Bob's Software Tips Blog

Crazy way to fix an iPod -- but it works!

2007-01-26T21:20:00.000-05:00

(The podcast of this blog post will be available soon.)

OK, this tip has nothing to do with PowerPoint or Excel or anything else like that, but it just saved me a few hundred bucks, so I thought I'd share it. Here's the deal:

My iPod had been working fine until -- and this is the weird part -- I transferred an episode of the Twilight Zone onto it from my new Tivo (I wanted to put the file on my office computer to burn the episode onto DVD). It might be the show's most talked-about episode: "Eye of the Beholder", in which Maxine Stewart plays a lady undergoing radical treatment in a hospital, trying to look "normal". Her head is completely bandaged, everyone describes her as hideous, and you don't see anyone's face until her bandages come off...

Maybe Rod Serling's masterpiece was too much for the poor, old iPod (or maybe it was the 1.5 GB size of the video files!), because it became very ill. It would work only intermittently, display the infamous sad-face and exclamation mark icons, and one day it just stopped working altogether, uttering a final, sickening chirp. The drive would click, but not much else would happen. People all over the Web described the condition as the Click of Death, where you face the unpleasant choice of replacing the hard drive or chucking the whole iPod in the recycle bin and buying a new one.

Did I mention my PC wouldn't recognize the iPod either? When I tried to view the Disk Management window in the Computer Management console (press + R, type compmgmt.msc /s then press Enter), the screen would freeze.

If your 4G or 5G iPod (has the gray, non-moving click wheel) stops working, the first thing you should do is reset it: hold the Menu and Select buttons for a few seconds until the Apple logo appears. If that doesn't get it working, reset it again, then immediately hold the Rewind and Fast Forward buttons to bring it into Drive mode. Then reset it again.

If that fails, use Diagnostic mode to run some hardware tests. Reset your iPod again, then hold the Rewind and Select buttons until the Diagnostic menu appears. Then navigate by pressing the Rewind and Fast Forward buttons and click the Select button to choose the tests to run. You can test its memory, screen, hard drive, connections and lots more.

So are you ready for the really crazy part? Here goes: I was running the hard drive scan, which should have taken several minutes, but was taking over 40 minutes. So I took a tip from Macslash.org and knocked each of the 4 corners of the iPod on the desk, about as hard as I'd knock on someone's front door. And the bloody thing sprang to life! The menus came back and when I connected it to my computer's USB port, Windows recognized the hard drive and iTunes sprang up and showed everything on the unit as though nothing was ever amiss. I was even able to cut and paste the Twilight Zone episode onto my hard drive.

I have to assume there was a loose connection somewhere. I was considering opening the case, using the instructions on the iPodlounge forum, but didn't have a guitar pick handy.

Some people on Macslash said they've even wrapped their iPods in a washcloth and slammed them backside-down onto the desk to get them working. I'll save that act of desperation if the 4-corner knock trick doesn't work.

Cool things you can do with Word's page numbering

2006-09-30T10:24:00.000-04:00

Numbering pages in Microsoft Word might seem simple, but you can control it in ways that aren't obvious. (The tips in this blog post will work in any version of Word from 97 to 2003.) There are a few things to understand, first:

Word uses sections to number pages. You can restart the numbering by inserting a section break.
All pages have numbers, but the numbers will be displayed only if you tell word to display them.
There are several ways to have Word display page numbers.
Page numbers are fields and you can control their formatting.
You can edit the field codes to control them in ways not possible by simply using Word's menus and dialogs.

First, the basics. It's easiest to insert page numbers in a header or footer:

Select View/Header and Footer.
Click the Insert Page Number button (Alt + Shift + P).
If you want, type of, type a space, then click the Insert Number of Pages button .
Click the Close button on the toolbar.
The numbers should now read something like Page 1 of 4 (or however many pages you have).

Want to change the number format or the starting number?

Select the page number (it should turn gray when you select it, since it's a field), then click the Format Page Number button on the Header and Footer toolbar.
Click the Number format drop-down list.
Choose one of six options: Arabic (regular) numbers, numbers with dashes, upper or lower case letters and upper or lower case Roman numerals.
To change the starting number, click the Start at option, then enter a number.
Click OK.

There's no law that says page number have to go in the header or footer, either. Select View/Header and Footer, then select Insert/Page Numbers. Click OK. Click the page number to see its frame, then click and drag the frame's border anywhere onto the page. Word will still consider it a Header or Footer item, so it will still be gray on the screen, but it will print normally.

If you need to stop and start page numbers, use section breaks. Let's say the first four pages of your long document need page numbers in lowercase Romans, and you want to begin Page 1 on the fifth sheet of paper. Insert page numbers and format them as lowercase Romans as we already discussed. Select Insert/Break, then under Section break types, double-click Next Page. Use the steps above to reformat and restart the page numbers. You might want to deselect the Link to Previous button, which is turned on by default. This will make it less likely that your second section page numbers won't revert back by accident.

The coolest part of page numbering is the ability to do arithmetic. I used this technique not long ago, when I wrote an outline for one of our Tip Talks. (These are live training sessions where a Nerdy Books trainer comes to your company and teaches your employees how to use the software faster, more efficiently and have fun doing it. Check it out!) The document was a total of five sheets: a four-page outline and a survey on the fifth sheet for the participants to fill out. The page numbers in the headers of the first four pages read Page 1 of 4, Page 2 of 4, etc., and there were no page numbers on the survey page.

Most people would do this as two separate documents, then combine them. But the copy machine can staple the stacks of pages as they come out, so it was easier and faster to print all five sheets as one document. And who wants to be a human collating machine?

Here's how you can do it:

In a five-page document, insert page numbers in the header of page 1. Make the numbering scheme Page 1 of 5, Page 2 of 5, and so on.
Make the fifth page a new section, unlink the headers, then delete the page numbering from the header of the second section.
In the header of the first page, delete the Number Of Pages field (it now reads 5).
Press Alt + F9 to view all the field codes.
Press Ctrl + F9 to insert a new field code. It will be a set of grayed-out curly braces { } . (Do not type the braces manually, or it won't work. You must press Ctrl + F9.)
Type = (an equal sign), then press Ctrl + F9 again to insert a nested set of braces.
In the new set of curly braces, type NUMPAGES, in all uppercase.
Press the Right arrow key a couple of times so the cursor is between the two ending braces. Type -1.
The whole thing should now read {={NUMPAGES}-1} .
Press Alt + F9 again to turn the field codes off and view the page numbers.

Another wacky, and undocumented, customization you can do is substitute words for page numbers. If you want page numbers to literally read Page One, Page Two and so on, do this:

In the header or footer, press Alt + F9 to view all the field codes.
Type Page, type a space, then press Ctrl + F9 to get the grayed-out curly braces { } .
Inside the braces, type PAGE \*CardText \*Caps.
The whole thing should now read {PAGE \*CardText \*Caps} .
Press Alt + F9 again to turn the field codes off and view the page numbers.

