Students may be required to type papers or homework assignments in a word processing program and save the files to a local computer or flash drive. Once saved, the documents can be attached to messages or submitted as a file to the assignment tool in Canvas. Microsoft Word is the preferred word processing program for creating assignments. In some courses instructors may require that students use Microsoft Word. Be sure to review the syllabus for each course or ask your instructor what is required. If students do not have access to Microsoft Word, they are encouraged to save files in the Word or rich text format.

If students submit documents not in the Word or rich text file format, instructors may not be able to open them. When documents are saved in a word processing program they are typically saved in the word processing program's default proprietary file format. For example, Open Office documents are saved in *.ODF format. and WordPerfect documents are saved in the *.WPD format. In the table below you can see how the document icons appear when you view the documents on your computer.

Document Icon	Program
	WordPerfect (*.WPD)
	Open Office (*.ODF)
	Apple Pages (*PAGES) Please note the steps for saving as Word are different.
	Microsoft Word (.DOC, .DOCX)

Steps to save Documents in Word Format

Important! Documents saved in the proprietary formats CANNOT BE OPENED IN MICROSOFT WORD! You can change the file type when you save the document. Follow the steps below.

In your word processing program from the File menu, click Save As…
The Save As dialog box will display.
Choose a location on your computer to save your file. You may want to create a folder to store all your class assignments
Remove any spaces from your file name.
Next to Save As Type in the drop down menu select Rich Text Format (.rtf) or Microsoft Word (*.docx).
Click Save. A copy of your document has been saved as Rich Text Format or Microsoft Word format.

Steps to Save Apple Pages Documents as Word documents

Note: For Apple's Pages you must export the document to the Word format. Go File > Export To > Word.

Video Tutorial on Saving Documents

Microsoft Office Purchase Options page for details on purchasing Microsoft Office.

Tip on Saving Documents

It is important to make sure you have backups of all assignment documents you create. This is especially true if you store documents on a flash (thumb) drive. Flash drives can become corrupted or lost very easily. There are free cloud based file storage services that give you free space to store and create documents in the "cloud". There are several options (Dropbox, Box, SugarSync etc) to choose from; however, there are two in particular that may be especially useful to students. You will need to create an account with the cloud service before you can start saving documents in the "cloud". This also provides a better backup of your assignment files and since documents are being saved in the web service you can access them from any computer with internet access. Check out the documentation on each option.

Overview of Microsoft OneDrive - Microsoft gives anyone who signs up for free MS Live account 7 GB of OneDrive storage space. OneDrive is tightly integrated with Microsoft Office 2013/Office 365. When you purchase Office University the OneDrive space is upgraded to 20 GB of storage space.
Overview of GoogleDocs - Requires a free Google account and your GoogleDocs account can be registered in your Canvas profile. GoogleDocs is also one of the Collaboration options in Canvas. GoogleDocs can be saved as Word documents.

Steps to save Documents in Word Format

Steps to Save Apple Pages Documents as Word documents

Video Tutorial on Saving Documents

Note about Office 2007, 2010 & 2013

Tip on Saving Documents