Computer Tips

Computer Tips & Tricks


These are some of my favorite tips I've received from Tip World. You can get them daily delivered right to your mail box if you click HERE.

Microsoft Office Tips from Tip World


IT'S A DATE. To create a series of dates in Excel, enter the starting date in the first cell. Select all the contiguous cells in which you want a date to appear then choose Edit|Fill. Choose the Series submenu to open the Series dialog box. Here, choose "Date under Type" and the type of date you want to use. Click OK.

GOT THE PICTURE?You can add a background picture to an Excel 7 worksheet. To do this, choose Format|Sheet. Then, from the submenu, choose Background, then select a picture you want to use. The downside is that although you can add the background and enjoy it all you want on your screen, you can't print it. This isn't a bug. Microsoft decided to disallow this because printing a picture in the background is slower than slow.

TELL EXCEL HOW TO SAVE Excel saves files to the My Documents folder by default. You can change this by choosing Tools|Options, then clicking the General tab. Now change the Default File Location to whatever you want to use.

TELL EXCEL WHERE TO GO Although you can change Excel's default file save location by entering a new folder in the Default File Location box on the General tab (choose Tool|Options), you can't start Excel with another working folder by using the Start In box in an Excel shortcut.
To start Excel with a different working folder, try using the /p startup switch in the Target box in an Excel shortcut. This will let you start in a location denoted by the shortcut, meaning you can have different shortcuts to run Excel in different folders. To set this up, right-click on the shortcut you want to use and choose Properties. Click the Shortcut tab and add to the command line in the Target box
/p ""
where is the folder you want to be the working folder. If you want to use a folder named MyFolder, you'd enter
/p "C:\MyFolder"
Click OK to save your changes.

BLANK OUT Have you had a problem seeing both a WordArt object and a graphic in a text box or frame using Word? To correct this, choose Tools|Options, click the Compatibility tab and select the check box "Don't blank the area behind metafile pictures."

TRIM THAT FILE SIZE If a Word file is getting a little too big, eliminate the Fast Save option. To do so, open the Tools menu and select Options. When the Options dialog box opens, click the Save tab and deselect the Allow Fast Saves check box.

BEGIN WITH NOTHING If you'd like to start Word with no document at all (not even a blank one), right-click your Word shortcut icon, then choose the Properties command to open the Properties dialog box. When the dialog box opens, click the Shortcut tab. Now add /n to the command in the Target text box. Your new command should look something like this:
c:\MSOffice\winword\winword.exe /n
depending on your installation. It's the /n that's important.

WRAP IT UP If you type a long text string into an Excel cell, the text will overflow into adjacent cells. If you'd like to keep all the text in a single cell, select the cell, pull down the Format menu, and choose the Cells command. When the Format Cells dialog box opens, click the Alignment tab. Select the Wrap text check box and click OK. When you reach the end of a line in your cell, press Alt+Enter to start a new line.

BUGGY BULLETS If you use Word 6, try this in a new document: Type

1. Bill Clinton
2. Al Gore
3. Rush Limbaugh

then go back and select the data and tell Word to use bullets (Format|Bullets and Numbering). When you do, Word asks if you want to eliminate the numbers. This isn't a problem, but if you type

U. S. Postal Service
U. S. Supreme Court
and try to bullet them, Word will still ask if you want to eliminate the numbers. This doesn't happen in Word 7.

HOME ON THE RANGE, HOME ON THE RANGE, HOME... If you want to fill an Excel range with the same value or formula, select the range, then press Ctrl and click on the first cell. Enter the value or formula in that cell, then hold down Ctrl and press Enter. Excel will fill in the entire range.

MOM DOESN'T LIKE RENAMED FILES If you rename a file that's pointed to in the Microsoft Office Manager (MOM), you can no longer use that button to move to a running instance of the application. For example, if you rename EXCEL.EXE to EXCEL5.EXE, clicking the button will not take you to a running instance of Excel. Instead, it will run a new instance of the program. That's because MOM looks for the original filename to see if a program is running. If you'd like to switch to an application with a renamed EXE, use a custom button, rather than the one supplied on the toolbar.