One more thing: if the page numbers don't update automatically as you add and remove pages, you can update them yourself. Press F11 to go to the first field code, press F9 to update it, then press F11 to go to the next field code. Or simply press Ctrl + A to select all the text in the document, then press F9 to update them all at once. You'll now be outstanding in your fields.

Understanding and managing USB devices in Windows XP

2006-07-09T16:36:00.000-04:00

I know I haven't blogged for a while, but now I hope to be back on something at least resembling a schedule.

One subject that often comes up is how Windows handles USB (Universal Serial Bus) devices and what you can do when USB devices don't work as you expect. First, let's talk about the two versions of USB that you'll probably encounter:

USB 1.1: these were the first widely-available devices and usually ran at a speed of 1.5 mb/sec. They were meant to replace old-fashioned serial and parallel (printer) connections that ran at only a fraction of the speed and could connect only one device at a time. While this speed was OK for slow devices like mice and keyboards, it wasn't useful for transferring large amounts of data, like from digital video cameras. For faster speeds, you needed SCSI or FireWire (IEEE 1394) connections. Since these were used mostly on the Mac, you often needed an add-in card for your computer to use them, which is one of the inconveniences that USB was supposed to alleviate.
USB 2.0: typically runs at the much higher speed of 480 mb/sec, which is faster than the original FireWire standard and much faster than SCSI. This is more appropriate for large data transfer, such as to external hard drives, and necessary to connect CD or DVD burners. However, some people still prefer FireWire for devices like video cameras, because FireWire is really a network that allows devices to be more interactive.

If you want to read a good technical and historical discussion of USB, you can find it at Wikipedia.

So how do you know which USB you have? If your computer was made sometime in the last few years, chances are its USB ports are version 2.0, which are backwards-compatible with 1.1 devices. One way you can tell which version your computer has is to look at the Device Manager in Windows XP:

Press + Break to open Device Manager (or click the Start button, then right-click My Computer and select Properties).
Click the Hardware tab, then click Device Manager.
At the bottom of the list, click the plus sign next to Universal Serial Bus controllers.
If your computer has is equipped with USB 1.1, you'll see a device or two called a Host Controller or Open Host Controller. If your computer is equipped with USB 2.0, you'll see a device or two called an Enhanced Host Controller or USB 2.0 Controller.

Any USB device you buy will have the regular USB trident logo and any high-speed USB device will have the red, white and blue high-speed logo (how appropriate for July 4 or Bastille Day).

If you connect a high-speed USB device to a low-speed USB port on your computer, Windows will probably give you a message that the device can run faster if you connect it to a high-speed port. A USB 2.0 internal expansion card costs about $20 and a USB 2.0 notebook adapter (fits in the PC Card slot) costs about $40.

The most common problem people have is when they connect a USB flash drive (sometimes called a thumb drive) to a computer and the computer doesn't recognize it. First, let me say that these are great devices. Connect one to your computer and it works like a removable hard drive. I have a 1 gb flash drive on my keychain and use it all the time (you can get one for about $40; I just saw a 4 gb flash drive that fits in the palm of your hand for $80).

When you connect a USB device to a computer running Windows XP, the computer will detect it immediately. When that device is a USB drive, you'll probably see a message on the taskbar that Windows detected a new device, followed by a dialog box that asks if you want to open the drive to see its contents, play a movie and other choices. Windows will also assign a drive letter to the device. But sometimes you won't get this dialog box, and when you open My Computer manually ( + E), you won't see the device listed. That means there's a drive letter conflict.

Here's how you fix it:

Select Start/Control Panel, then double-click Administrative Tools. (You may also have Administrative Tools directly on the Start menu.)
Double-click Computer Management.
On the left side of the Computer Management console, select Disk Management.
On the right side, you should see a device listed as a removable drive, probably with the same letter as another drive you're already using.
Right-click the white bar where it shows the letter, then select Change Drive Letter and Paths.
Select the letter, then click the Change button.
Pick a letter not already in use from the list, then click OK. Click OK on the warning message, then click OK again. (I assign U: to all USB flash drives, since I never use more than one flash drive at a time.)
Close the Computer Management console. When you go back into My Computer, you should see the USB drive with the new letter.

Another common problem is running out of ports. When USB started being implemented, the idea was that you would daisy-chain the devices together. So computer manufacturers would put in only two ports (always in the back) and only one port on laptops. For a variety of reasons, the daisy-chain idea never caught on, and computers made today typically have four ports in the back and two in the front, for quick access.

If you run out of ports, you can fix the problem -- as with so many others -- by applying cash. Buy an external USB hub for anywhere from $10 to $40, depending on size, number of ports and power. A hub will split a single USB port into several more. The better ones have their own power supply, so your devices don't have to rely on the computer for powering the USB connection. When there isn't enough power to go around for all the devices, they can go offline.

This brings me to the last problem I'll discuss today: USB devices going offline because of reasons unrelated to power shortage. This was fairly common when you had many devices connected using USB 1.1 in versions of Windows older than 2000, where the devices had to supply their own software to get USB to work. (Native USB drivers were first included with 2000, then made more robust in XP -- and Vista, presumably). If this happens, simply unplug all the USB devices, then plug them back in one-by-one. If any are daisy-chained together, connect the parent devices before connecting the child devices.

Create PDFs for free (or cheap) from your Office documents

2006-03-26T18:00:00.000-05:00

Most people I know outside the corporate world have experience with PDFs -- Adobe's Portable Document Format files -- as users or consumers of the technology. They can read PDFs, but aren't sure how to create them.

Fortunately, there isn't any big secret or mystery to PDFs. But before I tell you how to create your own on the cheap, let me explain why there's even a need for this file format.

Let's say you create a nice looking, highly formatted document, like a newsletter, announcement or flyer. You put graphics in certain places and use fonts that you bought or downloaded from somewhere. If you only want to print the document yourself and distribute it on paper, there's no problem. But what if you want to distribute it electronically, maybe by e-mail or putting it on the Web?

If you created the document in Word, you can distribute the Word document, but what if the people viewing the document don't have your fonts? They'll see other fonts substituted, and your formatting work goes down the drain.
If you created the document in PowerPoint or Publisher, or non-Microsoft applications, you not only risk the font substitution problem, but not everyone has PowerPoint installed and even fewer have Publisher installed. And who wants to read a document in Publisher, anyway? And yes, there are even a few computers that don't have Word installed on them.

That's where PDFs come in. A PDF is like a snapshot of your document. It includes fonts, layout, graphics and everything else you put in your document. Anyone can read PDFs using Adobe Reader (the software formerly known as Adobe Acrobat), available for free at Adobe's Web site. So what you intend people to see is exactly what they see -- no guessing required. This is also important for bringing documents electronically to a print shop for digital or offset printing, since the print shop might not have the application you used to create the document.

