Your assignments may require that you add a header or footer to your Microsoft Word file. You can add them by double-clicking near the top or bottom of your paper, depending on which type you are trying to add.

You can also add a header or footer by selecting the Insert tab and choosing the respective type.

For more details on editing the style of the header or footer, check out this article from Microsoft.

If you need some help on what to put in the header or footer, take a look at The Writing Center, located in the Student Success Center. In The Writing Center, you can find MLA, APA, and GCU style guides, as well as templates and other helpful writing websites.

1. Start by opening Microsoft Word.
   
   
2. On the left-hand side, click Open.
   
   
3. On the bottom section of the Open tab, click Recover Unsaved Documents.
   
   
4. You will then be presented with a list of your unsaved documents. Notice: Not all your content may have been saved when recovering your document.
   
   
   

The following steps will help you recover a Word document that was saved onto your computer before but are unable to locate after saving.

1. In Microsoft Word, click Options in the bottom left-hand corner.
   
   
2. Once in the Options tab, select Save from the left-hand column.
   
   
3. Under the Save documents section, copy the AutoRecover File Location.
   
   
4. Open your File Explorer (the manila folder icon on your taskbar) and paste the location into the top bar. Then, click enter.
   
   
5. Open the folder matching the name of the original saved file.
   
   
6. Next, open the .asd file by right-clicking over the file and selecting Open with.
   
   
7. From the pop-up window, select Word.
   
   
8. Your recovered document will now open! Notice: There is a chance that your file may not be recovered.

Following are the steps in saving your document:

1. Navigate to the File option in the upper left corner of your screen.
   
   
   
2. Select Save As from the main menu on the left-hand side panel.
   
   
3. To save your document in an existing folder, click Browse under Other locations.
   
   
   
   Navigate to the desired folder. Enter your file name and select the “Word Document (*.docx)” format.
   

   Once done, click Save.
   
   

4. If you are saving to OneDrive, choose your organization’s OneDrive folder. For GCU accounts, it’s recommended to save to OneDrive - Grand Canyon University storage. Enter your desired file name, select the “Word Document (*.docx)” format, and click Save.
   
   

You may receive a document that has comments on it, but the comments are not showing. Follow the proceeding steps to show these comments:

1. While your Word document is open, click on the Review tab. 
   
   
2. In the Tracking section, click Show Markup. Then, select Comments.
   
   
   
   If the comments do not appear after following Step number 2, proceed by clicking Show Markup > Specific People > All Reviewers.
   
   
3. If done correctly, comments will appear on the right-hand side of your Word document.
   
   

You may download a document from your course that won’t allow you to make changes to the document. The following steps will walk through allowing a document to open when you receive the error “Word is unable to open this document it may be protected”.

1. With Word open, select Options from the bottom left-hand corner.
   
   
2. Once in the Options, go to Trust Center. Then select Trust Center Settings. 
   
   
   
3. In the Trust Center, select Protected View. Then uncheck the three options in the center.
   
   
4. Press OK and then try to open the Word document that you downloaded from your course.

Turning on Track Changes gives you and anybody else accessing the document a way to make changes that are easy to spot. The changes are like suggestions that you can review, and then remove them or make them permanent. When Track Changes is on, Word will indicate there had been a change with a red bar on all lines that have changed. Clicking on the red bar will show the edits that have been made. Deletions are marked with a strikethrough, and additions are marked with an underline. Different authors' changes are indicated with different colors.

To enable or disable Track Changes in your document, select Review from the toolbar at the top of the screen.

Track Changes is located under the Tracking section. If it is on, the button will appear dark gray. If it is off, the button will match the color of the toolbar.

Windows computers allows users to turn on dark mode to help with working during the night. In Microsoft Word you may notice that your document will appear with a black page and white text. This means that Microsoft Word is using the dark mode on your documents.

To disable dark mode in Word, click on View at the top and then click the Switch Modes icon at the top.

To enable dark mode in Word, you will first need to turn on Dark mode in the Word canvas, select File > Account > Office Theme > Black.

Through the online version of Microsoft Word, users are able to generate a similarity score similar to what LopesWrite provides. This score is not an official score so you will need to submit to LopesWrite when submitting your assignments. For the steps on how to generate the report through Word, please follow the information provided.

1. Access the online version of the Microsoft 365 apps through the GCU Portal, for more information on how to access Microsoft apps in the GCU Portal. You can also access the Microsoft apps by heading to portal.office.com and signing in using your GCU email and password. Once complete you should see a Microsoft 365 page and select Word from the left-hand side.

   

   NOTE If the Word application does not show up on the left-hand side, please select the App Launcher located in the top-left corner of the screen and select Word.
   
2. Once Word is opened, select the assignment you would like to have reviewed.

   

   NOTE If the assignment you are looking for does not appear you may need to upload the file from your computer. Check out the OneDrive section of the article Microsoft Online Programs in the GCU Portal.
3. Once the document is opened select the Review tab at the top of the page.

   

4. Then select the Editor icon on the left-hand side.

   

5. On the right-hand side, scroll down and select the box under Similarity to generate the Similarity Report.

   

   NOTE As a reminder this process is not a substitution or alternative to LopesWrite. This process is a way for users to check for plagiarism that is similar to LopesWrite. The scores generated using this process may not be the same score that LopesWrite provides.

You may be required to use an Add-in to your Microsoft Word for a course. The following steps will help you add an Add-in.

1. While your Word document is open, click on the Insert tab.
2. In the Add-ins section, click on Get Add-ins.
3. You will now be able to search for a Microsoft supported Add-in.

Your assignments may require that you add a header or footer to your Microsoft Word file. You can add them by double-clicking near the top or bottom of your paper, depending on which type you are trying to add.

