clicking the little black arrows to see a drop down list of fonts and font sizes.)

We'll now add some Headers and Footers to our Word document.

Learn how to insert Headers and Footers into a Microsoft Word document-->

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