The problem is that while Adobe Reader is free, it's just that: a reader designed to display PDFs, but not create or edit them. To create PDFs, you need separate software to do the conversion. Almost all PDF conversion software will work with your "regular" software when you print. That is, to convert a document to PDF, select File/Print (Ctrl + P), then choose the PDF converter as though it's a printer. Instead of printing, the converter will create a PDF.

Typically, people create PDFs using Adobe Acrobat. Once a regular document has been distilled (i.e. converted) to PDF, Acrobat lets you edit it in many ways, such as modifying font embedding, making minor text changes, inserting or editing hyperlinks, rearranging pages, cropping, renumbering pages, adding digital signatures and security, creating automated reading orders, inserting bookmarks and much more. You can't beat it for the number and flexibility of features.

If you have $300 to $400 to spare for the standard or professional version (or $1200 for the whole Adobe Creative Suite), then go for it. But if your budget is a little tighter, there are many third-party and shareware options available. Here are a few, all of which offer free trials:

For $30 or $50 (standard and pro version), you can buy the Adolix PDF Converter (www.adolix.com). It will do a decent job of converting documents to PDF and compressing them, too. It has basic post-conversion editing features, such as open/modify security, rearranging pages and merging documents.

Win2PDF (www.win2pdf.com) will convert documents for $35 or $69 (also for standard and pro versions), but its post-production editing is limited. You can set passwords and change document titles, but not much else.

While most PDF converters still require Adobe Reader to view or print PDFs, pdfFactory and pdfFactory Pro (www.pdffactory.com) let you preview and print directly from the application. The Pro version costs $100, but you'll also want the FinePrint utility for better editing. Spring for the extra ten bucks and get them as a $110 package.

On price alone, it's hard to beat pdf995 and pdfEdit995 (www.pdf995.com), from a company called Software995. Guess how much they charge for their products? As the product names imply, you'll need one program to do the conversion and another to edit. They don't have many options, but their output is good. If you only need quick-and-dirty conversion, it's hard to argue with twenty bucks.

Actually, there is one argument with twenty bucks: it's called "free"...but there's a big catch. If you need to create PDFs for the sole purpose of sending documents to your local Staples for their quick print service, download their EasyPrint software from www.staples.com/easyprint. It offers zero editing capability and requires Adobe Reader to view and print. The catch is that every page gets a Staples copyright notice running up the right side. When you send the document to Staples, they remove the watermark.

Much of this discussion may be moot before long. Microsoft plans on building PDF conversion into Office 2007, release date still unknown. As they say in sports, "just wait until next year!"

How to Avoid Phishing Scams

2006-03-04T12:11:00.000-05:00

That's phishing as in strange, bogus e-mail messages. We've all seen them, we get some e-mail message from a bank we've never done business with, maybe from eBay or PayPal or some financial institution and with a dire warning, it says something to the effect of "Your account may have been compromised" or maybe "Someone tried unauthorized access" or maybe even "We seem to have lost your ID and password" and "Please, in the next 24 hours, you must log in and verify your information, and if you don't, your account may be suspended". And conveniently, there is a link for you to click so can and give them the information they want.

Phishing seems to be replacing spam as the e-mail scourge of the Internet. I'd like to tell you how to recognize these sorts of scams and up what to do or what not to do when you receive them. First of all, about 99.9% of messages like these are scams and you can safely delete them. Especially messages that look like they came from a bank where you've never even had an account. I often get these messages with return addresses pointing to banks with which I've never done business and having notices like "Please log in and in and confirm your accounts". These are obviously nonsense.

But what about a message that looks like it came from a bank where you have made deposits? These scammers' goal is identity theft, and they want still your identity so that they can steal your money or steal other people's money and make it look as though you're the one who's done it. Is it any coincidence at all that the banks that seems to be the most common that are sending these out or that or her being spoofed are the large banks? Such as Bank of America, Citibank, and so on, because they have the most depositors, the biggest target area.

But here are a few things that you should recognize when you get some of these. Number one: the Web address. You should know what the address is of any bank where you do business. If you buy and sell on eBay, if you use PayPal to send or receive money, you should know what the address is. For example, PayPal's legitimate address is www.paypal.com. If you see anything that says something like BillingPayPal.com or SignInPayPal.com or anything like that, you know that it's a scam. Also, you should look for the first part of the address, especially if it's a bank. The first part of the address shouldn't simply be http:// it should be https:// -- that S stands for security. That's not something that you can fake.

When you get a link to click in an e-mail like that, just do not click it. Any legitimate bank knows what it's doing and will not have any links in their e-mails for you to click. I will get once a month a notice for my bank that says my statement is available for viewing online, but they just tell me to go to their Web site -- that means that I can either type the address in manually in the browser's address bar or I could click it in my favorites list. Many banks will tell you that if you receive a message that looks like it's from them and it has a link, that means it's a spoof.

Now here's the scary part. Even if you manually type the address of some financial institution, it could still be fake! The way the spammers do it is they can plant a Trojan horse on your machine that actually redirects what Web address goes to what server. There is a system called DNS --Domain Name Service. It allows friendly names like www.eBay.com to connect to the actual server address, which is really just a string of numbers. But nobody wants to remember long strings of numbers, so DNS is there so you don't have to think about them. It's kind of like an automatic dialer on a telephone.

If a Trojan that changes the DNS addresses gets planted on your machine, when you type in what is a real address, you can be redirected to the server of one of these criminals. It's not even so much that you type it in, but they're expecting that you'll click on their link. For Windows users, there's a file on your system in your Windows folder called Hosts (no file extension). You might want to look at this file in your Windows folder and if you see it's been modified recently. It's a text file, so you can open it in Notepad (select Start/Run, or press + R, type notepad, then press Enter) to see if anything funny is in there, redirecting the address of a bank to an IP address. If you see that, just delete that line from the file. By the way, any of the lines in that Hosts file that begin with a # are comments and you don't have to worry about them.

So when you go to the Web site of a financial institution, how do you know if it's real or not? One thing you should immediately look for in the lower right corner of your browser -- Firefox or Internet Explorer or any other -- is a little padlock icon, and it should be in the locked position. And this is something that cannot be faked. That icon should be on the status bar; if it's on the Web page itself, it's meaningless. Anybody with a basic knowledge of creating Web pages can put all sorts of padlocks and security-looking graphics on a site, but in the status bar of the browser, it's another story.

And here's one other problem with links in an e-mail. It's very easy to type the name of a financial institution and link it to something else for example, the text could say www.citicorp.com but when you click it, it goes to some scammer's Web site. (Here's an example of a bogus link that goes to our own site: www.WrongAddress.com.) So you always want to make sure of what you're looking at in the address bar of your browser. Also look at the end of the address bar of the browser. There'll be little padlock icon, just like on the status bar, and that's something that a scammer cannot forge.

