Navigating MS Word Online

Microsoft Office Online really can do nearly anything that a full word processing suite can do, but some of the functions are so well hidden—or are so confusing—that people assume it’s a crippled junior version. The most difficult functions to figure out are all related to file management (deleting, renaming, moving, or copying files and creating file folders). This little tutorial is designed to help with file management.

The basic structure

MS Office likes to save everything in their own cloud server (OneDrive). The challenge is that the user is presented with quite a variety of menus which look almost identical, but have different functions:

1. Quick access: This is the menu you see when you first arrive. This one allows you to open recent files you have previously worked on. All the files from all the different applications display here. (Note: This menu does not understand file folders, so you will simply see all the files you have worked on in chronological order.)
2. My Content: This menu is in the grey band on the left of the screen. It’s not much different from “Quick access,” except that it does allow you sorting and searching options and it gives you access to all your past files.
3. Five or six application-specific menus (Word, Excel, etc.). The ones above present a list of everything you have done in Office, all together, but these separate out the files you made with specific programs. You can start a new file from one of these menus.
   • You can also begin a new file by clicking the ⊕ Create item in the left grey menu
4. OneDrive: This is the only menu which allows you to rename, move, or delete a file. It’s also the only one which is aware of file folders for organizing your work.

Finding OneDrive

You have two options for getting into OneDrive. After you have entered the site, you can:

• Click the apps icon in the upper left (It’s called a “waffle.”) and select OneDrive.

OR

• Open the My Content folder on the left, then open Cloud files and click Go to OneDrive in the upper right.

Now that you are in

OneDrive is the only menu which allows you to do real file management, but, again, things are sort of hidden. If you want to do something to a file (rename, delete, print), you must hover your mouse pointer over the file name and click the circle to put a check mark in it. If you want to create a new folder (not as useful here as in many other programs), go to the blue + New drop-down menu in the upper left. After you have created a new folder, you can click the ellipses … to get a drop-down menu which will allow you to move files to the new folder.

This is also the quickest, least confusing place to download a DOCX file for Blackboard.

The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author.

The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by Ashland University.

Revised 10/20/22 • Page author: Curtis Allen • e-mail: callen@ashland.edu.