To add a header, double click in the empty space at the top of any page in your document.

To add a footer, double click in the empty space at the bottom of any page in your document.

You can also add a header or footer by selecting the Insert tab, selecting Header & Footer, and choosing the respective type.

For more details on editing the style of the header or footer, check out this article from Microsoft.

If you need some help on what to put in the header or footer, take a look at The Writing Center, located in the Student Success Center. In The Writing Center, you can find MLA, APA, and GCU style guides, as well as templates and other helpful writing websites.

By default, on Mac, Microsoft Word saves a recovery file every 10 minutes. This means that there can potentially be 10 minutes of lost work. To reduce the amount of work that might be lost if Word crashes, the power goes out, or other unfortunate events, select Word in the menu bar at the top of the screen and then select the Preferences… option.

In the Preferences menu, under Output and Sharing, select Save.

In the Save Options, ensure that the Save AutoRecover info is checked and set the Save every: to 1, so your file will automatically save every minute.

If Word crashes while working on a document, then the next time word opens, it should open any documents that are in the AutoRecovery folder. We recommend following the steps for Setting the Save AutoRecover Interval above to make sure that a file is saved in Word that can be recovered. If you cannot open Word or simply want to find the AutoRecovery folder, then start by going to your Home folder. You can do so by opening Finder, selecting Go from the menu bar at the top of your screen, and then selecting Home.

Once in the Home folder, if you do not see the Library folder, select the settings gear in the Finder window and then select Show View Options.

In the View Options dialogue, ensure that the Show Library Folder option is checked.

Now that you can see your Library folder, you can navigate to the AutoRecovery folder with the following path:

Once inside the AutoRecovery folder, you can locate the files that Word created a backup for.

Following are the steps in saving your document:

1. Click File on the upper left-hand corner of your screen. Then, select Save As.
   
   
2. On the Save As pop-up window, type your desired title into the Save As textbox for your document. Click the box next to Where: to locate a destination to save your document. Select the File Format (e.g., Word Document (.docx) for a Word file). Then, hit the Save button to save your file.
   
   
   
   NOTE If it says OneDrive next to Place, OneDrive is set as the default save location. If you would like to save to your computer’s hard drive instead, click the On My Mac button in the bottom left-hand corner of the pop-up window
3. If you want to save the file to your OneDrive account, click the Online Locations on the lower-left corner of the Save As pop-up window.
   
   
   
   On the left-most column, select your OneDrive folder. It might ask you to enter your OneDrive credentials. Enter your OneDrive credentials to log in (i.e., GCU email address and password if you want to save your file to your GCU OneDrive account). Then, click the Save button to save your file.
   
   

You may receive a document that has comments on it, but the comments are not showing. Follow the proceeding steps to show these comments:

1. While your Word document is open, in the top right corner of the screen select the Comment button.
   
   
2. Then, select New, and type into the comment box.
   
   
3. Once completed the new comment will show up on the right-hand side of the screen, as well as a small comment Icon on the right side of the page.
   
   
   
   

Turning on Track Changes gives you and anybody else accessing the document a way to make changes that are easy to spot. The changes are like suggestions that you can review, and then remove them or make them permanent. When Track Changes is on, Word will indicate there had been a change with a red bar on all lines that have changes. Clicking on the red bar will show the edits that have been made. Deletions are marked with a strikethrough, and additions are marked with an underline. Different authors' changes are indicated with different colors.

To enable or disable Track Changes in your document, select Review from the toolbar at the top of the screen.

Track Changes is located under the Tracking section. If it is on, the button will appear dark green. If it is off, the button will match the color of the toolbar.

Mac computers allow users to turn on dark mode to help with working during the night. In Microsoft Word you may notice that your document will appear with a black page and white text. This means that Microsoft Word is using the dark mode on your documents.

To disable dark mode in Word, select Word in the upper left corner and select Preferences.

Under Personalize, select the option to “Dark Mode has a white page color” to keep dark mode in Word and turn your document back to white.

Through the online version of Microsoft Word, users are able to generate a similarity score similar to what LopesWrite provides. This score is not an official score so you will need to submit to LopesWrite when submitting your assignments. For the steps on how to generate the report through Word, please follow the information provided.

1. Access the online version of the Microsoft 365 apps through the GCU Portal, for more information on how to access Microsoft apps in the GCU Portal. You can also access the Microsoft apps by heading to portal.office.com and signing in using your GCU email and password. Once complete you should see a Microsoft 365 page and select Word from the left-hand side.

   

   NOTE If the Word application does not show up on the left-hand side, please select the App Launcher located in the top left-hand corner of the screen and select Word.

   

2. Once Word is opened, select the assignment you would like to have reviewed.

   

   NOTE If the assignment you are looking for does not appear you may need to upload the file from your computer. Check out the OneDrive section of this article Microsoft Online Programs in the GCU Portal.
3. Once the document is opened select the Review tab at the top of the page.

   

4. Then select the Editor icon on the left-hand side.

   

5. On the right-hand side, scroll down and select the box under Similarity to generate the Similarity Report.

   

   NOTE As a reminder this process is not a substitution or alternative to LopesWrite. This process is a way for users to check for plagiarism that is similar to LopesWrite. The scores generated using this process may not be the same score that LopesWrite provides.

You may be required to use an Add-in to your Microsoft Word for a course. The following steps will help you add an Add-in.

1. While your Word document is open, on the right side of the ribbon click on the Add-ins section.
   
2. In the Add-ins menu, click on More Add-ins.
   
3. You will now be able to search for a Microsoft supported Add-in.
   
   NOTE If you experience any problems with using add-ins, please note that installing and using add-ins is outside of our scope of service and GCU Technical Support cannot assist with using or troubleshooting add-ins. Please contact the developer for the add-in for further assistance.