Also look at the content of the message. If the message says something like "Dear depositor" or "Dear valued customer" rather than your name, that's probably a giveaway that it's not authentic.

Also look at the quality of the writing. A lot of these scams come from overseas, where the authors do not speak English as their native language. There are often spelling errors and grammatical errors. You might think, "Hey, I'm not the best speller in the world and I make grammar mistakes all the time." But banks that send e-mails to their customers don't send from just some guy or gal sitting at their desk, sending out messages to 10 million depositors from their personal Outlook account. Banks have people whose full-time jobs it is to read and write and edit these messages, and they will catch spelling and grammar mistakes before the e-mails go out. What amazes me is that the scammers don't even think to press F7 to do a spell check -- if English is not their native language, why would they not use a spell checker? I saw one the other day that looked almost real. It was supposedly from my bank, but they had the word "useful" spelled with two ll's, so I knew it wasn't real.

Also consider what they're saying and how they're saying it. If it's a breathless message with a false sense of urgency, you know they're trying to get you to click that link and type in your information before you have a chance to hit the Delete key. A real bank will not give you that sort of breathless warning, like you might get from some of these bogus virus warning messages.

Some of the scammers have found that they can use a publicly available databases like Yahoo or Google, where they actually can find your address, and I've gotten some that refer to me by name, and even have my home address. At first I wondered how these guys know who I am by address, and then I realized they all it takes is a simple Web search. So even if it doesn't say "Dear customer" or "Dear depositor", even for those referred to by name or by address, it still is very possibly a scam.

Some thieves will tell you that there's been some change on your account and they want to verify it. It is possible that you recently changed your password or maybe you did buy or sell something on eBay or you did something else online. Maybe you used your credit card number, and it just so happens that you get an e-mail about that particular bank or credit card and you want to see if the thing is legitimate. Maybe you don't even consider that it's a scam, because you've done something recently. Beside the fact that you still should not click a link like that in an e-mail, when you're on the site, look at what information they are asking for.

A regular bank will simply ask for user ID and password, but some of these will ask all sorts of information -- not only ID and password, but your mother's maiden name, your Social Security number or your bank routing number. Any page that asks you for information like that, you know is not legitimate. Especially if you get a page that asks for all this type of information at once you know is not real.

Keep in mind that when you get one of these messages that says, "Sorry, but we lost your information..." banks do not lose your information. You and I may have lost information here and there, but we're just regular people doing other things. Banks have full-time professional security people whose job it is to make sure that customer information is not lost, and if anything is accidentally deleted, they have backups, and backups of backups at secure data centers and sitting under a mountain somewhere (maybe here). So your bank will never tell you "Sorry we lost your ID and password". That simply isn't going to happen.

Because phishing attacks are becoming so common and increasing so much, some technical help is on the way. Internet Explorer 7.0, which is due out soon, will have some anti-phishing features, such as a little, green light on pages that are safe. Firefox, made by the Mozilla foundation, will also have some security features in future versions. Microsoft Outlook, Safari and Entourage on the Mac, will also have some features that will help. For example, links in e-mail messages are disabled by default, though this is a little silly, because that defeats a large purpose of the Internet. Though the average person doesn't e-mail links to credit card sites and banks. But even when these features are available and active, they are there to help you -- don't rely on them as crutches.

So beware and be vigilant and understand what it is that you're receiving by e-mail, and to assume that just because an e-mail looks like it comes from a trusted source or financial organization, doesn't mean that it really is. It's very easy to spoof the From field or the Reply To field in an e-mail message. Anybody with the most simple knowledge of e-mail software like Outlook could make that spoof. So have fun, be safe and we'll see ya' next time.

Aligning and positioning in PowerPoint

2006-02-25T21:16:00.000-05:00

If you use any graphics in PowerPoint, you need to know how to position and align them -- to each other, to the page or to text. Other than bad spelling, nothing screams Amateur more than graphics that look crooked or scattered or positioned unevenly.

Here are some handy features that will make it easier to deal with graphics, so you don't have to eyeball them.

Use the grid. The grid is a set of vertical and horizontal lines that's normally invisible. Objects will snap to the grid, as though the grid has some gravity. That's why, when you drag an object, it doesn't move smoothly across the screen.

To show or hide the grid, either click the Show/Hide Grid button on the Standard toolbar or press Shift + F9. If you want to ignore the grid temporarily, press Alt as you drag. As long as you hold the Alt key, you can drag objects smoothly...but there's less chance that they will line up.
Use the guidelines. If you want some objects to sit along a line, horizontally or vertically, don't eyeball it; display a line on the screen. When you press Alt + F9, a horizontal and vertical guideline will appear and objects will snap to them, unless you're holding the Alt key. Drag the guidelines anywhere you want. Of course, pressing Alt + F9 makes the guidelines disappear.

Are a single vertical and single horizontal guideline not enough? Just Ctrl + drag any guideline to duplicate it. To remove a guideline, just drag it off the edge of the page. But you'll have to remove them one-at-a-time; there is no command that deletes all guidelines. (Pressing Alt + F9 only hides them, it doesn't remove them.)

When you drag a guideline, do you notice the little numbers attached to the mouse pointer? They're showing you how many inches away from the middle of the slide you're dragging. If you'd rather that the number start from zero, to make it easier to measure how far you're dragging it, press Shift while you drag. For example, if you want to add a guideline half an inch below an object, hold Shift as you drag a horizontal guideline downwards. When the number on the mouse pointer displays 0.50, let go. As with dragging objects, the guidelines can snap to the grid or not, depending on whether you're pressing Alt.
Set grid and guides options. Press Ctrl + G to display the Grid and Guides dialog box. There, you can turn snapping on and off (if you're tired of holding Alt) and turn the grid and guides on and off.

When you turn the grid on, it only shows the lines at each horizontal and vertical inch. The grid has many more lines than that, but there isn't a way to make the rest of them appear. But in this dialog box, you can at least set their spacing. Click OK when you're done.
Move objects very small amounts with precision. To move an object horizontally or vertically exactly 1/10 of an inch, press one of the four arrow keys on the keyboard. To move an object 1/100 of an inch, press Ctrl + an arrow key. You can't be that accurate with the mouse!
Drag objects straight vertically or straight horizontally. Just Shift + drag the object. If you start dragging horizontally using the Shift key, you can't also drag vertically, and vice-versa. So go ahead, have that extra cup of Java! PowerPoint won't mind if your hands are a little shaky.

Here's a bonus tip: if you want to duplicate an object while dragging it, press Ctrl while dragging. And if you press Shift + Ctrl while dragging, you'll duplicate the object exactly horizontally or exactly vertically.

Video: AutoFill and absolute references in Excel

2006-02-04T20:10:00.000-05:00

Two features of Excel you have to know if you want to use the software effectively are ways of using AutoFill (there are more than one) and absolute references.

You can watch the Flash version here, which is bigger and easier to see than the smaller, iPod version.

