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Computers are extremely useful... but also extremely frustrating! So often, you cannot logically figure out how to do something; instead, there is some arbitrary piece of information you need to already know. Or there are particular buttons you need to click in a particular order, otherwise, you get nowhere. Or you can't remember how to do something, because it's been a while since you did it last. Or… bad things happen, constantly, out of the blue, and you can't figure out how to fix them! This manual is an effort to fill in all those gaps. Topics – over 600 – are arranged alphabetically. Step-by-step procedures are given, with the assumption that the reader is coming to the problem with only average computer experience. Available from Amazon.com |
114 ADDITIONAL TIPS
Below are things I’ve learned since I published the book. All kinds of factors vary, and nothing is guaranteed, but I’m sure you’ll find some very helpful information here. Scroll down all the way as far as you need to. Topics are in alphabetical order.
This page will be static after the end of 2015. –– MJ
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Accent over the e (é )
Aggravation – General Perspective Automatic Capitalization Automatic Function – Undoing the Change Backing Up – Not Leaving Actual Files on the Desktop Browser vs Search Engine Bulleted Lists – Automatic Calculator – Converting Units Function Capitalization of File Names Closing a Site When No “X” Shows Computer Freezing Computer Tune-Up – Things To Do Afterwards Copy – Keeping a File in Two Different Folders – Don’t Ctrl+P Won’t Work Desktop Organization – Migrating Icons Disk Erasing – DVD–RW or CD—RW Disk-Ripping to Computer Display Format of Files in Folders Document – Finding What Folder You Are Currently In Documents – Previous Version Dropbox – Sharing Files DVD Copying to Computer E-Mail – Automatic Signature E-Mail – Disappears E-Mail – Multiple Excel – Microsoft Excel External DVD Player Favorites – Need More Room on Toolbar Favorites – Toolbar Doesn’t Show File – Old File Date Still Showing File Location from Shortcuts Find / Replace Function – Matching Case Mode Left On Finding Document Location While in That Document Flash Drive – “Shortcut” Backup Caution Flash Drive Life Flash Drive Sensitivity Formatting – Removing Full Screen Gadget Sidebar – Disappeared Gadgets – Desktop Gadgets – Stock Market and the Free Stuff Trap Gadgets – Windows 8 Gadgets for Windows 8 – Clock Geek Squad People Grammar Function Hibernate vs Sleep Highlighting vs Shading Homepage – Setting Horizontal Line – Getting Rid Of Icon Missing Internet – Gone When Switched Computers Internet Not Working iTunes iTunes Search Technique Kindle – Note-Taking / Highlighting Line Spacing |
Link – Making a Link from a Word Doc to a Website
Link – Making a Link in an Email to a Website Maps Margin Stuck at Very Top Margins Not Low Enough at Bottom of Page Movie Review Websites Moving vs Copying – Warning Music – Downloading from Amazon Music – Lyrics of Songs Numbering – Automatic Indent Online Shopping – Credit Card Number Opening a Program – Delay Outdoor Computer Use Page Number – Lower Position Paper-Feeding – Photo Paper Password Tips Passwords – Squiggly, Unreadable Password PDF Conversion Phone Numbers Picture – Won’t Paste In Picture Cropping in Paint Program Picture Cropping in Windows Photo Gallery Picture Deleting Picture Flip (Left-Right) Picture Options Picture Straightening in Windows 7 Pictures – Changing Picture File Type Pointer – More Visible Previous Version of a File Printer Not Working Printing – Big Two-Sided Jobs with Multiple Sets Programs – Downloading or Buying the Software Disk? Programs – Downloading vs Buying Physical Disk Pronunciation Website Read Only Red Corrections (“Track Changes”) Red Shading Disappears Religion Study Restarting Computer – Frequent Fix Run or Save? Scams – Avoiding Search Engine – Getting Your Old One Back Shading a Hard Space Shopping Online Snipping Tool Spellcheck Ignore Spelling and Grammar Check – On/Off Start Search Box Index Updating Toolbars for Internet – Unwanted TV Viewing of Computer Screen Weatherbug – Suddenly Not Working Wifi Connection Away from Home Windows – Side-by-Side Windows 10 Windows 8 – Flying-In Icons (“Charms”) Windows Official Manual – Ugh Word / Character Count Word Replacing |
ACCENT OVER THE E (é) – To get that accent, I find an easier way than going through Insert > Symbol > select é, is to type in “café”, which automatically puts in the accent, and then just delete the first three letters.
AGGRAVATION – GENERAL PERSPECTIVE – Happened to get into a conversation with a dedicated computer guy (my age, over 60) who has been involved, professionally, in the computer world for years, at a very high level, and he said a friend of his is on the very cutting edge of computer stuff, and that this guy is frequently enthused about new developments, and that whenever he tries this guy’s stuff… it hardly ever works right! That really confirmed my conviction that computer problems have far less to do with my – and normal people’s – intelligence or lack thereof, than to do with the very nature of the beast: the stuff is technically very complex and things tend to go wrong practically all the time! Also, another smart guy told me that the computer world is interested in challenging projects, and new things, and is not focused on making things user friendly. As I wrote in the book, Microsoft is interested in appearing user-friendly, not in actually being user-friendly.
AUTOMATIC CAPITALIZATION – If you want get rid of automatic caps: Review tab > Spelling & Grammar > Options at lower left [Windows 8 route: File > Options > Proofing] > AutoCorrect Options at upper right > AutoCorrect tab at upper left > Uncheck “Capitalize first letter of sentences” > OK > OK. Now you’ll get caps when you type caps and lower case when you type lower case.
AUTOMATIC FUNCTION – UNDOING THE CHANGE – Most automatic functions that you have set, can be undone by Ctrl+Z for the thing you just typed. For example, the letter “I” typed by itself automatically changes from small i to capitalized I. If you want to keep a small i by itself, do an immediate Ctrl+Z.
BACKING UP – NOT LEAVING ACTUAL FILES ON THE DESKTOP – If you like to keep certain documents or folders on the desktop, fine, BUT, what you should do is: DON’T keep the documents or folders themselves on the desktop but only their shortcuts. Otherwise, when you go to back up your My Documents folder, you will miss backing up those files located on the desktop, because those files were no longer actually in the My Documents folder. With those file shortcuts only on the desktop, you can access them equally easily, yet will not accidentally leave the actual files out of a backup operation. Also, when shortcuts are included in your backup to an external device, it may be only the shortcut and not the actual file itself being copied! I still don’t know when it is and when it isn’t; I just try to deal with actual files, not shortcuts, in any backing-up procedure.
