Most programs including operating systems like Windows and Mac, web browsers like Internet Explorer and Firefox, and programs like Microsoft Word and Outlook, use menus to hold the commands that you need to run the programs.

A typical menu system consists of several words and/or icons. When you click on the word or icon you get a list of choices. You then click on the item that indicates the action you want to perform or the place that you want to go.

Below is a simple menu from Windows Notepad. When the word "File" was clicked on, the menu listing "New, Open, Save, Save As, Page Setup, Print, and Exit" appeared.

When you see the command that you want, you simply use the mouse to position your mouse over the menu choice and left-click. If a menu choice is "grayed out", like many of the menu choices below,  it means that those choices are unavailable. In different circumstances, those menu choices will become available and others may be "grayed out".

Note that next to some of the menu choices, there are key combinations, like Ctrl+N and Ctrl+O listed. You can use that key combination to quickly access that menu choice without moving your cursor to the menu bar and making that choice.

In the above example, pressing the Ctrl key and the S key at the same time save the document just as clicking on File, and then on Save would.