Learn to Use your Computer

Internet Tips : 7 R's BEFORE you forward a letter
READ IT! : Do you, seriously, want your name on a hoax letter? Moreover, some are sent out without being read (Ex. Researcher gets an inquiry and finds out it is a true report just sent out)
REALITY CHECK - If it is a health warning or a virus, you will hear about it on TV or read about it
RESEARCH - 25 yr old petitions are being circulated; Congress passed a bill against tax n email in hopes of stopping inquiries on the bogus chain letter;
REMEMBER - Forwarded emails can not be counted/tracked.
REACHING - for your checkbook may be a reality as higher user fees could result if server/provider has to increase expense by buying more bandwidth.
RETHINK - before you add to a long list of forwards (learn to cut and paste).
REALIZE - that continued sending of chain/hoax letter could raise user fees

HOW TO PROTECT YOUR ADDRESS BOOK; I learned a computer trick today that's really ingenious in it's simplicity. I received it from a friend. As you may know, when/if a worm virus gets into your computer it heads straight for your e-mail address book, and sends itself to everyone in there, thus infecting all your friends and associates. This trick won't keep the virus from getting into your computer, but it will stop it from using your address book to spread further, and it will alert you to the fact, that the worm has gotten into your system.

Here's what you do; first, open your address book and click on "new contact", Just as you would do if you were adding a new friend to your list of e-mail addresses. In the window where you would type your friend's first name, type in AAAAAAA, Also use address AAAAAAA@a.aaa

Now, Here's what you've done and why it works: The name AAAAAAA will be placed at the top of your address book as entry #1. This will be where the worm will start in an effort to send itself to all your friends. But, when it tries to send itself to AAAAAAA, it will be undeliverable because of the phoney e-mail address you entered. If the first attempt fails (which it will because of the phoney address), the worm goes no further and your friends will not be infected.

Here's the second great advantage of this method: If an e-mail cannot be delivered, you will be notified of this in your IN BOX almost immediately. Hence, if you ever get an e-mail telling you that an e-mail addressed to AAAAAAA could not be delivered, you know right away that you have the worm virus in your system. You can then take steps to get rid of it! Pretty slick, huh? If everybody you know does this then you need not ever worry about opening mail from friends. Pass this on to all your friends.

Unless you're a graphics pro, you need to tweak just about every image you slap into your Word 2002 document. And, hoo boy, Word does some frustrating things with images. Fortunately, there's always some hidden way to fix things.
It's always best to work with images in Print Layout view, so choose View—>Print Layout from the menu.
Display the Picture toolbar: Choose View, Toolbars, Picture from the menu.
Select the image by clicking it.
When you click an image to select it, the image grows eight "handles," one for each side and corner.
Resize the image by grabbing (clicking) a handle and dragging it in or out.
Move an image around on the page by dragging it with the mouse. Drag in the center of the image.
If you need an image centered, put the image on a line by itself (a paragraph) and then center that line.
After you're done tweaking your graphic, just click the mouse on some text. This trick deselects the image and returns you to text-editing mode. (You may also want to close the Picture toolbar by clicking its X button.)

Windows Me and XP make it easy to peek inside your graphics files. Instead of displaying a folder full of bland icons, Windows Me and XP transform each icon into a thumbnail-sized preview of the file's contents.
That makes it a lot easier to find the picture of Kitty eating the bamboo leaves after you dump 63 cat pictures into the same folder.
To turn on the previews, open the folder with the pictures, click View from its menu, and choose Thumbnails from the drop-down menu. Windows immediately replaces the icons with previews of your graphics and photos.

The text you associate with links is just as important as the links you choose to use on your site. The text gives users a hint about where the link is taking them so they can decide whether to go along for the ride.
Generally, when you create link text, let users know the following:
Whether they're leaving your site.
What kind of information the page they're linking to contains.
How the linked site relates to the current content or page on your site
The goal of your link text should be to inform users and build their trust. If your link text doesn't give them solid clues about what to expect from your links, they simply won't trust your links -- and won't follow them.
Always avoid the use of "click here" in any link you create. If you link text is well crafted, you don't need the extra words to prompt the user to click on a link. The link text should speak for itself.

Computer accounts are created and deleted often enough and mail addresses change often enough that a large list always contains, at any given moment, some addresses that are no longer valid. If you send a message to the list, your message is forwarded to these invalid addresses, and a return message reporting the bad addresses is generated for each of them. Mailing-list managers (both human and computer) normally try to deflect the error messages so that they go to the list owner, who can do something about them, rather than to you. As often as not, however, a persistently dumb mail system sends one of these failure messages directly to you. Just ignore it because you can't do anything about it.
Sometimes you may get an "I'm away on vacation" message or a "click here if you're not a spammer" message in response to list messages you send. Don't respond to those either since vacation and antispam programs shouldn't be responding to list mail at all, but do forward them to the list manager so he or she can suspend their subscriptions until they get their software under control.

