Help Desk Tips

Home About RHFtech Overview Services Technology Help FAQs Fun Stuff Help Desk Tips Blog Links Contact Us

Contents: only search RHFtech Acronyms – Acronyms You Should Know But May Not Adobe – Convert PDF-to-text service Adobe Acrobat – Free PDF Printers Amazon's Kindle - A Device I Wanted To Love Audio/Video – Whole House A/V Entertainment Systems Backing Up – Backing Up Is Easy To Do Backing Up – Using the “Save As…” Menu Backup Programs for Windows and Macs BitTorrent – Sending Large Files Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD, Why I'm sitting this out Blu-ray wins, HD-DVD is dead, who cares? Blue-ray won, what does that mean to you Browsers – Clear Your Address History Browsers – Quick Address Entry Charmap – Oddball Characters Collaboration – Edit with Brackets Design – Consistency and simplicity are possible Email – Gmail's Colored Labels Email – Mistake – Off Topic Reply To Sender Email – Sending Text Message (SMS) Via Email Email – Use and Abuse, part 1 of 2 Email – Use and Abuse, part 2 of 2 Email – Using the '+" Symbol in an Address Entertainment - What Is The Best Electronic Entertainment Value? Firewalls – Love them, hate them, don’t ignore them Floppy – No Floppy? – Make the ”A” Drive Disappear Fun – Make your own seal General – Technology is Disposable General – Technology’s Unintended Consequences General – Use Technology to Offset Rising Costs Google – Accessible Web Search Google – On Your Cell Phone Google – Tips and Tricks HDTV – Tips for Buying HDTV and Home Theater Equipment HDTV – Understanding High Definition Television HDTV – Why Do Black Bars Appear? Home Entertainment – Home Theater PC (HTPC) Humor - Taketh my money, taketh my MULA[tm] Internet Explorer – Alternatives Internet Explorer – Blank Home Page Internet Explorer – Text Size and Legibility Internet Explorer – Version 7, Wait A Little Bit Longer Internet Explorer 7 – Some Keyboard Shortcuts Internet Explorer 7 – Zoom the Web Page or Change Text Size iPods – Create Ebooks for your iPod iTunes – Tips and Tricks Junk Mail – Opt Out of Credit Card and Insurance Offerings Mac – Setting Sleep Options Mashups – Knowledge Expanded Media – The Broken World Of Home Entertainment Media Microsoft Excel – Automatically Backup Files Microsoft Excel – Print A List Of Named Ranges Microsoft Excel – Search and Replace for Wildcard Characters Microsoft Excel – Split Table Heading Into Triangles Microsoft Office - Compatibility Pack for Office 2007 File Formats Microsoft Office 2007 – 3 Things Microsoft Outlook – Backing Up Data Files Microsoft Outlook – Compacting the PST File Microsoft Outlook – Date And Time Shortcuts Microsoft Outlook – Delete Autocomplete Items Microsoft Outlook – Edit Email Subject Microsoft Outlook – Inviting Others to Appointments Microsoft Outlook – Missing Next Year's Holidays? Microsoft Outlook – Moving Your Data Files Microsoft Outlook – Multi-day appointments Microsoft Outlook – OutlookTools Microsoft Outlook – Printing Your Contacts Microsoft Outlook – Remove Autocompletion Entries Microsoft Outlook – Using Conversations Microsoft Outlook Express – Backing Up Data Files Microsoft Word – Add Line Numbers Microsoft Word – Automatically Backup Files Microsoft Word – AutoText Microsoft Word – Capitalization Microsoft Word – Create A Shortcut To A Template Microsoft Word – Find and Replace Microsoft Word – Headers and Footers Microsoft Word – Hyphens Are Complex Little Lines Microsoft Word – Last Document Shortcut Microsoft Word – Make A Shortcut To A Font Microsoft Word – Open a Document to Last Edit Microsoft Word – Pictures with Border and Shadow Microsoft Word – Reveal Formatting Microsoft Word – Tables – Underused, Underappreciated Microsoft Word – The Horizontal Ruler Microsoft Word – The Vertical Scroll Bar Mouse – Bigger, Better Mouse Cursors Music – Freeing DRM'ed iTunes Files Office – Online Versus Offline Applications OpenOffice – Expect the Unexpected Operating Systems - Comparing Vista, Leopard and Linux Passwords – Living On Line – Disability And Death In A Paperless World Photos – Eye-Fi For Your Photos Photos – Organize Your Photographs With A GPS Presentations - ZoomIt Printing – Create Additional Printers (Link to video) Printing – Photo Printing Printing – Print Selection RSS – Don’t Surf The Web, Use RSS Security – American or Prussian? Security – Put Owner Info In Digital Equipment Security – Rootkits – Are you infected? Security – Something I Know... Speech – Your Computer Speaks Storage – New Media For A New Era Technology – School is so yesterday Telephony – POTS, VoIP or cell phone, which is right for you Telephony – Two Low Cost And One Free VoIP Services To Consider Ultra-Mobile PC - My Favorite Computer Updates – How Many Updates And Updaters Does Your Computer Need Updates – Like Death and Taxes, Only Worse Video – Forget TV, Watch The Web Video – High Definition (HD) Video Sources Video – Television Without The TV Video – Watch, Watch or Listen Vista – Ready For A New Day? Weather – Websites, programs and tricks Web Services – Sending Large Files Web Video – Chime.TV Easy, Usable And Fun Website Design – The Good, the Bad, the Ugly Windows – A Couple of Windows Mouse Tricks Windows – Clean up your desktop! Windows – Clean up your taskbar with Minimizer XP Windows – Custom Folder Icons Windows – Every Day Is Y2K With Microsoft's WGA Windows – June 30, 2008, The Day Microsoft Windows Died Windows – Keyboard Shortcuts to Switch Focus Windows – Make Your Screen More Readable Windows Task Manager – A Fuel Gauge And Tachometer For Your Computer Windows Vista – Microsoft, Vista