BROWSER vs SEARCH ENGINE – Pretty confusing, but it’s roughly this: A browser enables you to interact with the internet. A search engine searches for sites related to info you put into its search box. A browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, etc.) is for accessing the internet. A search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) is for searching the internet for specific websites.
BULLETED LISTS – AUTOMATIC – If you put in a dash (two hyphens in a row) and it automatically changes it to a heavy black bullet, to get rid of that and retain just the dash, click on the dropdown arrow that shows up just to the left of the bullet, and select “Stop automatically creating bulleted lists.” Or, do an immediate Ctrl+Z and that brings back the dash.
CALCULATOR – CONVERTING UNITS FUNCTION – Start > All Programs > Calculator (or type “Calculator” into Start search box) > click on Calculator > View > Unit Conversion (expands window) > select type of unit (like “temperature”) > select “from” and “to” > put in first value, and the converted value shows up below. Then, to get calculator back to its original unexpanded size, click on View and then “Basic.”
CAPITALIZATION OF FILE NAMES – Sometimes when you try to change a document or folder name into all caps, or from all caps, it keeps reverting back to the case it was in. But, if you close out the folder, then open it again, then the order takes effect and you get what you wanted. A delayed action.
CLOSING A SITE WHEN NO “X” SHOWS – If a devious site won’t LET you close it out because it doesn’t give you the X at upper right, Ctrl+F4 should close it. Or, you can right-click the taskbar > Start Task Manager > Applications tab > click on the site in the list given > End Task. Other times, the X appears only when you hover your pointer over the far upper right corner.
COMPUTER FREEZING – The usual fix is to close and restart your computer. I find that when I try to open up 2 or 3 programs too quickly, one right after the other, that often leads to a freeze or some other malfunction.
COMPUTER TUNE-UP – THINGS TO DO AFTERWARDS – It’s good to get your computer cleaned out once a year. However, when you get it back (from Best Buy or wherever), you may have to adjust things back to the way you had them. 1) Desktop icon arrangement (note that they may have put all of your desktop items into one folder called “Desktop Items”) 2) You may need to re-connect your router. I don’t know. I’d ask store geek about this. 3) Your email as homepage (Tools > Internet Options > General tab > Homepage > Enter your email URL address) 4) Your Favorites bar back up (right-click an empty spot at the top, and check the tool bars you want showing. 5) Your desktop gadgets back up 6) Passwords you had set for automatic, you may have to re-enter (Tools > Internet Options > Advanced tab > Reset > Reset again, and then restart the computer) and check “Keep me signed in” box, if that shows up, to get them automatic again. 7) Taskbar size. I had to right-click the taskbar at bottom > Properties > check “Small icons” which makes the taskbar a bit thinner, the way I had it before and the way I like it. ––– Note that when you bring your computer in for a tune-up/cleanout, you should plan for those few days to be without your normal computer: Make sure you have your files all backed up, and make a copy of your key documents onto a flash drive so you can work on them on another computer while yours is in the shop. Note that when they tell you how many viruses/malware they cleaned out, don’t get bent out of shape. They told me 40. I said, “Whoa!” But they dismissed my concerns, saying that they get many with 700 viruses/malware.
COPY – KEEPING A FILE IN TWO DIFFERENT FOLDERS – DON’T – If you want a copy of a document in two places – because you often forget just where you have it stored – the way to avoid confusion, is to not make a copy, but make a shortcut (right-click > “Create shortcut”) and move that shortcut to the other folder. That way you keep the original in its original folder, yet can access it from the other logical folder you happen to remember more easily at the time. YET, you are dealing with the SAME document each time; you’re not adding different things to two documents at different times and getting yourself into a mess.
CTRL+P WON’T WORK – After 16 years of using Ctrl+P to print a document, suddenly Ctrl+P wouldn’t work for me. Turns out I had accidentally pressed the “Num Lk” key at upper right, which makes a bunch of the letter keys turn into numbers instead, so that when I was pressing Ctrl+P, it was actually Ctrl+*. I just pressed the Num Lk key again and things were back to normal.
DESKTOP ORGANIZATION – MIGRATING ICONS – Lately my icons completely re-arranged themselves on their own, several times. Seems after I re-started the computer, it was OK. But, I’m tired of having to re-position them all to where I like them. Newest solution for me: I put the 50 or so icons into 15 or so folders, according to broad topics. Now if they migrate, it will be easy to put those folders back where I like them, because there are less of them.
DISK ERASING – DVD–RW or CD—RW – Usually: Double-click Computer > click on the disk Drive E > click Erase this Disc at top. But, oddly, sometimes that option does not appear at top. So, I found what to do is: Scroll down your panel of items at left, go to Computer and Disc E. Click on Disc E and the very same window comes up as clicking on Computer twice, but this time “Erase this disc” option IS there.
DISK-RIPPING TO COMPUTER – Open Windows Media Player > put disk in > click “Rip” tab at top (middle left). Tracks should land in your Music folder, under a folder titled the current date. Key thing is that that “Rip” tab does not show UNTIL you put the disk in. Note that you can’t use Windows Media Player to rip material from a DVD. To rip a DVD: Insert it > close it if it starts to play automatically > double-click Computer > right-click Drive E (your disk bay) > click Copy (note that nothing happens yet) > click onto a target (like the Desktop) > then do a Ctrl+V, at which point it starts to get ripped onto your computer.
DISPLAY FORMAT OF FILES IN FOLDERS – When in a folder, click View at top to show options for having your items in that folder displayed. I like “List” because it takes up the least room. The “Details” one is also good, because it shows dates modified.
DOCUMENT – FINDING WHAT FOLDER YOU ARE CURRENTLY IN – When you’re in a folder window, it shows you the progression of locations at top, but once you’re in a document, you no longer can see what folder you’re in. But one often wants to remember which folder it’s in, for future reference. To see the folder your current document is in: For Windows 7, click File at upper left, and over at the lower right, click “Open File Location”. ––– For Vista, to find where you are when you are already in a document: Click the colored “Office Button” icon at the very far upper left > Prepare > Properties > at the top is a yellow bar showing your location.
