Whether you are upgrading from an earlier version of Word or moving straight from WordPerfect to Word 2013, you’ll notice fairly quickly the rather unusual way the program handles basic tasks, including common file-management functions such as opening and saving documents.[1]  But even before you open or save a document, you’ll experience a dramatic difference from the way most Windows programs work.  Indeed, the very first time you launch Word 2013, you’ll encounter what Microsoft refers to as the “Backstage view” (and what I like to call “the File menu on steroids”), the screen that ordinarily appears when you click the File tab in modern versions of Microsoft Office.  That is because unlike most Windows programs, Word 2013 typically opens not to a new blank document but to the Backstage view.[2]

Even long-term users of Word might be perplexed by the Word 2013 “start screen.”  How do you…