Primary importance to you as a writer and author is file storage. So in this section, I want to make sure that you are able to both save and retrieve your documents which are so important to you. So you may be familiar with saving on your computer itself. The method of getting there is going to the file menu in the top left hand corner, regardless of the version you have, unless it's in one of those two years that had this circular four color ribbon toolbar. If you're in that era, then click on that circle otherwise, click file and choose Save. Now the first time that you save your document, save as is going to be your option here and you will be presented with a screen somewhat like this, it might be smaller, or it might be this full size depending on your version again, in the newer models.

You'll see one of the options is one drive and this Is the cloud based computing area for storage that we talked about earlier, OneDrive is connected to your Microsoft account so it will be connected with an email address when you're logged in here. And you can organize items in folders the same way you might on your computer. If you would like instead to save it to a spot on your computer itself, if you don't feel comfortable with cloud based storage, then click the option here. And you'll notice there are a couple of different areas I want to talk you through. So in the left hand menu, you will see if you scroll, you'll notice there's a scroll bar just attached to that left hand menu. You can see a drop down arrow here next to quick access.

If there are places you've stored things recently, or if you want to look perhaps for a flash drive or a backup drive that you've plugged in, then often scrolled down to the bottom To find those drives in their order there. Or if you're like many people and you want to save in your documents folder, you can choose that from the left hand area. In each case, regardless of what you select, note that at the top very much like an internet browser, you'll see an address bar telling you where your files are being stored. Are they on this pc? Or are they on OneDrive? Notice how that will change based on what I've clicked and I had note that I also have backed up many of my files to the cloud.

But here in the documents area, if you're talking about storing something locally, you can create new folders so if you only have your documents and then you've stored every single file inside of here, you may choose to organize them as I have in folders and the New Folder button is located in that top left hand corner. Just click there it will add a new folder and you can name it Rate new novel. And then by either double clicking this or highlighting it and choosing open, you'll notice it gets added to that address bar at the top. And now you become able to save your document inside of this folder so that you can keep yourself most organized. Make sense? You can choose a name for your file here.

It can be anything except including slashes. It can include dashes and DOT's. So that's okay, but not slashes or characters like question marks or the pound symbol, things like that. All the letters and numbers though, are fine. So go ahead and name your document. If you're going to be communicating with someone who has older versions of Microsoft Word, then you'll want to save it as a type that's going to be compatible.

So this Microsoft 97 through 2003 document or as a regular Word document which will be compatible with everything since then 2007 and on up and then go ahead and click Save. You may be warned that your document will be upgraded to the newest file format. So that is possible. It will allow you you to use the versions that you have the tools that you have in your newest version. But when you've saved as that compatible version when someone else opens the document, it will indeed try to make as much available to that person as possible. Now, there are a few handy shortcut ways to save your document once you've saved it the first time.

One of them may be on your Quick Access toolbar and depending on your version, this could be located at the very very top of the screen, or it might be located as a second line of toolbar under neath your normal toolbar, this image has looked like a small, hard floppy disk. I know hard and hard disk and floppy disk don't sound compatible. So for those of you who are my age have, you will remember the truly floppy disks. Well, this one looks more like the smaller three and a quarter inch disk that came after that one. And if you don't see the save feature on look on your toolbar there for another drop down arrow, which will open up your easy access items and allow you to turn on and off all of the other possible quick choices you may use for shortcuts there. For me, I keep just a few on my toolbar, the ones that I use most frequently, you can decide and we'll talk about this in a different section of the class.

But I always like to have save on there as one of my quick options. So if you're ready to update your document, just click safe. You may also prefer a keyboard shortcut. So for saving, that keyboard shortcut is Ctrl. So there's a key in the lower left hand corner of your PC labeled c TRL. This is the Ctrl key.

Or if you're on a Mac, it's the Command key, hold the Ctrl or Command key down while you type the letter S. And that will also save the most recent version of your document. Or again, you can go to File and Save. That's always going to be an option File Save will save the document in the exact same place you already had it with the exact same name. If you want to, however, update that or change the name or move it somewhere else you'll need to use file save as, and that will open up just as it did the first time you saved your option to go and save it to cloud based storage or to move to a different document on your computer. Or perhaps If you want to plug in an external drive to backup your files, or something like a flash drive or USB drive, you can then plug that in first and then open up your more options and be able to access those drives lower down on that left hand menu.

To save these backup copies of your file, you can then change the file name, perhaps you would be comforted to have the date added in there. You can add the year as well, whatever it takes for you to be able to keep your files managed. But remember where it is you're saving, it's very important for you to know that it's in a folder within another folder, or what drive you're looking for, or on an external drive or flash drive is very, very, very important to remember that for yourself. So do write that to your mental hard disk. Now here's a quick little song to leave you with because I think everything Learning goes down smoother with a little bit of fun. I remember attending a worship service in the summer of 2000 Oh my gosh, no.

1999 The summer my child was born and the minister began his sermon by singing. Jesus backs up all his files on his IBM PC Jesus backs up all those files on his IBM PC. Jesus backs up all his files on his IBM PC Jesus saves Jesus saves Jesus saves and he got very dramatic at the end. Anyway, no extra charge for my bad sense of humor. You can apply this across your religious background, just plug in the tune to Glory Glory hallelujah or some other but the message is clear. It is very important these words that you're composing that you'd be able to find them.

So go ahead and save your files and remember to back them up as you go along. I think it's super important each day as you're adding items if you want to just create a new file with those newest ones. Because I know as writers, we're often tempted to look back and say, Oh, you know, I really I just erased that perfect line two or three days ago. So you can use that file save as feature to create a new version of your document each day, if you want to be able to keep track of that and over time