DOCUMENTS – PREVIOUS VERSION – Once you’ve changed or even deleted a document out of your Recycle Bin, sometimes you can retrieve a previous version if you realize you need it. But, I have no idea why it works sometimes and other times not. Right click the current document version you realize you do not want > Restore Previous Versions (if that option shows up… it may not) > it searches > if finds any previous versions > highlight the one you want (it shows dates) > Copy. (Changing the name of the doc back to its original name might help. It did, once, for me.)
DROPBOX – SHARING FILES – I don’t have much experience with this program but I found it very useful a couple of times. Basically it enables you to share larger files, like whole videos, through email. It’s relatively simple. You sign up for a Dropbox account (it’s free), you move a big file into your “dropbox” and include the email address of the recipient. The recipient gets an email with a link that the recipient just needs to click on to view the video. ––– To share a video: Sign in to your account on Dropbox.com > click Upload to upload your video or click Add a File, OK > that should land it into your Dropbox folder. Open dropbox folder > click on desired file > move pointer to right to get a “Share” option open > click on Share > that opens another dialogue box, in which it shows the URL of your video > enter the recipient’s email into the box just below (“Send this link to”) > OK. Then the receiver can watch it (or download it). ––– That’s it. But be wary of what you click and where you put things. Dropbox is a great free program, but like most programs, they try to get you to buy their more advanced versions that cost money, or it seems to me – this has happened to me several times – they try to get their toolbar installed as your default toolbar, which kind of works like free advertising for them. I don’t know. Basically watch what you are clicking, but otherwise, it’s very useful.
DVD COPYING TO COMPUTER – This is what worked for me. Good luck. Put the disk in, turn it off after it starts to play, then, under Computer, right-click the icon for the DVD (Drive E), and then click Copy. But, note that after you click Copy, it doesn’t do anything yet! You go to your Libraries > Videos folder, and do a CTRL+V there, THEN it starts to copy, showing a green progress bar. It ends up in your Videos folder, inside a folder called “DVD Video Recording”. You have to search around inside that folder to find the actual material; there are other files associated with it; the largest file would be the actual material (“Video_TS” or “VTS_01_1″). And, you may not be able to find that “DVD Video Recording” folder in the first place until you close and then re-open your Videos folder; then it suddenly appears there. (I’m pretty sure they deliberately make it hard to copy videos, to minimize piracy. But here I’m talking about personal video material, not commercial movies. Although there’s all kinds of gray areas. I typically do stuff like record an episode of Seinfeld onto a DVD and want to transfer it to my computer.)
E-MAIL – AUTOMATIC SIGNATURE – You can have all your email that you send out, end with your signature (or website, or whatever you want) automatically. This may vary among email programs, but for me: Gear icon at upper right > Settings > Writing Email (not Accounts) > at bottom of that page is another link to a different “Accounts” [“Note: to edit your signature, go to accounts”] > click on that and it’s there, to change and save.
E-MAIL – DISAPPEARS – Don’t know if anyone experiences this but me. In clicking on an email to open it, if I accidentally double-click it, it simply disappears. Yikes! Lost forever? Turns out, for me, double-clicking sends an email to the bottom of my Spam folder, where I can find it and send it back to my Inbox.
E-MAIL – MULTIPLE – Varies with the program. With me, I think it’s: Go to your Contacts list, check the desired ones, and click some option somewhere that says something like “Send an email to your selected contacts.”
EXCEL – MICROSOFT EXCEL – If you do a lot of tables, stats, record-keeping… like if you run a business, MS Excel is a very useful program. As you enter data, it will do many operations automatically for you. But, for the average person, I think just using the Insert > Table feature of MS office and manually entering data works fine.
EXTERNAL DVD PLAYER – The disk bay on my laptop went bad. Had to buy an external DVD player to play disks on my laptop. You just connect it with its USB wire to a USB port. Only costs about $40. But, it does not record DVDs like the original bay did. To get one that records DVDs also, I think it’s more in the $100 range. I believe the trend is for laptops to no longer include a disk player (to make laptops thinner and cheaper); so external players may be the norm now.
FAVORITES – NEED MORE ROOM ON TOOLBAR – If you have a lot of favorite sites up on your internet Favorites toolbar, you might start running out of room and those at the end of your list won’t show unless you click the double angle brackets at the end. To get more room, right-click, not an empty spot on the toolbar, but right on any of your favorites tabs. That brings up an option list including “Customized title widths.” Click choice of long titles, short titles, or icons only. That way you can fit more on the Favorites toolbar.
FAVORITES – TOOLBAR DOESN’T SHOW – Note that when you have a website up in a reduced-size window, the favorites bar at top doesn’t show. Maximize the window and then it shows.
FILE – OLD FILE DATE STILL SHOWING – I noticed, when backing up on a flash drive, that when I replace an old file with the updated one of the same name, the date of the file sometimes shows as the old date rather than the new one, even though it IS the new file! Can be very disturbing to see the old date, because you think, oh no, my latest version didn’t get backed up! BUT, when you close the flash drive and open it up again, the new date then shows correctly. Sometimes, due to some odd combination of operations, the proper date shows only on a delayed basis!
FILE LOCATION FROM SHORTCUTS – Very useful feature. Right-clicking a shortcut on the desktop and clicking “Open file location” finds the location of the file in its folder and not of the location of the shortcut on the desktop, which you already know and is useless info.
FIND / REPLACE FUNCTION – MATCHING CASE MODE LEFT ON – If you use the “Find” or “Find and Replace” function and specify matching case, DO NOT FORGET to undo that matching case checkbox, or it will stay in matching case mode for the next time and will not find or replace non-matching words! Can be a major disaster, like editing out foul language and inadvertently leaving a lot of it in, because caps did not match.
FINDING DOCUMENT LOCATION WHILE IN THAT DOCUMENT – For Windows 7, click File at far upper left, then “Open File Location” at lower right. ––– For Windows Vista, click the big colored “Office Button” at far upper left > Prepare > Properties (shows locations at top bar). Or, click the Vista “Office Button” > Save As > in the panel at left, the folder the document is in will be highlighted slightly. Then, once you see which folder the document is in, you can simply return to the document by clicking “Cancel” at lower right, canceling the “Save As” action.