POWERPOINT FILE SIZES There's a common misconception that linking files in PowerPoint saves disk space. The truth is that when you link a picture to one of your presentations, the file size will be the same as if you had embedded the picture. What happens is that PowerPoint maintains a metafile copy of the picture. It's this copy that gets displayed. If the linked picture changes, then the saved picture changes. If the picture gets deleted or moved, PowerPoint will still display the last stored version.

HIGH QUALITY SLIDESYou can use the Advanced tab in the Options dialog box to control the way PowerPoint 7.0 handles 24-bit graphics when it saves slides in the .WMF format. Begin by choosing Tools|Options. Then click the Advanced tab and make sure the check box labeled Render 24-bit Bitmaps at Highest Quality is selected. If you select the radio button Best for Printing, the slide will be saved as a 24-bit image. If you select Best for On-Screen Viewing, the image will be saved with a depth of 8 bits.

DOS-I-DOS Want to copy and paste something from MS-DOS to a Windows 95 window? With the MS-DOS toolbar to help, you can do it in four easy steps. (If the toolbar isn't showing, click the icon in the upper-left corner of the DOS window and select Toolbar. And if you don't see a title bar at all--in other words, if you're in a full-screen MS-DOS view--hit Alt+Enter to get back to a window view first.)
1. Select the Mark icon (the one with the dotted square on it).
2. Click on the first character of text you'd like to copy, then drag to select the entire area of text.
3. Click the Copy icon to copy the selected text to the Clipboard.
4. Switch to the window where you'd like to paste the text and click that application's Paste icon (or hit Ctrl+V on your keyboard). The text will appear exactly as it did in the MS-DOS window.

BEST WAY TO VIEW PRESENTATIONS Yesterday, we told you about the Advanced dialog box, where you can choose between On-Screen Viewing and Best for Printing. If you know you're only going to view a presentation on screen, don't choose Best for Printing, unless you're using photographs in your presentation. Most graphics look just as good on screen in 256 colors, and there's a huge difference in file sizes. In general, a 24-bit picture is three times the size of an 8-bit picture.

EVERYONE LOVES A SHORTCUT Since everyone likes shortcut keys, here's a collection for Access.
ACTION KEYS TO PRESS
Display Control menu Alt+Spacebar
Open Replace dialog box Ctrl+H
Open new database Ctrl+N
Open existing database Ctrl+O
Paste the Clipboard contents at the cursor Ctrl+V
Copy to the Clipboard Ctrl+C
Cut to the Clipboard Ctrl+X
Undo Ctrl+Z
Open Find Ctrl+F
Here are some shortcut keys that you can use inside an access database window.
ACTION KEYS TO PRESS
Move up a single line Up Arrow
Move down a single line Down Arrow
Move up one window Page Up
Move down one window Page Down
Move to the first object Home
Move to the last object End
PRINTING IN YOUR AREATo set the print area (and assign titles) for your Excel worksheets, choose File|Page Setup. Now, click the Sheet tab in the Page Setup dialog box. Type into the Print Area box the reference of the cells you want to use as the print area. For example, you might use $A$1:$G$10. Next, go to Print Titles and enter the reference to the row you want to use as the title. Go to the Columns To Repeat At Left box and type in the reference to the column you want to use as the title. Click OK.