Creating tables of contents in Word, part 2

2006-01-21T17:02:00.000-05:00

In my last blog post, January 9, 2006, we talked about creating a Table of Contents in Microsoft Word 2003 using built-in styles. In this post, we'll talk about the other methods of creating TOCs in Word: creating them from custom styles, from marked text and from outline levels.

Creating TOC entries from custom styles is similar to creating TOC entries using the built-in styles. The difference is that rather than relying on Headings 1, 2 and 3, which look the way someone at Microsoft decided they should look, you can format text with styles you might want to call Chapter Heading, Major Heading and Minor Heading, for example -- and give them the font, size and spacing that suits your needs.

The first thing you need to do is create the styles. We'll talk about doing this in Word 2003; it works a little differently in the older versions. Here's how:

Select the first line of text in your document that will be a major headline. Use the formatting toolbar or the Font dialog box (Ctrl + D) to format it.
Display the task pane, if it isn't already visible (Ctrl + F1).
Click the small, down arrow at the upper-right corner of the task pane, then select Styles and Formatting.
With the cursor in the text you just formatted, click the New Style button. Type a name for the style (like Major Heading), then click OK.
In the task pane, click the style name you just created. The text won't change appearance, but it will now be defined by the style name you just clicked.
Click in the next headline that should look the same as the last headline you just formatted, then click the style name in the task pane. Repeat until all headlines are formatted with your new style.
If you want headers that are subordinate to your major headline, repeat steps 1-6, using a new style name.

Once all your major and minor headlines are tagged, insert the TOC almost the same way you did if you followed the directions in my last blog post.

Click the spot in your document where you want the TOC to go. In Word 2003, select Insert/Reference/Index and Tables, then click the Table of Contents tab.
Click the Options button.
Select the Styles checkbox, and deselect the checkboxes for Outline levels and Table entry fields.
Delete the numbers in the text boxes to the right of Headings 1, 2 and 3.
In the same list, find the style names you created earlier, and put the appropriate numbers in their text boxes -- 1 for the first TOC level, 2 for the second TOC level (if any), and so on.
Click OK, then click OK again. You'll now have a table of contents that uses your own, custom styles.

The other two methods for creating a table of contents is to base the entries on outline levels and text that you specifically mark as TOC entries.

Outline View is for creating structured outlines. To use it, click the Outline View icon in the lower-left corner of the screen. Use the Outlining toolbar to mark text as a heading level or as body text (or press Tab to indent text to a lower level heading and press Shift + Tab to mark text as a higher level heading).

When your outline is finished and you're ready to insert your table of contents, click the Options button as before, and select only the Outline Levels checkbox. Click OK, then click OK again.

The third (or fourth) way of putting document text into a table of contents is to manually mark the text. Since this can take a lot of manual labor in a long document, use it only if you need to put text in a table of contents that can't be formatted like the rest of your headings. This takes only a few steps:

Select the first line of text that should go into the TOC.
Press Ctrl + Shift + O (that's O like Oscar, not the number zero) to display the Mark TOC dialog box.

The text you selected will be listed, with a table identifier of C and a level of 1. The C means you're creating a table of contents, and the 1 means the text will be the first TOC level. You can change the letter, if you want a different sort of table (like I for index, or D for diagrams), but that's a discussion for another day.
Leave this dialog box open (drag it out of the way, if necessary), then select the second line of text to go into the table of contents.
Click the Mark TOC dialog box to have this second line of text listed. Change the level, if you need, then repeat.
When you've marked all the text you want, insert the TOC as we discussed above. When you click the Options button in the TOC dialog box, make sure to select Table entry fields.

One last word about tables of contents: there's no rule that says you have to use only one method or another. If you have a huge document, you can use all the methods we discussed in both of these TOC blog posts and they will each do their own thing.

Creating tables of contents in Word, part 1

2006-01-09T23:55:00.000-05:00

Microsoft Word has several features for handling large documents. One of the most common is the table of contents (TOC), which works mostly the same way in all versions of Word.

TOCs are so important, Word has three ways of creating them (or four ways, depending on how you count): using styles that are built-in or those you create yourself, using outline levels and manually marking text. In each case, Word will recognize which text in your document is supposed to be copied and listed in the TOC.

Creating a TOC from built-in styles is the easiest method, and that's what I'll show you today. Styles are a great feature in Word and in other applications; you use them for quick and consistent formatting. If you aren't familiar with the concept, a style is simply a basket of formatting attributes that you can quickly apply to paragraphs, the same way you would mix paint, then apply it to your walls.

For example, all the dates on this blog page are formatted in the Trebuchet font 12 points, bold, left aligned and dark yellow. All the titles of the posts are formatted as Arial 18 points, bold, left aligned and slightly off-white. Rather than formatting each date or title individually, we create styles with names like Blog Date and Blog Title, then decide which text gets "painted" with those styles.

To make it easier, Word comes with pre-made styles, called Heading 1, Heading 2 and Heading 3. Here's how to use them to create a table of contents:

Apply Heading 1 and Heading 2 to all major and minor headings in your document. Simply click in a major heading, then press Ctrl + Alt + 1 to apply Heading 1 and click in a minor heading, then press Ctrl + Alt + 2 to apply Heading 2. Yes, Ctrl + Alt + 3 will apply Heading 3.
Click the spot in your document where you want the TOC to go. In Word 2003, select Insert/Reference/Index and Tables, then click the Table of Contents tab. (The menus of older versions are only slightly different.)
Click the Options button. The dialog box that appears is what controls which of the three (or four) TOC methods you use.
Select the Styles checkbox, and deselect the checkboxes for Outline levels and Table entry fields. Notice the check marks next to Headings 1, 2 and 3, and notice that they are set to produce TOC levels 1, 2 and 3. If you want to prevent any of these three Headings from appearing in the TOC, just click their checkmarks to deselect them.
Click OK, then click OK again.

If you applied all three heading styles, your TOC should now look something like this, with the three headings in the text corresponding to the three levels in the TOC:


Cats. . . . . . . . . . .5   <-- Heading 1 / Level 1 
   Black and white . . .10   <-- Heading 2 / Level 2 
   Calico. . . . . . . .12
      Long hair. . . . .13   <-- Heading 3 / Level 3 
      Short hair. . . . 14
   Siamese. . . . . . . 15
Dogs. . . . . . . . . . 20
   Poodles. . . . . . . 23
      Miniature. . . . .24
      Large. . . . . . .25
   Rottweilers. . . . . 25
   Golden Retrievers. . 26

That's all there is to it! If you change any of the text in the document that are formatted with these heading styles, you'll want to update the TOC. All you have to do is right-click the TOC, then choose Update Field from the popup menu. (Or just click the TOC, then press F9.)

In my next post, I'll show you how to use the other two (or three) methods of TOC creation.

