A word processor is an application that allows you to type, edit, and format words. Word processors were once a tool of their own, but now they exist everywhere as a program on something else. Your phone and computer can process words, and on a different axis, many websites can now process words, whether that’s fanfiction sites with editing tools and chapter pages or utilities like Google Docs, accessible from basically anywhere.
A word processor used to be a pretty simple thing. Why would it need to be complicated? Words go in, italicize or bold them, format them for print, boom! Done. Now, however, there are tons of utilities packed into the average word processor, and Microsoft Word in particular has an absurd number of tools jam-packed in the opening ribbon alone.
Because Microsoft functions often move around in updates, this article is written in the December of 2025 – information may become outdated as Microsoft Word updates.
So lets get started on using Microsoft Word, with the tabs at the top of the page in the area known as the ribbon.
File
The ‘File’ tab is the tab where your basic file functions, like saving your current document, opening a new document, opening a template, and getting ready to print your document are. This also where you can find the ‘info’ setting, where some metadata about your document and options like ‘protecting’ it (meaning adding a password to it) are available. If you’d like to change the file type of the file you’re working out of without creating an additional copy of it, you can do so using the ‘export’ option in this file tab.
Your ‘Account’ and ‘Options’ pages are also located in this tab. Under account, you can choose to log out of your Microsoft account (this is basically never necessary) and even update the color settings and theming of your Microsoft Word application! Other things like Add-Ins are more complicated, and generally not needed – when you need an Add-In, you will know, and most applications of Word products do not need Add-Ins. For comparison, one of the more popular Add-Ins for Excel (another Microsoft product) is Pivot Tables, a tool used to do more advanced charting that base Excel can do, but only with a lot of finagling. Beyond that is the ‘Options’ tab, which has plenty of useful tools to make your life easier – spend some time going through them! A lot of little annoyances common to Word are actually default settings in the Options tab that can be changed, like what AutoCorrect looks for, color settings for the page, and the Editor.
The Home Tab
The ‘Home’ tab on the ribbon has many of the tools you’ll probably want closest to hand. Many of these tools can be keyboard-shortcutted when you’re more comfortable with the tools as well – there are many articles on these shortcuts, many by Microsoft itself!
You can also customize this ribbon in the Options menu from before, so the exact slots you find these tools in may change. There are generally a clipboard widget, a font widget, a paragraph widget, a style widget, and some other options that may or may not be there by default, including dictation, a sensitivity reader, the Add-Ins blank default slot, and an Editor slot that may also have CoPilot if your subscription comes with that.
These are the crucial word processor tools, and if you’re simply writing copy or for school assignments, you may never need to touch the other tabs, although exploring can’t break anything.
The Insert Tab
The Insert tab will cover things like tables and picture settings, and if you’re writing something with structure, text boxes, headers, footers, and complex math symbols. You can find 3D models here, as well as a library of simple shapes and icons! Charts can be made here, and if you’d like to make a comment on a document, you can find that option here – simply highlight the text, click the ‘Comment’ button, and then leave your comment, hitting enter when you’re done.
This tab allows you to do things like insert pictures from file, and alter the kerning settings on pictures once they’re in the document, meaning you can change how they interact with your text as you’re writing it. Charts and tables are fairly self-explanatory: a simple table for data, and colored charts can be added to your document, and filled out as you like. Tables come with a number of presets now, so if you need something specific like a calendar, check there first.
The Draw Tab
The draw tab is a more specific application that works in places the Insert tab assets can’t. You can draw with this tab, format the background, draw math and other symbols to be converted to text, and replay the drawings made. The Drawing tab also comes with an ‘Ink Help’ widget, so more specific information can be found there.
Unlike the Insert tab, drawn objects from the Drawing Tools widget do not interact with text as they’re being drawn, meaning text will not shift around the lines or shaped you draw, they’ll sit underneath it by default. This tool can make Word easier to use on tablets – the last pen in the Drawing Tools lineup allows for limited gestural editing, and the highlighter is more intuitive than the press-and-select you may find frustrating to do without a mouse! With these tools, Word can be used to edit without a keyboard-and-mouse computer.
The Design Tab
The design tab has some of the same tools as the Home tab, and is intended for writing copy. You can add a semi-transparent watermark here, set a ‘style’ or ‘theme’ for your document’s headers, if it has any, alter fonts in the same way, and apply effects to objects you may have added from the Insert tab. You can change the entire page’s color and add a nice border here, too! If you’re looking for paragraph spacing, this can also be found here.
The Layout Tab
If you’re trying to stick to a certain style for an academic paper, this tab will be relevant – it has the settings for margins, indents, and spacing, among other things. If you’re trying to write something in landscape for some reason, you can change the orientation here, or set the number of columns you’d like to write in.
You can also add line numbers, adjust how words hyphenate (given Word can recognize them), adjust how the breaks appear in your UI, and – when you have pictures in your document – you can use the Arrange widget to adjust how those pictures interact with the text, just like the Insert tab.
The Reference Tab
The reference tab is another tab primarily used for academics or teaching. This tab gives you the option to add a Table of Contents. It can even generate one for you automatically based on what it detects as headers! You can, of course, manually create one using this tool too, and it also offers the option to update the table in that widget. The Footnotes widget is self-explanatory as long as you know what footnotes are – you can insert them here, and jump between them here.
The References Tab
The references tab features a bunch of wonderful tools for building out a citations sheet, incredibly handy if you’re trying to write an academic paper and don’t want to have to use some online site riddled with ads to make good, properly formatted citations. It even does a handful of different formats! You can also insert tables of figures here, mark your citations or entries so other people can see which sources are being referenced, add footnotes, add captions to pictures or figures, and this is another spot you can add a Table of Contents.
The Mailings Tab
More on the business side of things, the Mailings tab allows you to format a Word document so you can print directly onto an envelope, and allows you to either pull recipients from an Excel or .csv document (the ‘Start Mail Merge’ option) or from your contact list, across Microsoft products (the ‘Select Recipients’ option). The rest of the tools are directly tied to these two options – it’s a great product for printing a lot of envelopes all at once!
The Review Tab
The review tab allows for markup, where you can suggest changes to a document within Word, without actually making said changes. You can also compare documents with their past versions! Once these markups are made, the end recipient can choose to accept changes or reject them – but either way, the change will be visible as red ink, so be judicious in how you use this tool.
The View Tab
The view tab has tools relating to the UI (user interface) itself. You can add macros here, view properties of the document, and control what scrolling does on your instance of word.
The Help Tab
The help tab is exactly what it sounds like – it directly connects to a handful of resources for Word. Something to note is that it only works while connected to the internet, because many of those buttons are performing internet searches!