And You Windows Vista – Vista or Leopard? Windows XP – Desktop Hibernate Shortcut Windows XP – Play a Sound When Caps Lock is Pressed Windows XP – Setting Power Options Windows XP – Shut Down XP 7 Different Ways Windows XP – Spring Cleaning Windows XP – Taskbar Utilities Backing Up – Using The “Save As…” Menu If you live on the edge you may fall off. Ricky’s Rules Last week I promised to show you how to save backup files for most applications you use, including PowerPoint. This method works for almost every computer application that provides us with a choice of what to name a document and where to save it. Many of us are so wrapped up in trying to figure out how to use our computers that we often overlook simple ways of doing things. We expect the computer to do it for us. Sometimes we have to take matters into our own hands to get what we want. This is one of those times. We will use PowerPoint for this example because it does not have a programmatic way to save a backup of a data file as Word or Excel do. We are working on a presentation and it comes time to save it. What do we do? From now on we always use File – Save As… Here are three things we do NOT do: Do NOT click on the floppy disk icon in the toolbar to save the file. Do NOT use the menu item File – Save. Do NOT use the shortcut key Ctrl‑S. Why? When we select File – Save As… we are always prompted for the file name and location. This does not automatically happen with the other three methods. In fact it only happens with them the first time we save a document, after that we are not prompted so when we save a document we overwrite the previous saved version. File – Save As… will prompt us every time, asking if we want to overwrite the existing file with the same name. The other three methods do not. Now here is the magic. We use a version number for saving the file. For example, the first time we save the presentation we might name it Presentation01.ppt. (The ppt extension is automatically added by PowerPoint. You may not see this file extension since it depends upon how Windows Explorer is configured.) The next time we save it as Presentation02.ppt. The third time we save it as Presentation03.ppt. Any time we make more than modest changes we save the file and increment the version number. Now we have backup files and a history of the development of the item. At some later date we will delete all the unnecessary earlier versions and keep the final. But until then if something happens to Presentation03.ppt we will open up Presentation02.ppt or Presentation01.ppt and not have to start from scratch or do without. Most applications have keyboard short cuts to access the File – Save As… menu. In Windows, press Alt–F, followed by the “a” key. After a while this will become second nature. Backing up is easy. Are you still living on the edge? Notes on Naming One digit or two? We suggest using double digits such as 01, 02, 03… not single digits like 1, 2, 3 for file naming. The reason is that if you create file 10 it will sort next to file 1, and 20 will sort next to file 2 rather than sorting in “human” numeric order. Computers need you to be as consistent and logical as possible. (This assumes we will not create more than 99 versions of a file. If you expect to go above 100 start with 001.) Dates or Numbers? Lots of people like to use the date in file names, perhaps you do. Why do we use a version number and not the date? There are several reasons. The file’s details already contain the file’s creation date and the date the file was last modified so it is a bit redundant to use that for naming. More importantly, it is possible to create several versions of the file in a single day. Furthermore, how do you date things? Do you use month-day-year as your method? If so then a file with the name Presentation12132005.ppt would show up next to Presentation12132006.ppt even though they are a year apart. If you must use dates (and we really recommend against it) please use the convention of year-month-day, and specify years with four digits not two, and months and days with two digits and not one. Computers work much better with a logical use of numerical characters. BitTorrent – Sending Large Files This tip will show you how to “send” large files using the BitTorrent system. It is not too hard. There is some detail in preparing to send your first torrent file. Subsequent torrents should be easy. An overview of the process is that we first get and configure our free software. Then we create a tracking file. We email the tracking file, and finally, the recipient uses the tracking file with a BitTorrent application to retrieve the target file from our computer. Requirements ·    A BitTorrent client/server application. This tip uses uTorrent, a free Windows application. Macs can use Azureus, a similar application and also free. (Click on the links to download either one.) ·    The ability to download and then run the software mentioned above. ·    The ability to configure your network router’s port forwarding capability, if you have a router. ·    The ability to configure your firewall to allow uTorrent to act as a server to the internet. Configure uTorrent Download/save the uTorrent application. It is small and does not require a setup program. Remember where you saved it if you do not save it to your desktop. The first time you run the program it will ask whether you want to create a Start menu item and a desktop shortcut. Answer yes. It will also ask if you want to make it the default BitTorrent client. Go ahead and answer yes. Next the Network Wizard window will pop-up.