By now, you've no doubt heard some Web guru singing the praises of XML. But what, you wonder, is so special about it? Here are a few key elements:
XML allows you to create your own markup language. Unlike HTML, XML has no predefined set of elements. You can create your own elements based on the specific needs of your Web site, company, or industry.
XML data can be presented in a variety of ways. XML concentrates on describing data, not on the appearance of the data. However, you can display XML documents in a variety of ways. XML's ability to separate data from the presentation instructions allows you to change the way an XML document looks without changing the actual data.
XML enables more efficient information exchange over the Web. XHTML is considered the "next generation" version of HTML and adds many of the advantages of XML to the older HTML language. When browsers eventually support it, the data exchange between a browser and a Web server will be greatly optimized. For example, rather than reloading an entire HTML page, XHTML will enable you to download only the portion of the page that has changed since the last reload.
XML is good for transferring data across platforms. Businesses depend on reliable data interchange within and across companies. However, the age-old challenge in transferring data has been that everyone stores data in a different structure using different software tools. XML provides a reliable, low-cost alternative to expensive data-sharing technologies.

Word has a special Web Tools toolbar that displays several buttons that add features to your Web pages. Three of the buttons on this toolbar let you insert multimedia items on your Web pages:

• Movie: Inserts a video into your Web page.
• Sound: Inserts a background sound that plays whenever the page is viewed.
• Scrolling text: Inserts text that automatically scrolls across the page.

Before you can insert any of these items, you must display the Web Tools toolbar by choosing View, Toolbars, Web Tools.

The Web Tools toolbar also includes a Design Mode button that switches between design and preview mode. When the page is in preview mode, movies, sounds, and scrolling text display as they appear when the page is viewed in a browser. To edit or remove a movie, sound, or scrolling text, click the Design Mode button to place the page in design mode. You can then select and edit the movie, sound, or scrolling text.

Once a week, haul out your vacuum cleaner and tackle the computer. Using the smallest attachment you can find, vacuum the living daylights out of
Your keyboard: Unplug the keyboard. Turn it upside down and shake it. Look for loose keys that might be consumed by the vacuum cleaner. If the keys are all hooked on, vacuum every nook and cranny. Turn the keyboard upside down again and repeat once or twice. Finally, shoot compressed air into all the corners and then vacuum again.
Your monitor: If you have a traditional big monitor, turn it off. All those holes in the case should be vacuumed to get rid of the dust. Bonus points if you can get at the dust inside. No, don't open up the casing. Sheesh. You could get electrocuted. (LCD/flat panel monitors don't need vacuuming.)
The computer itself: Shut down Windows and turn off the power. Then vacuum every single place you can reach. Use your hand to block the largest air intakes so you get maximum suck where you need it most. Finally, stick your finger in the diskette drive, push the little flap back or up (depending on the kind of drive), and vacuum like crazy.
Peripherals: Turn off your printer, scanner, modem, DSL box, UPS, power distribution bar, network hub, external drives, and everything else, and vacuum, vacuum, vacuum.
After you vacuum, pull out a cleaning rag and wipe off the plastic case on your computer, the back of the monitor, printer, the outside of your scanner, the tray on your CD drive, and any other plastic that's literally sitting around gathering dust. Don't use any cleaners. If some gunk is stuck to a piece of hardware, use a little water and rub gently. If it's still stuck, add a bit of soap and rub gently.
If it's still stuck, get a universal solvent like Goo Gone. You aren't supposed to use solvents on plastic cases, but if you're trying to get off tape residue, you don't have much choice. If you use a solvent, make sure you're in a well-ventilated area, and that Aunt Mildred doesn't haul out a cigarette while you're in the middle of cleaning.

If you know that the users of your Web pages containing Excel data will be using Internet Explorer (Version 4.0 or later) to view them, you can make it possible for them to manipulate the data and make modest modifications to the worksheet data when viewing the pages in their Web browser. All you need to do to make this happen is to select the Add Interactivity check box in the Save As dialog box at the time you save the worksheet as a Web page.

The types of manipulations and changes that users can make to the spreadsheet data of an interactive Web page in Internet Explorer depend upon the type of data that the page contains:

• Worksheet data tables: Users can edit the cell entries and have the table's formulas updated either automatically or manually as well as modify the formatting of the cells in the table.

• Data lists: Users can sort and filter the data in the list as well as modify field entries and make formatting changes to the list.

• Pivot tables: Users can pivot the fields in a table as well as add new fields. They can also refresh the table data from the external data source (assuming that this source is accessible from the Web page), show details for any of the summarized data in the table, add calculated fields to the table, and page through the summaries by using different items in the Page Fields.