FLASH DRIVE – “SHORTCUT” BACKUP CAUTION – If you back up a shortcut onto a flash drive, you’ve only backed up the shortcut, not the file itself. It may seem you have the file itself there because if you put the flash drive into your own computer, it will open up to the actual file; but, that is only because you are using your own computer. If you use the flash drive in some other computer, you do not have the file, only the useless shortcut. Now, I am not sure at all about what I just wrote, but that’s what seemed to be the case when I experimented. Yet other times backing up a shortcut onto a flash drive did back up the actual file also. So I don’t know. Whatever is the case, double check to make sure you did back up the actual file.
FLASH DRIVE LIFE – Recently heard someone talk about his flash drives suddenly expiring. Did a little research on the internet. Seems flash drives will last maybe 10 years before dying. They last longer than hard drives. And they can be erased thousands of times with no negative effect. Outside of physical abuse, I find flash drives to be very stable and dependable. Biggest danger is probably simply losing them, because of their small size.
FLASH DRIVE SENSITIVITY – Instructor of a computer course told us not to remove a flash drive while it is in a transferring process. Not only will that info not get transferred properly, but the material already on the flash drive could get ruined! Need to cancel the transferring process if you want to pull the flash drive out, or, wait till the transfer finishes. ––– He also said that there is an industry trend to get rid of the standard hard drive in computers (with the spinning disk and the reading beam) and replace it with a flash drive type device, which is not as sensitive to bumps and jolts. Dropping a traditional laptop onto the floor will damage the hard drive, but dropping a flash drive rarely causes damage. ––– At Walmart recently, I noticed they sell 64 GB flash drives for $40. So I’m thinking eventually I’ll buy a couple, rather than another external hard drive. As an external storage device, it takes up less space, and is not as sensitive to damage.
FORMATTING – REMOVING – Block the section > press CTRL and the space bar. Or, block the section > Home tab > Font box > click eraser icon at upper right of box.
FULL SCREEN – Press F11. Toggles back and forth. (Remember, that’s for when you are on the internet, not for Word documents.)
GADGET SIDEBAR – DISAPPEARED – Had a tune-up done for my old computer. When I got it back, the gadgets were gone from the desktop. I put “gadgets” into the Start search bar. Nothing, except documents. I put “sidebar” in; then it showed “Windows Sidebar.” I clicked on that and the gadgets came back onto my desktop.
GADGETS – DESKTOP – My "Weatherbug" gadget deteriorated, then simply stopped working. Googled "weatherbug” and downloaded it. Different setup, but, it has the same info, and I'll be used to it in no time. "Hourly" and other options are at top. Also, I googled "clock desktop gadget" and downloaded a clock (had been missing the physical clock one for months).
GADGETS – STOCK MARKET and the FREE STUFF TRAP– My stock market gadget stopped working fully. Microsoft says they are no longer supporting their gadgets (they want to transition to Windows 8 procedures instead). I checked with a Geek Squad guy and asked him if there is any way, now, to simply get a stock market gadget by itself WITHOUT all the stuff they bundle in with it (all kinds of programs automatically included, and a default toolbar of theirs that takes over your computer, etc., etc). He said no, there isn’t. And he rolled his eyes when I mentioned how it seems to me that when you try to download something free, all these companies install THEIR toolbars on your computer, to take over your computer operations. He said, “Yeah, we know all about that,” implying that that is absolutely what they do, and they hate it also. ––– I had spent a lot of time much time searching unsuccessfully for a simple stock market gadget, like the one I had with MS before it ceased working fully. So this Geek Squad guy confirmed for me that any such item is no longer available out there, and that virtually all the free stuff out there is designed to trap you into buying other stuff. I’ll just have to do another click or two each time, to get to a financial website and see the current Dow Jones average there, instead of more easily on a desktop gadget. ––– Again, for another item I tried to download free, I had to spend half an hour getting rid of their intrusive extra stuff. They had more than one program bundled in with that program and each one had a different name that I had to research to establish which one it was, so I could go ahead and uninstall it! At this point, I’ve decided to virtually never download free stuff; it’s far more hassle than it’s worth. ––– Solution: Here’s a good solution, instead of a gadget: I googled “DJIA” > it immediately shows the current average, with a graph that can be viewed for daily, monthly, yearly, etc. periods > I clicked on the yellow star at the left of my Favorites bar to put that site onto my Favorites bar (the icon is a blue g, called “DJIA – Google Search”) > once the icon was in the list, I dragged and dropped it onto my desktop, thus making a shortcut there. Now I just need to click on that icon to get the current number, along with the graphs. Works just like a gadget.
GADGETS – WINDOWS 8 – If I use the swipe-in search at right, and enter Gadgets, the top one gives 3 pages of gadgets, including clock, calendar, stocks, weather. Or, Start > Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization > Desktop Gadgets > right-click > Add.
GADGETS FOR WINDOWS 8 – CLOCK – Had to go all over the place to finally, finally, get what I want – a simple desktop clock. (Time is given at the lower right of your taskbar at bottom, but I like a visual clock on my desktop.) According to one site, to enable Windows 8 gadgets, you have to run third party software, called “8GadgetPack”. So I clicked on that link, downloaded it (took two full minutes), installed it. It put stuff up on a sidebar at right immediately, including exactly the simple clock I always liked, plus other gadgets below it. Dragged the clock out onto the desktop, right-clicked the sidebar and clicked “Close Sidebar.” Voila, finally have my clock. Other sites warn that downloading gadgets can be risky, with malware. And, going thru Windows 8 directly in my computer got me nowhere, despite some sites telling you how (just led to complex garbage, as other commenters angrily noted.)
GEEK SQUAD PEOPLE – Was talking to a couple of Geek Squad guys at Best Buy. They have to do thru rigorous courses and training to get – and to keep – their jobs. Confirms my experience that Geek Squad help is pretty solid.
GRAMMAR FUNCTION – At this point I favor keeping the grammar function on. It is helpful. For example, I noticed a word at the end of a sentence was underlined in green, yet I knew it was spelled correctly. Turns out that sentence was in the form of a question, and therefore needed a question mark at the end. I had a period. I put the question mark in, and the green underlining disappeared. So I do find the grammar function helpful. File at upper left > Options > Proofing > “Check grammar with spelling” > OK. Of course, right now, for who knows what reason, the grammar function is not working for me. Hate the computer world. Things constantly work intermittently! ––– Hah, just figured out one key factor: You have to start the next sentence before a grammar error gets underlined in the previous sentence! Note also that the grammar correction function is helpful but not consistent. Like, right now, I can type in “We is going to the store” and the singular/plural verb error is not underlined. Hah, wait a minute. I went File > Options > Proofing > (lower down) Writing Styles: Settings > Grammar > check Subject-verb agreement > OK. Now it works; the incorrect verb is underlined. I had had that box unchecked. (Or a cyberspace ghost unchecked it. I know I myself never did.)
