Creating and Opening Documents

To Create a New, Blank Document:

1. Click the File tab. This takes you to Backstage view.
2. Select New.
3. Select Blank document under Available Templates. It will be highlighted by default.
Creating a new document
 
4. Click Create. A new, blank document appears in the Word window.

To save time, you can create your document from a template, which you can select from the New Document pane. We'll talk about templates in a later lesson.

To Open an Existing Document:

 

1. Click the File tab. This takes you to Backstage view.
2. Select Open. The Open dialog box appears.
Opening a document
 
3. Select your document and then click Open.

If you've opened a file recently, you can also access it from the Recent Documents list. Just click on the File tab and select Recent.

Opening a recent document