# Welcome to AbiWord's tutorial for writing a letter

In addition to creating a letter, this tutorial will help you become familiar with some of the functions of AbiWord. Before you begin this writing process you need to decided who you will be writing your letter to. Once you have determined who you are going to write your letter to you are ready to jump into the task-orientated part of writing your letter.

## Task 1

Let's start creating your letter by opening a new document.

Select "File" and from the drop down menu Select new.

"The choose a template window will open", "select start with an empty document" by placing your mouse pointer in the circle and clicking.

Select "OK" to open your new document.

## Task 2

You are now ready to type your letter. One of the most common ways to start writing your letter is to begin with addressing to whom you are writing your letter to.

For Example:

Dear Mr. Rogers.

Then continue on in the writing of your letter.

## Task 3

Once you have finished your letter you may or may not wish to "Save" the document. In order to "Save" your document select the "Save as" icon from the tool bar.

## Task 4

Now that you have opened your document and written you letter and saved it you are ready to use the spell check function to search for misspelled words.

Go to the "Tools" function on the menu bar.

Now select the word "Spelling" to search for misspelled words in your letter.

At this point a spell check box will open up with your misspelled word hi lighted in red, and a suggestion box with options you can chose from to replace your misspelled word.

Click on one of the following options: "change, change all, ignore or ignore all".

If at any point during your spell check you decide to exit the spell check function simply click on the"Cancel" button.

You may also want to change your spell check options.

Select "Spelling Options" from the list and then change your setting options.

## Task 5

If you would like to do a word count in your letter you can do this by You can do this by clicking on "Tools" in the menu screen.

click on "Word Count" a box will open which will display how many words, pages, paragraphs, lines, characters with and without spaces are in your letter.

## Task 6

You are now ready to close your document. To do this select "File" and from the drop down menu click on "close".

Please see other functions under one of the other two tutorials demonstrated in this task-oriented tutorial

## Task

The next step in creating your document is use the "Insert" function on the menu screen.

Click "Page Number" from the list in the drop down box.

In this box you can adjust where you want the page number to show up on your document.

If you open the drop down box underneath the word "Position" you can select either "Header" (top) of the document or "Footer" (bottom) of the document.

In this box you will also want to adjust where the page number will be located on the document. You will find this drop down box underneath the word "Alignment" here you have three choices "Right" "Left" or "Center" click on one of the three.

Be sure to preview the page before you select "OK"

Now select the "OK" button.

You will notice page numbers on your document. However if at anytime during the process of numbering your pages you want to exit this function click the "Cancel" button to go back to your blank document and no page number will be assigned to your letter.

## Task

The next step in creating your document is to implement the date and time function into your document.

You can begin by clicking on the "Insert" function on the menu screen, above the tool bar and then click on "Date and Time" in the drop down list.

Pick one of the "available formats" from the list and then click "OK".

At this point you should see the date and or time that you choice displayed on your document. Be sure to place your curser wherever it is that you would like your date and time information to be displayed.

## Task

The Find and Replace functions are used to help you find a specific word or phrase within your document or to replace it with something new.

To find a specific word in your document click on "Edit" on the menu screen.

click on "Find" in the drop down list.

Type in the word you are looking for and then click the "Find Next" button and the word you are looking for will be hi lighted in gray throughout your document.

As for the "Replace" function, which you can find just underneath the "Find" function, you can select a specific word you want replaced with a different word all throughout your letter. .