HIBERNATE vs SLEEP – Not sure, but I think the key difference is that Hibernate automatically saves your work, whereas Sleep doesn’t (if you forget to manually save it). And then Hibernate takes a bit longer to get the computer going again compared to Sleep. I personally prefer Sleep to Hibernate, simply because I like the computer to be ready to use in two seconds, rather than the 10-15 seconds boot-up time for Hibernate. A key factor for me is that no one else uses my computer, so I don’t have to worry about losing unsaved material because of other people. But if you have other people using your computer, you may be better served using Hibernate, so that you get the automatic saving. ––– I read that a laptop unplugged uses only 2% of its battery power per hour, when in Sleep mode. So that means maybe after 2 days the battery will run out. I frequently plug in my laptop every day, so it rarely runs out, and even if it does, so what. I just plug it in and it’s up and running instantly.
HIGHLIGHTING vs SHADING – When you shade a text, with the paint can icon in the Paragraph box, you can press the F4 key at top to repeat that action. But, the F4 repeat function does not operate to repeat a text highlighting action (the crayon icon in the Font box); for that, you have to do it again. The F4 key does not work for the crayon icon.
HOMEPAGE – SETTING – When I got a new computer, I wanted Yahoo.com as my homepage, so that I always open up the internet directly to my email on Yahoo.com. Procedure: Internet Explorer > Tools dropdown arrow at upper right > Internet Options > in the Home Page box type in http://mail.yahoo.com > then go right to the bottom and click Apply and OK. If you want a different home page, get on the home page you want, copy its URL address in the upper left box, and then go thru the above procedure, and paste the address into the Home Page box, click Apply and OK.
HORIZONTAL LINE – GETTING RID OF – If you accidentally get a horizontal line that you can’t delete (it keeps moving along or ahead of the text you type), it’s probably a border line you need to delete: Home tab > Paragraph box > Borders dropdown arrow > at very bottom is “Borders and Shading, click that > select None > OK.
ICON MISSING – Every so often you simply cannot find the correct icon to click on because the icon only shows up if you hover your pointer over a particular spot. So, you might want to hover your pointer over the edges and corners of your screen and the desired icon may pop up to click on.
INTERNET – GONE WHEN SWITCHED COMPUTERS – Couldn’t get the internet, or my wireless connection to my printer, when I connected my old computer. Long story short, when you switch computers, sometimes settings get automatically changed and you have to reset your settings. In my case the computer had gotten set back to USB (wire) connection, instead of the Network Connection (wireless, router). [Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center > Connect or Disconnect.] I also had to re-install my printer program.
INTERNET NOT WORKING – You get the dreaded “This page cannot be displayed” message. The three most common fixes for me: 1) Making sure my wireless connection button at front of my computer is in the ON position. 2) Turning off my modem and router for 10 seconds and then back on. 3) Just waiting; sometimes it is the internet provider that is down temporarily, and it has nothing to do with your computer or setup.
iTUNES – There seems no end to iTunes complications for me, since I am fussy with my music. I won’t go thru all the stuff, especially because procedures seems to change every year. I just keep at it until I get what I need, cursing all the way. One good thing I will mention is that if you misplace or lose a song you’ve bought, if you try to buy it again, iTunes will inform you that you already bought it and will offer you an immediate free re-download.
iTUNES SEARCH TECHNIQUE – Because it's often tricky and difficult to ascertain the latest album by an artist in the iTunes program, I find it's very helpful to FIRST go to Wikipedia for the artist, because they always list all the artist's albums chronologically. So you can see the latest album there, and then go on to iTunes and find it under the name of the album.
KINDLE – NOTE-TAKING / HIGHLIGHTING – Excellent change in my intellectual life procedures: I used to read a book, take written notes on key points, then type them into my computer, for future reference before interviewing or debating a particular author. Now, with Kindle, it’s much easier. I highlight the key passages, which puts them into My Clippings. I attach my Kindle to my computer and transfer (block, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V) those passages. Thus, I have maybe 2 or 3 pages of key notes easily accessible from my computer. No need to write out or type notes on passages, and, no need to have a physical book taking up space in my apartment.
LINE SPACING – I generally like a line space between paragraphs, but not a full line space, so I go: Block the text > Paragraph box at top > Line and Paragraph Spacing dropdown arrow > Line Spacing Options > Spacing, Before 0 pt, After 6 pt > Line Spacing: Single > OK. (And, “don’t add space between paragraphs” box unchecked.)
LINK – MAKING A LINK FROM A WORD DOC TO A WEBSITE – Highlight the source word or phrase > right-click on the highlighted section and select “Hyperlink” from the dropdown menu > copy the URL address of the website, and paste it into the address box at the bottom of the window that opened up > click the OK button at lower right (the source word or phrase turns blue, indicating an internet link has been created. To use the link, press the Ctrl key and click on the source word.
LINK – MAKING A LINK IN AN EMAIL TO A WEBSITE – Actually pretty simple: Make a copy of the website’s (or YouTube video’s) complete URL address at upper left (highlight it and Ctrl+C to put it onto your clipboard, unseen), then paste it (Ctrl+V) into the desired spot in your email text. The web page address now appears as an active clickable link that your recipient can just click on to visit that site. ––– Another way is to make a copy of the URL > open Compose > click Link icon at bottom > paste in URL into “Edit Link” box > OK > send email.
MAPS – I used to use Yahoo maps but suddenly they are not there anymore. I now google “Google Maps” and I find it’s quite good.
MARGIN STUCK AT VERY TOP – There may be other situations, but I recently found that if I see that the side margins are as ordered but the top and bottom ones are stuck right at the top and bottom, the explanation is that I accidentally clicked the “hide white space” option. If you hover your cursor directly over the top or bottom edge of the page, a double arrow shows. Double-click on that to either hide or show white space between pages and the white space of the margins. If the top margin for example seems stuck at the very top, it really is not; it’s just that your “hide white space” viewing option is ON. Double-click that two-arrow icon that pops up and that will put things back to normal, with top and bottom margins showing properly at their chosen setting.