Netscape Tips from Tip World


SHARING BOOKMARKS Netscape Navigator has an easy way to share your favorite Web sites with other Web crawlers. You can do this by making the contents of your bookmark list an HTML file, which can then be exported to other users (you can also import HTML files as bookmarks). A little background first: An HTML file is just a text document that contains links to other Web documents. Because HTML documents have a standard format, they can be interpreted by any Web browser. This means you can share files, through importing and exporting, with anyone with any Web browser. Here's how to make a bookmark file ready for export:

1) Choose Bookmarks|Go to Bookmarks from the main Netscape Navigator menu. This opens the Bookmarks window.
2) Select the bookmark file that you want to export, then choose File|Save as. This opens the Save bookmarks file dialog box.
3) Choose the location you want to save the file to, then enter a filename. Make sure you ha ve the Save as type set box to "HTML files."
4) Click Save and the HTML file is created in the directory that you specified.
Importing HTML files as bookmarks is a snap as well. Here's how:

1) Choose Bookmarks|Go to Bookmarks.
2) From the Bookmarks menu, select File|Import.
3) Select the HTML file that you want to import and click Open (or simply double-click it). The links that are in the file are immediately added to your bookmarks list.

SAVE THE IMAGES! Every once in while when you're Web surfing, you come across an image or graphic that you just have to keep for all eternity. Here's a quick way to save that image (.GIF or .JPEG) to a disk. Point your cursor at the image and click the right mouse button (if you have Windows). From the context menu that appears in the pop up box, select Save image as, which opens the Save As dialog box. Just enter the location and name for the image, then click Save. That's it, the image is all yours.

QUICK WALLPAPERINGYesterday we showed you how to save that incredible .GIF or .JPEG image you found on the Web for posterity. For those of you running Windows 95, here's how to make it your computer's wallpaper quicker than you can say, "Pass the paste." Once again, point your mouse on the image and click the right mouse button. From the context menu that appears in the pop-up box, select Set as Wallpaper. The image is immediately set as the wallpaper.

THUMBNAIL SKETCH Many Web sites that have graphics put them in as icons called "thumbnails." These are just small representations of larger images to minimize transfer time to a site. All you have to do is click the thumbnail to see the full-size image. Good Web site designers include the file size of the full image and sometimes the estimated transfer time next to the image. You can use these to see if you think the image is worth downloading. If you have a site with several of these, download the smallest one first to see if you like the quality of the image.

GRAPHIC FILE FORMAT FUN GIFs and JPEGs. You've no doubt run into these trusty little acronyms if you deal with graphics on the Web, but how often have you wondered just what the heck they mean? Not to worry, here's what you need to know, in a nutshell.
Basically, GIF and JPEG are both compression methods for graphics images, used to save both transmission time and disk space. Although you may see other graphics file formats on the Web, these two are by far the most common. For the acronym-impaired, GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format, and JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group.
We won't bore you with a lot of mumbo-jumbo about the technical differences between the two, since they look and act very much the same. In fact, you probably won't be able to tell which compression method was used just by looking at the graphic on the Web site. Having said that, there are a couple of differences to note:
1. JPEG files are most often used for sharp photographic images, while GIF files are often used for colorful graphics, many of which are not photos.
2. GIF images start to display on screen while they download, while JPEG images must download entirely before they display.
3. GIF files can be made "transparent," meaning they have been customized to display without a background. This makes them appear to "float" on the Web page.
4. GIF files use the extension .GIF, and JPEG files use the extension .JPG.

LOADING TIME SAVER If you want to save time loading Web pages, load them without their graphic images. To do this, select Options from the main menu, then deselect the option Auto Load Images. After you choose this method, Web pages will load with placeholders where graphics would normally appear. If you want to see the graphics once a page has loaded, click the Images button and the page will reload with the graphics displayed.

VRML UNDERWEAR Wanna get three-dimensional? Get VRML (ver-mul, like thermal). What's VRML? Well, you know HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language) tells your Web browser how to display textural elements and links. VRML (or Virtual Reality Modeling Language) tells the Web browser how to display the various components that make up the three-dimensional worlds on the Web. Ever encountered a site with some cool rotating, spinning, or "realistically" moving object? Thank VRML. Without getting too deep in the geek-speak, let's see what VRML really does. It's the standard for encoding computer generated graphics into a file format to be transmitted across the Internet (or an Intranet). It's also the standard that the Web browser uses to interpret and display these graphics, allowing the user to interact with them. Although it's in the nascent stages right now, it's entirely conceivable that VRML will supplant HTML as the Internet's primary language backbone. Finally, just like with HTML code, each Web browser may interpret VRML a little differently. Netscape Navigator uses a feature called "Live3D" to interpret it.

