Computer and Web Articles

Three great downloads for the week:

1. Zoom — With ZoomIt, you can use an assigned keyboard hotkey to quickly zoom to any portion of your screen. ZoomIt is a free download and a great tool for anyone who’s ever wished they could view the contents of their monitor in more detail. Learn more at http://tinyurl.com/2xv7eu.
2. Recover — The Asterisk Revealer download for Firefox lets you reveal the contents of ANY password field (you know, those fields where the text is hidden by a string of asterisks). My guess is that at some point in your online ventures you’ve stared at a line of asterisks on your screen wishing you could see through them, not remembering the password you chose … If my guess is right, download this tool and keep it around; it’ll likely come in handy for you in the future. Learn more at http://tinyurl.com/2mtxyf.
3. Resize — Ever run into a pop up window on the web that was too small? Did you try to resize it … but found it was too stubborn and wouldn’t budge? If so, the free Windows download, ResizeEnable, is the tool for you. It’s way tougher than those “no-we-won’t-let-you-resize-us” windows but just sits quietly in your system tray until you need it. Learn more at http://tinyurl.com/378gpa.

The easiest method of inserting today’s date in an Excel cell is to simply hold down the Ctrl key and … press the semicolon key. That’s it. It works, I promise! Try it out.

There’s a great shortcut for entering the current time as well - hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys, and then press the colon key. Ta-da!

Remember that hitting the Alt + Enter key combination while typing inside a cell forces a line break.

The next time you want to select ALL your Excel sheets at once, click on the tab of the first one, hold down the Shift key, then click on the tab of the last one.

You can always sort your data by columns by selecting Sort from the Data menu, then Options. Select that Sort left to right option button, then click OK - and in the Sort by option dialog box, just select the row number by which the columns should be sorted. Click OK one more time and you’re good to go.

• At just about any point in time, hitting the Explorer (Start) key + D will minimize all open windows on your screen and instantly take you to your desktop.
• To increase your font size in Microsoft Vista, right-click your desktop, select Personalize, select Adjust font size (DPI) in the left pane, hit Continue when the warning pops up, choose “Larger scale (120 DPI)”. Then click OK.
• Use your End key! See it, over there by the Home key, pretty close to the Delete key on your keyboard? In Microsoft Word, hitting this key will whisk your cursor to the end of the text row you’re editing. When browsing the web, hitting this key will shoot you right to the very bottom of the web page you’re viewing. (For all you smarty-pants out there, I’m guessing you’ve already figured out that the Home key does the exact opposite of the End key … am I right?)
• In PowerPoint, hitting Alt + Shift + D inserts the current date into your slideshow (D for Date …). Hitting Alt + Shift + T inserts the current time into your slideshow (T for time …).
• In Word, Ctrl + M indents your cursor by a half inch. Alternatively, Ctrl + Shift + M removes a half inch of indent.
• While reading an email, if you decide you’d like to print it, hit Ctrl + P. Easy.

If you’re still using LimeWire or BearShare to share and download files, stop. Right now. Those programs involve spyware and loads of other junk that are guaranteed to slow down your computer.

Try using Gnucleus instead. It’s free, it’s spyware free, yet it’s still powerful and easy to use. See for yourself: http://tinyurl.com/yvv3vp.

You know those toolbars stacked up on top of each other at the top of your screen when you’re editing your Word documents? You know — those toolbars filled with all the little icons and buttons that you’ve *never* used? Big news — those toolbars don’t need to be there!

If you have unused toolbars in Word, why not turn them off? They’re just taking up space — and the more space those toolbars take up, the less space you’ve got for viewing your actual documents.

To turn off a toolbar, first right-click on it. Anywhere on it. Then left-click any toolbar with a checkmark next to it. Presto-Change-o, it disappears from the screen. Play around with these settings and don’t worry about messing up or deleting toolbars.

To make a toolbar show up again, just left click on the toolbar name in the same list that shows up when you right-click on a toolbar.

In Microsoft Word, clicking a web link (eg: www.hello.com) doesn’t do anything at all. This is because Word doesn’t know whether you want to visit the site or edit the text.

Sooooo, next time try holding down the Ctrl button on your keyboard before clicking a link; this tells Word that you really do want to visit the website address you’re clicking on. Works like a charm.

Windows Vista allows you to have up to three clocks (displaying times from three different time zones) configured on your desktop.

Simply go to the Date and Time section in the Control Panel.

Flip to the Additional Clocks tab and configure your two extra clocks to whatever time zones you’d like.

Where do they appear, you ask? They’ll appear in the tooltip whenever you hover your mouse over the Taskbar clock.

Question: “Hi Erin, I use Word a lot to write letters and reports at my work. I see that when I look at my recently used documents list in word, it shows me the last four files I worked on. Can I increase this number or am I stuck with four?”

Answer: You can definitely increase this — but only up to nine. To change the number of previous documents that Word shows you when you look at the Recent Documents list, go to Tools, then Options, click the General tab and locate the option that reads “Recently used files list.” Hit the up arrow to increase the number to nine.

And that’s it!

When you type a number at the beginning of a new line in Word, the program usually assumes you’re creating a numbered list. Some people love this feature, others loathe it.

If you fall into the latter group, you can turn this feature off completely by going to Tools, then AutoCorrect Options, then the AutoFormat As You Type tab.

Are you there? OK. See that checkbox next to “Automatic numbered lists”? It’s checked, isn’t it? Uncheck it and click OK. Easy; you’re done.

The next time you wish to create a numbered list, simply click the numbering icon (it has the numbers 1, 2 and 3 next to three horizontal lines). Alternatively, you can click Format, then Numbering if you prefer to use the menu options across the top of the program.