Make it easier to open or save in favorite folders

2006-01-01T13:09:00.000-05:00

If you have a lot of data files on your computer (Word docs, Excel workbooks and so on), you've long outgrown storing them in My Documents. Maybe you've created folders to store files for specific projects or clients. If you work with other people in an office, even a small one, this isn't even a question. You routinely access files on other computers. Which means you know how frustrating it can be to keep going back-and-forth to all these drives and folders.

Fortunately, all the Microsoft Office 2003 programs make it easier for you to get to these folders by putting links to them in dialog boxes like File Open and Save. Here's how you do it:

In any Office program (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.), display the File Open dialog box (Ctrl + O) or the Save As dialog box (F12).
Manually navigate (one last time!) to a folder to which you want easy access. Double-click the folder to see its contents.
The File Open or Save As dialog box you're using is probably too small to display any more icons, so stretch it out: place the mouse pointer in the box's lower-right corner, then click and drag downwards and to the right. (If there isn't enough room, first put the mouse pointer on the box's blue title bar, where it says Open, Save As or whatever, then drag the entire box up and to the left.)
At the upper-right corner of the box, click the down arrow to the right of the Tools menu , then select Add to "My Places" from the pop-up menu.
Notice the gray Places bar, on the left side of the dialog box. There is now a shortcut to your folder at the bottom, below the shortcuts to the Desktop and other common folders.

At any time, you can click this shortcut to go to that folder immediately.
You can even rename this shortcut, if you want: right-click it, then select Rename from the pop-up menu. And if you ever want to remove it...nah, I'll let you figure this one out.
But wait! There's more! This shortcut will now be available on the Places bars in all the other Office programs.

Here's another hint: if you want to put a lot of shortcuts on the Places bar, you'll quickly run out of room. So make the icons smaller: just right-click an empty spot on the Places bar, then select Small Icons from the pop-up menu. The text labels will remain the same size.

Make objects dance in PowerPoint 2003

2005-12-16T20:05:00.000-05:00

Most people don't realize that PowerPoint 2003 has a lot of animation capabilities, especially for software that's intended for business users. Some of these goodies are kind of hidden, but easy to use. One feature you can try without much trouble is a motion path.

If you want an object (such as an AutoShape, imported graphic or text box) to move across the screen along a path that you define, you use a motion path. Here's how to do it:

Select an object, then select Slide Show/Custom Animation.
In the task pane, click the Add Effect button, then click Motion Paths from the flyout menu.
If you want the object to move in a straight line in a pre-determined direction (right, left, etc.), choose one of the options on this flyout. But it's more fun to choose Draw Custom Path, then select Scribble from this flyout.
When you choose Scribble, the mouse pointer changes to a pencil. Just draw a line or curve -- or scribble -- on the screen. As soon as you let go, the object moves along the path. You only see the path itself when designing the slide; it's invisible when running the slide show.

Once you have a motion path, you can edit it. To make the object move along the path in the reverse direction, right-click the path, then select Reverse Path Direction. To reshape the path, right-click it, then select Edit Points. Drag any point to change the path. If you click a point instead of dragging it, you'll see it has adjustment handles (they have hollow boxes on the ends). These are Bezier curves. If you're familiar with Beziers in high-end graphics programs such as Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop or CorelDRAW, you'll find these are similar.

To change the curvature of the path where that particular point is, drag an adjustment handle. To make the point smooth, straight or cornered (cusped), right-click it, then choose the appropriate option from the menu. Delete a point by right-clicking it, then selecting Delete Point, or create a new point by right-clicking the line, then selecting Add Point. You can also drag the ends of the line segments.

When you're finished editing the line, either click the blank page background, or right-click the line, then select Exit Edit Points. Preview the animation by clicking the Play button on the bottom of the task pane, or run the presentation for real by clicking the Slide Show button, also on the bottom of the task pane.

Easy way to delete stuff in Excel that can't seem to be deleted

2005-10-27T19:41:00.000-04:00

Another question someone just asked me went something like this: "I have an Excel worksheet that has a table of colored boxes for people to fill in data. But there are over 20 unnecessary pages of boxes and lines that I can't get rid of, no matter what I do. I can set the Print Area, but can't I just delete all this stuff?"

If you want to get rid of everything, including formatting and formulas from a particular row or column all the way to the end of the worksheet, you can do it by deleting the entire rows and the entire columns, rather than just the cells themselves. You remove the rows and the columns separately.

To delete every row from a certain point to the very bottom:

Click the gray row header to the left of the first row you want to delete (the row number to the left of column A). The entire row will become highlighted.
Press F5 to display the Go To dialog box (or click in the Name Box -- above the Column A header and to the left of the Formula Bar).
Type 65536:65536, then press Shift + Enter. This will highlight all the rows.
Right-click any of the highlighted row headers, then select Delete from the popup menu.

To delete every column from a certain point to the right end:

Click the gray column header above the first column you want to delete (the column letter above row 1). The entire column will become highlighted.
Press F5 to display the Go To dialog box (or click in the Name Box -- above the Column A header and to the left of the Formula Bar).
Type iv:iv, then press Shift + Enter. This will highlight all the columns.
Right-click any of the highlighted column headers, then select Delete from the popup menu.

What to do when Outlook Express gets really stuck

2005-10-25T11:22:00.000-04:00

I got a call the other day from someone who had a message stuck in the Outbox of Outlook Express. The message wouldn't get sent, he couldn't delete it and he couldn't open it. To make matters worse, every time he tried to view the Outbox, OE would crash. He didn't have even half a chance to send or receive e-mail.

The good news is that each folder in OE is a separate file on the hard drive, though it isn't obvious where on the computer they are. If you delete one of these files, OE will create a new, empty one in its place.

Here are the steps:

Select Tools/Options, then click the Maintenance tab.
Click the Store Folder button.
Select the entire path and name in the box. It doesn't look selectable, but it is. Just click and drag all the way through it (it will probably scroll when you drag).
Copy (Ctrl + C).
Click Cancel, then click Cancel again.
Close Outlook Express.
Open My Computer ( + E).
Click in the Address bar or (Alt + D). If My Computer doesn't show the Address Bar, select View/Toolbars/Address Bar.
Paste (Ctrl + V), then press Enter.
Select the file called Outbox.dbx, the press Delete. Click Yes to confirm.
Open Outlook Express. The Outbox will be empty.

Better bookmarks: borrow from WordPerfect

2005-07-23T17:47:00.000-04:00

In my July 12 post, I showed how you could use Word's bookmarks feature to navigate long documents. And my post of October 19, 2004 showed how to use Word's Shift + F5 shortcut to jump to the last 3 places in any document you edit, without having to create bookmarks.

While these are both great to know, there are some downsides. As you edit a document, the places where Shift + F5 goes to keeps changing. And if you need to mark a particular place in a document only temporarily, creating lots of bookmarks could be more trouble than they're worth. So today, I'll give you a macro that does the best of both -- borrowing a feature from WordPerfect called a QuickMark. (This will work in all versions of Word.)