MARGINS NOT LOW ENOUGH AT BOTTOM OF PAGE – Usually it’s because, even though you’ve set the margin low, your Widow/Orphan control box is checked (this feature prevents single lines at the beginning or end of a paragraph from displaying by themselves, thus causing the extra white space at page bottom). To turn this feature off: Paragraph box dropdown arrow at lower right > Line and Page Breaks tab > Pagination, uncheck “Widow/Orphan control” > OK.
MOVIE REVIEW WEBSITES – I like the website “Metacritics.com”. Other sites are hard to navigate or have too many ads. This one is comprehensive yet easy to navigate. I usually click “See all” and then order them by rating, so that I see what the current best rated movies are. ––– The prefix “meta” is an interesting word. It means one level of description higher, or a broader more general perspective on something. A meta-study of breast cancer means a study of many studies on breast cancer. So, “metacritic” would refer to a bigger, broader, overall view of the material of critics – which is what I like, so I don’t get mislead by the skewed perspective of just one or two critics.
MOVING vs COPYING – WARNING – A key difference to keep in mind is this: When you drag a file from your computer to an external device, you are making a copy. But if you are dragging a file from one place within your computer to another place within your computer, you are moving it, not copying it! This is critical, because if you are working within your computer and assume you’re making a copy, when you are actually moving the file, you may end up deleting it, thinking you have a copy, but you don’t!
MUSIC – DOWNLOADING FROM AMAZON – Sometimes iTunes doesn’t have a song I know exists, and I can find and download it from Amazon.com instead. Here’s the procedure that worked for me (I already have an account with Amazon, a prerequisite): Amazon.com website > at left of search box at top, click dropdown arrow > click “MP3 Music” > then put the name of the artist or song into the search box > click “Go” > when you’ve found the song, it has a Play button at the left of the song, so you can hear a 30-second sample > if you want it, click “Buy MP3″ at right. (At some point earlier, I had to download an MP3 Downloader from them, free. There is a button somewhere for “Need download help?”) > sign in with email address and password > “Sign in using our secure server” > “Continue” > “Download to your computer” > click Save on bar window at bottom > click Open Folder to see where it landed, and then move it to wherever you want (like your normal big Music folder under Libraries or Owner).
MUSIC – LYRICS OF SONGS – The downside to the site Lyricsmania.com is that you gotta fend off all sorts of ads flying in on you. Lately, I find it easier to simply google the name of the song, comma, lyrics. Note that you usually get someone’s version of the lyrics, not necessarily the “official lyrics.” You’ll see lots of small differences among sites.
NUMBERING – AUTOMATIC INDENT – If want automatic numbering more to the left, click the "Decrease Indent" icon in the Paragraph box repeatedly. If want the numbers to be closer to the first word: Paragraph box at top > Numbering dropdown arrow > Define New Number Format (at bottom) > Alignment, Left.
ONLINE SHOPPING – CREDIT CARD NUMBER – I filled everything out correctly but got a “format error” message. Tried putting my credit card number in WITHOUT the spaces. That made the difference. It went thru OK then. Some sites will tell you if you should include the credit card number spaces, or not. This one didn’t say anything.
OPENING A PROGRAM – DELAY – Sometimes a program takes a long time to open. Often, as you wait, you can hear the hard drive making slight sounds; that’s usually a good indication that it IS in the process of opening. QuickTime is a good example of a program that takes a while to open (sometimes a good 30 seconds) and makes you think nothing is happening.
OUTDOOR COMPUTER USE – Originally, I had decided outdoor use of a laptop was not worth the effort, because the screen was just too hard to see, with too much light reflected off it. But, with further experimentation, I’ve changed my mind. If you set up the proper conditions, it’s quite feasible. 1. Make sure the area at your back is fully shaded. No dappled light spots coming thru the trees. 2. Wear a dark shirt. 3. Increase the size of your font, or zoom up your screen. 4. Make the font bold, and white on a black background (Ctrl+A > font box at top > Font color > white; and Paragraph box at top > Shading paint can icon > black). With this setup, your text becomes pretty readable after all.
PAGE NUMBER – LOWER POSITION – I usually like it very low so I can get full use of page space. Double-click the page number > brings up Header and Footer Tools > at right, put “Footer from Bottom” to “0” > close Header and Footer. Sometimes it won’t go lower because you accidentally put an extra line space in, under Header and Footer Tools, and you need to delete that line.
PAPER-FEEDING – PHOTO PAPER – For heavy photo paper, I think it’s better to have the feeder tray fairly empty. If it’s near full, the top sheet rests too close to a side rail; the paper is too stiff and the suction is not strong enough to pull the paper up past the rail. But when the paper load is minimal, the paper bends more and the side rail is not as much a factor in holding back the sheet from being pulled up. At least that’s what it seems like, to me. I used to have a printer that gravity-fed down from the top (angled tray). And it seemed to have far less feeding problems that the “suction-fed up from a bottom tray” type printers.
PASSWORD TIPS – The length of a password makes it stronger, so that, instead of having a hard-to-remember shorter password, it makes sense to simply have a long phrase that’s easy to remember. Like “thecowjumpedoverthemoon.” Just make sure it’s not a common phrase like the one I just gave. Make it an odd phrase that only you yourself would remember. Or, you can take your basic password that you always use, and just add easy-to-remember stuff to the start and end of it. Instead of “house”, make it “123house123″ or “xyzhousexyz”. I find passwords are horrendously annoying. Can never remember which of three I used. Good to keep a list somewhere (hidden) on your computer.
PASSWORDS – SQUIGGLY, UNREADABLE PASSWORD – Sites will sometimes require you to enter a password they provide, which is in squiggly, hard-to-read characters. Rather than guessing and having to do the whole thing over and over till you get it right, there should be a button right near there to click on and give you another such password. Keep clicking on it till you get one you can read.
PDF CONVERSION – If you want to convert a Word doc to a PDF doc, you can use the website “Freepdfconvert.com”. Orange title. Nice and straightforward. There is a spot where it mentions “membership,” but it’s not required. Or, you can do the conversion right in your computer, at least in MS Office 2010. Open your Word doc > File at upper left > Save As > at lower middle center of window, Save As Type dropdown arrow > PDF > Save. The PDF document lands into the same folder as your original Word doc.