Windows 95 Tips from Tip World


ONE-CLICK LISTINGS: PART 1 OF 2 Want to print a directory (folder) listing in Windows 95? If you have a few minutes to set up a batch file and do a little Registry tweaking, you can print a folder listing with ease. (We read about this technique in the Windows 95 Annoyances Web site, at www.creativelement.com/win95ann.) In today's tip, we'll show you how to set up the batch file.
Open Notepad and create a batch file by typing the following lines (substitute your printer port for LPT1, if necessary):
CD %1
DIR >LPT1
Name the file PRINTDIR.BAT, save it in your Windows\Command folder (assuming that C:\Windows is your Windows 95 directory), and close Notepad.
In an Explorer or My Computer window, locate the batch file you just created, right-mouse click it and choose Properties. Select the Program tab, select Minimized under Run, and select the Close on exit option. Click OK.
In our next tip, we'll show you how to edit the Registry so that this batch file runs whenever you right-mouse click a folder and choose Print.

ONE-CLICK LISTINGS, PART TWO OF TWO You can print a Windows 95 directory listing by setting up a batch file and then editing the Registry. In our last tip, we showed you how to create the batch file: In Notepad, type the following lines:

CD %1
DIR >LPT1

then save the file as PRINTDIR.BAT in the C:\Windows\ Command folder. In the file's Properties dialog box, set the file to run minimized and to close on exit.
The rest of this technique involves editing the Registry. Open the Registry Editor and navigate your way to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell. Right-mouse click shell, choose New, and then select Key. Name the new key "Print" (no quotes). Right-mouse click the new key, select New and then Key; and this time, name the key "command" (again, no quotes).
In the right pane, right-mouse click (Default), choose Modify, and in the Edit String dialog box, type your batch file's path (c:\windows\command\printdir.bat) on the Value data line.
That's it--close the Registry Editor. To test out your handywork, right-mouse click any folder, choose Print, and race to the printer!

THE MANY FACES OF MY COMPUTERTired of using the Start menu to get everywhere? Add a folder to the My Computer right-mouse menu and place all your favorite shortcuts inside. It's just another of the many ways you can set up quick access to where you want to be. (Note: This tip involves some detailed Registry editing, so we recommend backing up your Registry, or at least its HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT branch, before you begin.)
First, create a folder that holds all your favorite shortcuts. Or, if you have a particular folder in mind to which you'd like access from the My Computer menu, take note of its name and path.
Now for the Registry part. Open the Registry Editor--choose Start, Run, type regedit, and click OK--and navigate your way to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}. (Don't let all the numbers scare you--they're all in order, so just look for the onethat starts with "20D04FE0" and double-click it.) Inside, right-mouse click the shell key, choose New and then Key, and name the new key My Folder. With My Folder still selected, right-mouse click (Default) in the right pane, choose Modify, and in the resulting dialog box, type "&My Folder" (no quotes) on the Value data line. Click OK.
Right-mouse click the new My Folder key, choose New and then Key, and name the new key "Command" (again, no quotes). In the right pane, right-mouse click (Default) and choose Modify to bring up the Edit String dialog box. Type the following on the Value data line
C:\Windows\Explorer.exe C:\
followed by the path of the folder you'd like the My Folder item to point to. So, for example, if you had a Useful Shortcuts folder on the root directory of your hard drive, you'd type
C:\Windows\Explorer.exe C:\Useful Shortcuts
Click OK and close the Registry Editor. Click My Computer with the right-mouse button and select your new My Folder item (or whateveryou've named it) to display its contents on screen.

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