The idea is this: use a shortcut to mark any spot in a document as a QuickMark. Later, use a different shortcut to come back to the spot, no matter where else you edited. If you assign the QuickMark to a different location, the previous one is removed, and you'll now come back to the new one. These macros have saved me a lot of time over the years.

First, create the macros:

In Word, open the Visual Basic for Applications editor (Alt + F11).
In the Project Explorer on the left (press Ctrl + R if you don't see it), double-click Module1, underneath Normal. (If there is no Module1, right-click Normal, then from the pop-up menu, select Insert/Module.)
Select the following code, copy (Ctrl + C), then paste (Ctrl + V) into Module1:


Sub InsertQuickMark()
If ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.Exists("QuickMark") = True Then
ActiveDocument.Bookmarks("QuickMark").Delete
End If
With ActiveDocument.Bookmarks
.Add Range:=Selection.Range, Name:="QuickMark"
.DefaultSorting = wdSortByName
.ShowHidden = False
End With
End Sub

Sub FindQuickMark()
Selection.GoTo What:=wdGoToBookmark, Name:="QuickMark"
With ActiveDocument.Bookmarks
.DefaultSorting = wdSortByName
.ShowHidden = False
End With
End Sub

Close the VBA editor (Alt + F11). There's no need to save -- it will get saved when you exit Word.

Now, assign the shortcuts

Right-click any toolbar, then select Customize.
Click the Commands tab, then click the Keyboard button.
In the dialog box that appears, scroll down the Categories list on the left side, then select Macros.
In the macros list on the right, select the one called InsertQuickMark.
Click in the Press new shortcut key box, then press Ctrl + Q.
Click the Assign button.
In the macros list on the right, select the one called FindQuickMark.
Click in the Press new shortcut key box, then press Ctrl + Shift + Q.
Click the Assign button, then click the Close button.
Click the Close button again.

Put it to the test! Open a long document. Scroll a little, click the page, then insert the QuickMark (Ctrl + Q). Page down a few times, then find the QuickMark (Ctrl + Shift + Q). Scroll a little more, click a different spot, then insert the QuickMark again (Ctrl + Q). Go to a different part of the document, then find the new QuickMark (Ctrl + Shift + Q). Got the idea?

Use bookmarks to navigate long Word documents

2005-07-12T19:08:00.000-04:00

Bookmarks are (is?) a great feature of all versions of Word that few people seem to know about. The concept is simple: if you have a long document and need to get from one spot to another quickly, you put an invisible mark at each spot, such as a subhead or chapter title. Give each bookmark a unique name and you can then jump from one bookmark to another. Here's how:

Go to the first place in a document where you want a bookmark.
Press Ctrl + Shift + F5.
Type a boomkark name (no spaces allowed -- use underscores, instead), then press Enter.

To jump to a bookmark that you already created, simply press Ctrl + Shift + F5, then double-click a bookmark. You'll notice in the bookmarks dialog box that you can sort them alphabetically by name, or by location, from the top of the document to the bottom.

If you ever want to see the bookmarks in a document, select Tools/Options, then click the View tab. Select Bookmarks, then click OK. Hide them again the same way.

Maybe in my next post, I'll show you a neat little trick I use with bookmarks when I need one in a spot only temporarily. Stay tuned.

Make messages stand out in Outlook

2005-06-26T11:13:00.000-04:00

If you get dozens -- or hundreds -- of e-mails a day, many of them screaming for your attention, how can you mark which are the really important ones to deal with?

One way you can do it is to have every message from a particular sender, such as your boss or an important customer, display in red as soon as it arrives. Here's how to do it in Outlook 2003:

Select a message from this sender, then select Tools/Organize.
In the organizing panel, select Using Colors.
The default selection should offer to color all messages from that sender in red. Change it if you want, then click the Apply Color button. All messages from that sender will now be red.
Click the X in the upper-right of the Organize panel to close it.

But what if you want to cherry-pick messages, even from different senders? You can do this in three basic tasks: create a category, give the category a color, then apply the category. It's kind of like creating a style in Word or a graphics program. Here's how to do it in Outlook 2003:

Create a category

Select a message you want to color.
Select Edit/Categories (or right-click a message and select Categories from the pop-up menu).
Click the Master Category List button.
Type a name for the category (Read this, for example). Click Add, then click OK.
In the Available Categories list, click the checkbox for the Read this category you just created, then click OK.

Give the category a color

Select Tools/Organize (if the Organize panel isn't open already), then click Automatic Formatting.
Click Add, type a name, then click Condition.
In the Filter dialog box, click the Advanced tab.
Click the Field button, then from the flyout menu, select Frequently-used fields/Categories.
Click in the Value box, then type the name of the category you just created (the condition should now read Categories contains Read this).
Click the Add to List button, then click OK.
Back in the Automatic Formatting dialog box, click the Font button, then set the font to bold and red. Click OK twice.
When you click another message, you'll see the one you were just on is now bold and red.
Click the X in the upper-right of the Organize panel to close it.

Apply the category to other messages

Right-click a message, then select Categories from the pop-up menu.
Click the checkbox for the Read this category, then click OK.
When you click another message, you'll see the one you were just on is now bold and red.

Keep Word, Excel or PowerPoint bookmarks when creating a PDF

2005-06-10T13:18:00.000-04:00

If you have a Word, Excel or PowerPoint document and create an Adobe Acrobat document (PDF) from it, bookmarks and hyperlinks in the document won't survive the trip. The PDF will show the links in blue underline, but nothing will happen if you click them.

This happens if you create the PDF the usual way, by printing and selecting PDF as the printer. But if you have Acrobat 6 or 7, you can keep your bookmarks when creating the PDF by opening the document in Acrobat and letting Acrobat do the conversion.

First, check your settings in Acrobat. Select Edit/Preferences/Convert to PDF. Select Microsoft Office in the Converting To PDF list. then click the Edit Settings button. Make sure Add bookmarks is selected, then click OK twice.

Now you're set to convert the document. In Acrobat, select File/Create PDF/From File (Ctrl + N). Double-click your file. When it finishes, your bookmarks and hyperlinks will work.

Creating a document this way doesn't use the normal Acrobat distiller. It uses the PDF Writer, which used to be a separate option when installing Acrobat. It isn't as robust as the distiller, so this shouldn't be your first choice when creating a PDF.

Counting words in Word 2003

2005-05-23T20:44:00.000-04:00

If you ever need to count the number of words you're writing -- perhaps you're writing a magazine article or a personal ad -- here's a handy feature in Word 2003 you'll like:

Right-click any toolbar and select Word Count. You'll get a little toolbar, probably floating on the screen. If no text is selected and you click the Recount button, it will show you how many words are in the entire document. If you select some text, then click the Recount button, it will show you how many words are selected.