• Charts: Users can edit supporting data (shown beneath the chart as an attached data table) and have the chart automatically updated on the page.

Figure 1 shows you how a typical interactive data table appears on a new Web page after opening it in Internet Explorer 6. Notice that the interactive table is self-contained with a toolbar at the top, a facsimile of the worksheet row and column header at the top, and vertical and horizontal scroll bars on the right and the bottom. Notice also that this table uses gridlines to demarcate the cells and sports a sheet tab at the bottom, just like a regular Excel workbook window.

Figure 1: Interactive HTML worksheet opened in Internet Explorer.

The Office Web Components add horizontal and vertical scroll bars to the interactive table because you have no way to resize the table. You must use the scroll buttons to bring new parts of the data table into view on the Web page. Likewise, the row and column headers are automatically displayed to give you a way to widen or narrow the columns and heighten or shorten the rows by dragging the appropriate border of a column letter or row number.

Despite the obvious similarities to the Excel worksheet window, you can see some noticeable differences as well. The most significant difference is that the interactive spreadsheet table has no Formula bar or menu bar.

Without a Formula bar, you can't tell which values in the table are calculated by formulas and which are input as constants. Also, the only way to edit a table cell is by double-clicking the cell and then editing the entry there (at which time, you can immediately tell whether it's a value or a formula that you're editing).

Without a menu bar, you must pretty much rely upon the buttons on the toolbar to make changes that affect the entire table. The only other way to access commands that affect the table is by right-clicking one of the table cells to display its shortcut menu. The items on this shortcut menu duplicate the functions of the buttons at the top of the table, with the exception of the Insert and Delete items. These menu items both lead to the Rows and Columns submenu options that enable you to either insert or delete the columns or rows that are currently selected.

To make up for the lack of a menu bar, the toolbar above the interactive worksheet contains a Commands and Options button. When you click this button, a Commands and Options dialog box with four tabs — Format, Formula, Sheet, and Workbook — appears, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Use the controls in this dialog box to make changes to an interactive worksheet table.

These four tabs enable you to make the following types of changes:

• The Format tab contains buttons and boxes for changing the font, size, alignment, border, and cell and text color of any cells that you've selected.

• The Formula tab contains boxes that enable you to see the contents (very helpful when dealing with long formulas) and value of the active cell, along with all the range names defined in the table. You can even use its Define button to define a new range name for the current cell selection.

• The Sheet tab is divided into Find What and Show/Hide sections. To find some text or values in the table, enter the search text in the Find What text box and then click the Find Next button (using the Match Case and Entire Cell Only check boxes if you need to refine the search). Select or deselect the Show/Hide check box options (Row Headers, Column Headers, Gridlines, and Display Right to Left) to control which interior table elements to display or hide.

• The Workbook tab is divided into Calculation, Show/Hide, and Worksheets sections. Use the Manual and Automatic option buttons to switch from automatic recalculation (the default) to manual recalculation (in which case, you click the Calculate button to update table formulas).

Use the Show/Hide check box options (Horizontal Scrollbar, Vertical Scrollbar, Sheet Selector, or Toolbar) to control which overall table elements to display or hide. (Note that you can't remove the scroll bars when the table is too large to show all the data in the table.)

Use the Sheet Name text box to rename the table sheet that's selected in the list box below, the Insert button to insert a new sheet into the table, the Delete button to remove the current sheet, and the Hide button to hide the current sheet in the table.

Use the Order buttons to move the current sheet ahead of (with the button with the upward-pointing arrow) or behind (with the button with the downward-pointing arrow) the other sheets in the table.

Unfortunately, you can't save any of the changes that you make to an interactive Web page in Internet Explorer. The only way to save any formatting or editing changes you make to an interactive data table, data list, or pivot table is to export the page back to Excel as an XML (Extensible Markup Language) file and then save the changes there.

Most, if not all, e-mail clients allow you to use folders to organize your e-mail. In fact, folders are a great boon to keeping your incoming e-mail uncluttered and under control.

Don't confuse e-mail folders with file folders on your disk drive. Conceptually, they're similar to each other only in that each allows you to organize information. While some e-mail clients may use file folders to store your e-mail, many do not. The folders are maintained within the client as a logical structure, with no relation to file folders on the hard drive.

Rather than leaving all your e-mail in your inbox, give some thought to how you can organize it using folders. For instance, you could have a folder for your work-related e-mail or a folder for each project you're working on. You could also create folders for family e-mail, hobbies, and other categories.

You can configure most (if not all) e-mail clients to display available folders onscreen. The folders in Outlook are part of the Navigation pane. When displayed, the pane is at the left side of the program window.

The Navigation pane (or its equivalent) is helpful when working with folders. You can easily drag messages from one folder and drop them in another or move entire folders. To create an e-mail folder, simply right-click an existing folder and choose New Folder. Name the folder and start using it to store messages.