This basic Windows tutorial is intended for beginners, but it is not impossible that more advanced users might pick up a tip or gain some knowledge in this Windows Tutorial.

One of the top reasons why people use windows is its ease of use and the massive quantity of software applications available for Windows, so you can nearly accomplish any imaginable task with Windows and the many thousands of apps available for it. In this Windows tutorial I will focus on the concepts that makes Windows based software easy to use software.

Since Windows 3.1 many concepts have remained the same, so somebody that used to work in an application in Windows 3.1 will still see lots of familiar things around in Windows XP especially taking the basic operations into account. What also makes it such and easy operating system to use is the common functionality shared by most applications. This common functionality shared between different software will be the focus of this discussion. For some neat tips and tricks see the Windows Tutorial (Basics - Part 1).

The File Menu

When looking at the File menu think about what you want to do with the file. Do you want to open, close, save, import, export or print it. Other features that might be found in the File menu is the Page Setup. In Page Setup you normally specify the size of your documentation, margins and paper orientation like portrait or landscape for instance. 

A lot of software products also provide a list of recently worked on files beneath the File menu. So instead of looking for the file you might open it by clicking on its name in the list of recent files. File names might still appear on this list even if they are deleted. As you keep on working on new or other files the older names will be pushed off the list.

Another feature of the File menu that is worth mentioning is the Save As command as a lot of people does not understand the exact operation of this command. Before talking about the Save As command lets quickly discuss the Save command. Once you start a new document you will always be prompted to supply a file name before the file can be saved. When the program knows the file name it just continue to save the document when you click on save as it do not have to prompt you for the file name again. 

Now lets continue with Save As, but remember Save As is not used to change a file's name, you should rename a file if you want to change its name. Save As is mainly used if you want to make changes to an existing file, but want to keep the original file intact. You should be very careful now when you proceed with this task and I recommend the following procedure. Open the original file that you want to make changes to. Immediately after opening it use the Save As command and save it under the new name. This will ensure that you not accidentally make changes to the document and save it to the original file name, because you may easily lost parts of the content of your original document if you accidentally click on Save before the file were duplicated with the Save As command under a new name. Note that once you used the Save As command the new file name will be indicated in the program's title bar of most software applications. Now you are sure that your original file is still intact under the original name and you are working on the "Save As" version of the file. 

The Edit Menu

In the section of this Windows tutorial we will cover aspects that is the same under most applications in the Edit menu. You will most of the time find the following commands under the Edit menu in nearly every software application.

• Cut
• Copy
• Paste
• Find

Cut will remove text or an object from a document where as Copy will leave the text or object in the document intact and place of copy of it on the clipboard. You can now paste this text or object into a new or other document. Remember that whatever you Cut or Copied last will be on the clipboard and you can paste it as many times as you want.

The Find command is used to find text in the currently open document.

The Format Menu

The Format menu is also common across hundreds of applications. Below is some commands that will generally be found under the Format menu.

• Font
• Paragraph
• Bullets and Numbering

You use format font when you want to change the name of the font, its size, whether it is regular, bold or italic or if you want to change the color of the text.

When you want to format a paragraph, normally you would want to change its alignment, indentation and spacing before and after the paragraph.

Formatting bullets and numbering is used to change the shape of bullets, at what number a number list must start and how it must handle sub-sections.

The View Menu

The view menu is also common amongst lots of software products and you should look in this menu for how you want the page be viewed on screen, which toolbars should be visible. Other items in this list will mainly depend on the functionality of the software product in question.

The Tools Menu

Under the Tools menu you will normally find the Spelling checker and the Thesaurus. Should you be looking for the place where to customize the application or set some options, it also located under the Tools menu in the vast majority of software applications.

The above menu's is the most rudiment and is found in hundreds of software applications. Most software developers stick to tried and tested guidelines and make the same type of functionality available under common menu's and this makes it very easy for a user to find certain functionalities in different Windows based applications even if the user is not familiar with the software product.

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