Click the drop-down list that shows you the number of words, and it will show you the number of characters (with and without spaces), lines, pages and paragraphs. If you use this feature a lot, drag the toolbar by its small title bar onto the toolbar area at the top or bottom of the screen, and it will become docked there permanently (or until you hide it with another right-click).

Older versions of Word also do word counts, but the feature is more slick in 2003.

Go certify yourself!

2005-04-26T12:15:00.000-04:00

When you open an Access 2003 database (.mdb file) that you or a colleague created, there's a good chance you'll get a security warning, telling you the file might not be safe:

While this is designed to protect you from malicious software (viruses, trojans, spyware, etc.) from untrustworthy sources, there is little chance you wrote a virus to infect yourself. Fortunately, you can inoculate yourself from this bit of overprotection, using a digital certificate. (You can also eliminate the warning by setting macro security to Low, but that isn't a good idea.)

Digital certificates are made for commercial software developers. For example, you can create an inventory manager that runs in Access and sell it online. Web sites like www.tucows.com and www.shareware.com have hundreds of database applications written by small companies and individuals. These developers all have to purchase yearly digital certificates from a "trust authority," such as Verisign, Thawte or DigiCert. These trust authorities make sure you are who you claim to be and that you have legitimate contact information, so you can't write viruses under an assumed name and distribute them to customers who think they're buying legitimate software. As for who is certifying the certifiers, I cannot say.

Fortunately, you don't have to buy a certificate to open your own database! Microsoft Office comes with something called a self-sign certificate. It lets you certify yourself on your own computer. To use it, open Windows Explorer ( + E), go to c:\program files\microsoft office\office11 and double-click selfcert.exe. Type the name for the certificate (your own name should be fine), then press Enter. If you don't see selfcert.exe, you'll have to install it from your Office 2003 CD. (Note to would-be virus writers: if you try to use your self-sign certificate on another computer, it won't work.)

Now open your Access database and click Open in the security warning one last time. Go to the Visual Basic editor (Alt + F11), then select Tools/Digital Signature. Click Choose, and you'll see the certificate you just created. Click OK twice. then exit the VB editor (Alt + F4).

Close your database and immediately re-open it (Alt + F, 1). The database will open immediately without the security warning. Keep in mind that even though you need to create the certificate only once, you'll need to install it in the VB editor in each of your databases.

Got a list? Use Excel 2003's new list feature.

2005-04-21T15:45:00.000-04:00

One of the few changes in the 2003 version of Excel is the improved way it handles lists. A list is any sort of table of information, such as names and addresses or product names and prices. You simply define a list, then maniuplate it.

To define a range as a list:

Click inside a range or select a range you want to be a list, like a database.
Select Data/List/Create List (Ctrl + L).
Make sure the range is correct and select whether the list has headers. Click OK.
On the List toolbar, use items on the List menu to manage your data.
If you don't see the toolbar, right-click a toolbar, then select List.

If you click outside the list, the toolbar disappears; click inside the list to see it again.

Now that you defined a list, here are some things you can do with it:

Click the drop-down arrows at the tops of the columns to filter the lists like an AutoFilter.
For automatic totals, click the Toggle Total Row button. The totals appear at the bottom of the list.
To get other automatic functions, click the total itself, then click the drop-down arrow that appears next to it. Click a function name.
To add data to the list, click the asterisk at the bottom, then type your data. (If you know Microsoft Access, this will be familiar.) As soon as you enter the first cell in the list, the list expands and you get another blank row.

Put your PowerPoint presentation on the Web

2005-04-01T11:33:00.000-05:00

If you have a PowerPoint 2002 or 2003 presentation that you want to show to multiple people who are geographically dispersed, there are a few ways of doing it:

E-mail the presentation to everyone and hope the large file size makes it in one piece and doesn't get flagged by a spam filter.
Use an expensive presentation service, like Microsoft LiveMeeting, Webex or GoToMeeting, load the PowerPoint file into the service, learn how to use it, set up a separate conference call and deal with technical issues from your audience.
Save your presentation as a Web page and upload it to your Web server.

Choice #3 is the easiest, fastest and least expensive option. In PowerPoint, just select File/Save as Web Page, create a new folder (Alt + 5), then click Save. (For advanced options, click the Publish button in the Save As dialog box.)

After saving the presentation, upload the files and any subfolders it creates to your Web site, give out the Web address, and you're done. PowerPoint will create a navigation screen on the left side of the browser and will put the presentation in the main part of the window. Each member of the audience can view the presentation on their own. The only requirement is that they use Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher, which is on about 98% of all PCs.

Keep the old personality on a new computer

2005-02-25T00:13:00.000-05:00

If you've had your computer for a while, you probably have everything set up just the way you like it: start menu and desktop items, wallpaper, shortcuts, e-mail settings, bookmarks and so on. The same probably holds true for your Microsoft Office settings: AutoCorrect and AutoText entries, custom dictionary, toolbars, macros and the like.

When you replace your computer with a newer model, or if you need to reformat your hard drive and start everything from scratch, you know what kind of hassle it is to get everything working and looking the way you're used to. You can try to back up as much of this as possible, but you're bound to forget at least something.

Fortunately, Windows XP, Office 2000, Office XP and Office 2003 all have built-in utilities to help you keep your old computer's personality when you make the transition.

To keep your Windows XP settings, select Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Files and Settings Transfer Wizard. The wizard is easy and self-explanatory. It will save your settings on your hard drive or backup device. (If you save it on your current hard drive, remember to back it up before reformatting or tossing your old drive.) When you have your new computer or reformatted drive, run the wizard again and restore the settings you saved.

To keep your Microsoft Office 2003 settings, select Start/All Programs/Microsoft Office/Microsoft Office Tools/Microsoft Office 2003 Save My Settings Wizard. If you have Office XP, select Start/All Programs/Microsoft Office Tools/Save My Settings Wizard and if you have Office 2000, select Start/Programs/Microsoft Office Tools/Save My Settings Wizard. The concept is the same: back up the old settings and save them in a safe place, then restore them to the new machine. Unlike the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard, the wizard for Office XP and 2003 have the additional option of letting you save your settings on Microsoft's servers for free, in a secure place where only you can retrieve them. The wizard for Office 2000 has only this option -- it doesn't have a way to save your files on your own device.

There is one caveat to all this. If your current Windows or Office settings are corrupted and are what's causing you to reformat your drive, you might want to think twice before using these wizards, or you might end up taking the old problems to the new machine.

Share photos online for free, with Google

2005-01-21T07:07:00.000-05:00

Last October, I wrote about a new, free service from Google that makes it easier and faster to search for stuff on your computer. Google now has free software, called Picasa (www.picasa.com), which helps you organize and share your photos.

Organizing and sharing photos is certainly not a new concept, but the older version of Picasa cost $30; the new version is not only better, it's a free download and has no ads, spam, program limitations or any other nonsense. How Google will make a profit from it is anyone's guess.