PHONE NUMBERS – If you google “White Pages” and enter a person’s name, it gives you the phone number and address (might have to click on a few things, including “Full Info”). So this site serves as a phone book. I no longer feel the need for a phone book, or want one taking up space. Most everything can be found on the internet these days.
PICTURE – WON’T PASTE IN – One time I couldn’t seem to get a picture pasted into a document. Turns out it WAS getting pasted in, but lower in the page so that I couldn’t see it until I scrolled down.
PICTURE CROPPING IN PAINT PROGRAM – Cropping is one of the functions that works differently in Paint than in other programs. To crop in Paint: “Select” dropdown arrow at upper left > Rectangular Selection > then drag and draw a rectangle around the portion you want to keep > click “Crop” up at top.
PICTURE CROPPING IN WINDOWS PHOTO GALLERY – The technique is a little different from either cropping pictures in a Word document, or in the Paint program. In Windows Photo Gallery: Edit at top > Crop > Proportion > Custom, which puts a grid over the picture > drag the grid edges to get your desired size > Edit again > Crop again. It’s done.
PICTURE DELETING – There are all kinds of odd things that can go wrong, so be very careful in deleting copies of desired pictures. After deleting a copy, make sure you still have the original. If you don’t, then go to your Recycle Bin to retrieve it.
PICTURE FLIP (LEFT-RIGHT) – Highlight picture > go to Picture Tools at top > Arrange box > Rotate Objects dropdown arrow > flip horizontal.
PICTURE OPTIONS – If right-clicking doesn’t give you your options like it usually does (especially Save As), then go to top of pic, on the circle handle and right-click. That usually gives you the options. Or, just keep fiddling around, again and again, and then suddenly the options show up. The curse of the computer world – things work INTERMITTENTLY.
PICTURE STRAIGHTENING IN WINDOWS 7 – You probably have your picture already in your Pictures folder, but if not, and you only have it in a Word document, here’s the whole procedure for cropping and then straightening that picture: Right-click the picture > Save as Picture > name it > click Pictures folder at left > Save. Then go to Pictures folder and right-click the picture there > Open with > Windows Live Photo Gallery > crop the picture (Edit, Crop, Custom) by dragging the grid over your desired section of the picture > click Edit again, Crop again > Apply crop, and that crops it. Now double-click the picture > Straighten. That should straighten it. Then make a copy back to the document you want it in. (Windows Vista does not have the straighten feature.)
PICTURES – CHANGING PICTURE FILE TYPE – Often a picture can’t be used for other purposes once it’s embedded into a Word document. You have to convert it to a usable format, like JPEG rather than Word document. There may be other ways to do this, but using the Paint program is how I did it: Go to the document with the desired picture > right-click the picture > Copy > open Paint program > CTRL+V it into there > click Paint dropdown arrow at far upper left (above the Paste clipboard) > highlight but don’t click Save As > move to right and select JPEG > Name it and land it into your Pictures folder, by clicking on Pictures folder in your list over on the left and then clicking Save at lower right. Should be usable now.
POINTER – MORE VISIBLE – I had settled on a pointer style of “Windows black (extra large)(system scheme)”, because it’s more visible. But then I realized that the style you choose comes with its own associated I-beam pointer style. And although this style had a better I-beam pointer also, it was not as good as another choice, which had better visibility for both pointer and I-beam, namely, “Windows Inverted (extra large)(system scheme)”. So now I use that style. Start > Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Devices and Printers > Mouse > Pointers tab > Scheme dropdown list > select “Windows Inverted (extra large)(system scheme”) > OK.
PREVIOUS VERSION OF A FILE – All of this I’m not sure of, but I think: Windows 7 you could right-click and get a “restore previous version” option, but Windows 8 does not have that option (you have to set up some system option that saves your versions in the cloud), or you have to do a System Restore to a previous date. Bottom line, I will do a System Restore if I find I desperately need a previous version, and hope for the best, or, maybe when I get Windows 10 it will have a restore feature. This is actually important because every so often I really badly want an old version of a file.
PRINTER NOT WORKING – Find your printer under Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Devices and Printers, and make sure it is checked as your default printer. Sometimes a new program will automatically change your settings.
PRINTING – BIG TWO-SIDED JOBS WITH MULTIPLE SETS – If your printer tends to misfeed frequently, a misfeed can mean a cascading series of incorrect back sides (page 7 is backed up with page 9, etc.)… a real nightmare. One way around this is to not print a set of pages in numerical order, collated by the printer as they print, but rather, to do each page separately, front then back, and then collate the piles manually into sets at the end. For example, do all your pages 1-2, then all your pages 3-4, etc. Then, at the end, manually collate them into sets of 20 booklets or whatever. That way a misfeed means just a blank side or individual sheet needs to be done over, rather than a whole series of sheets with incorrect backs. The collating is extra work, but not as much work as redoing whole booklets with pages out of order due to one misfeed.
PROGRAMS – DOWNLOADING OR BUYING THE SOFTWARE DISK? – Your choice. The advantage of downloading is that the fixes and patches are right up to date. The advantage of having a physical disk is that if you have a major problem, you can un-install it and then install it again, and there’s a good chance that will fix the problem, and you don’t have to go through the aggravation of making phone calls or searching for the right (and safe) place to download from the internet. Myself, I prefer to have the physical disk.
PROGRAMS – DOWNLOADING vs BUYING PHYSICAL DISK – One advantage of downloading a program is that you get it right away, and don’t have to pay postage. BUT, for certain programs, you might be better off buying the actual physical disk, inserting it and installing it that way. For example, for me, my Pinnacle/Studio movie editing program often has things go wrong, or the whole program crashes, and it is absolute hell to try to get help. They consistently send you in circles; you constantly run into catch-22 situations. I finally gave up and simply ordered their newest version (Pinnacle Studio 16), the physical disk, not the download. That way, any major crash, I can just re-install it myself, without trying to contact their horrible help system.
PRONUNCIATION WEBSITE – Came across a site that audibly gives you the correct pronunciation for words – Howjsay.com. Very simple and straightforward: Google the site > type the word into the box > click “Submit” > and the word gets pronounced clearly.
READ ONLY – If you click twice to open a document and get impatient and click twice again too soon, it will often bring up the “Read-only” window saying someone else is already using the document. What you should do then is, in that very same small window, click “Cancel” at lower right. That cancels the second opening of that document and just leaves the first one as a normal document you can work on, as not a “Read-only” document. Basically, to avoid the “Read only” message, when you open a document, be patient and wait for it to open. Don’t try to open it again as it is in the process of opening. You can open a doc twice, but when you do it before it finished opening the first time, you get the annoying “read only” message.
RED CORRECTIONS (“TRACK CHANGES”) – Don’t know what the latest thing is. If you clicked Track Changes under the Review tab, I think it used to enter new text in red and underlined. Now it seems it just puts a vertical red line in the left margin of any changes to the text. At any rate, you have to move over a bit at top and click Accept to accept the changes, and you have to click on Track Changes again to get rid of the function and get back to normal. Keep clicking those two spots till you get the right order to get what you want. Suggestion: Professional writing editors, learn this feature. All other humans, avoid it; not worth learning.
RED SHADING DISAPPEARS – Often, for me, the standard color choices under the Shading dropdown arrow has the red column turned into yellow/tan, instead of red. To find the red, go to More Colors at bottom > Standard tab, and the pink shading I like is the hexagon very closest to the white center of the color hexagon in line with that red point of the hexagon.
RELIGION STUDY – I find there is no longer a need to buy expensive programs to study religion. A website called “Biblegateway.com” provides all the different versions of the Bible, with an easy to use interface. “Strong’s Concordance with Hebrew and Greek Lexicon” gives you Strong’s classic Bible word study book. "The Koran – Browse" gives you the Koran. Etc.
RESTARTING COMPUTER – FREQUENT FIX – Once again, restarting my computer proved to be the solution to miscellaneous problems that pop up out of nowhere. Suddenly my Start search box was not working, suddenly my screen was showing two water-blob-looking spots, suddenly my pointer disappeared and I could not get it back… all these were fixed by simply restarting my computer each time.
RUN OR SAVE? – Definitely Save, then Run (which means Install) later. Otherwise, you don't have it; you just ran it once and the program didn’t get installed. So that’s the normal thing I should do: SAVE, then RUN, then wait for a window to pop up for INSTALLING.
SCAMS – AVOIDING – If someone on the phone is too pushy in trying to sell you something, be wary. Seems the most common scam is trying to sell you some program to fix your problem, when that is not really the solution to your problem, and the worst is buying a program that only infects your computer, making it worse, so that that scammer can assure you that you need to buy an additional more expensive program to fix the problem. In general I find going to Best Buy is so much safer than trying to solve a problem over the phone with a stranger, who suspiciously repeats the claim that he is “certified Microsoft technician.”
SEARCH ENGINE – GETTING YOUR OLD ONE BACK – MS’s damn “Bing” browser somehow installed itself onto my screen. To get rid of it, I did this: While on the internet, click dropdown arrow of Tools at upper right > Internet Options at bottom > General tab > Search > Settings > Search Providers at left > highlight the one you want (Google, for me) > Set as Default > Close.
SHADING A HARD SPACE – If you enter a “hard” space (Ctrl+Shift+Spacebar), you can’t shade that space using the Text Highlight Color icon in the Font box. You need to use the Shading icon in the Paragraph box.
SHOPPING ONLINE – I subscribe to Consumer Reports magazine because I like to know what actual customers and objective tests have to say about products. I note that a very good free alternative to this magazine is to look up a product on Amazon.com (they sell just about everything) and check the reviews there. You get a good idea of the positives and negatives of a product, as experienced by actual consumers.
SNIPPING TOOL – I’ve become a big fan of this tool. It’s just like the Print Screen key at the top right of your keyboard, except that instead of taking a picture of the whole screen, you can draw a rectangle around the small part of the screen you want a picture of. Start > All programs > Accessories > Snipping Tool (the screen becomes dimmed) > drag the cursor around the area you want to capture (the captured area becomes no longer dimmed) > File at upper left > Save as > send it to desired location > Save. Then when you click on that file, it shows you your captured rectangle of material, which you can right-click and copy and land in a Word document and adjust to your tastes there.
SPELLCHECK IGNORE – If want no more constant red underlining for an apparently misspelled word (like your own name, if it’s not a common name), put your cursor in the word > Review tab at top > Spelling and Grammar > it shows up at right > click “Ignore All”. Be sure to click “Ignore All”, not just “Ignore” or it will ignore just that one instance but not future ones. [You can scroll your cursor through your document text at left, with that pane up at right, and as your cursor scrolls through any misspelled words underlined in red, THAT word shows up in the pane to correct or to “Ignore all.” If the word is underlined in red because it was a repeated word, the pane tells you that (“Repeated word”).]
SPELLING AND GRAMMAR CHECK – ON/OFF – File at upper left > Options at bottom left > Proofing > and that gives you all your options to check or uncheck. As usual, it’s total overkill, half the stuff you don’t know what they’re talking about. For me, under “When correcting spelling and grammar in Word”, I check the first four out of the five there. [Also I unchecked ignore words in upper case, so if I misspell something in upper case, it will show me (underlined red). I think the default setting ignores misspelled words in caps.]
START SEARCH BOX INDEX UPDATING – Using the Start search box to find a file is very useful, but its Index needs updating occasionally to run better. For Windows 7, here is how to reach this feature (other than typing in “Indexing Options” into the search box): Start > Control Panel > System and Security > System > Performance Information and Tools at lower left > then at upper left “Adjust indexing options” > Advanced > Rebuild > OK. May take a couple of hours. And, I believe the computer has to be plugged in; I don’t think it will rebuild the index if it’s just on battery power (?).
TOOLBARS FOR INTERNET – UNWANTED – If it’s an unwanted standard toolbar, right-click an empty spot up top there, and it gives you options for the various toolbars to display (Menu, Favorites, etc.). If it’s a toolbar some company has foisted upon you – so aggravating! – Start > Control Panel > Programs > Uninstall a program (the program or company that stuck their toolbar up on your computer) > restart the computer. My experience in trying to get a new stock market desktop gadget: I kept encountering sites that send you ads, or add additional stuff, or try to add their toolbar onto your computer as a default toolbar, etc., etc. All the invasive complications that I find SO aggravating. I couldn’t get anything to download simply, as I did originally. It’s always 20 steps, downloading a downloading manager program so I can download a download. So crazy. Seems like there’s no longer such a thing as a simple download, because companies use popular downloads as baits to pull you into all kinds of other things. Absolutely hate it. Man, I’m not going to download any more %&#%&# free programs. Not worth the aggravation. (Rare exception – Audacity audio editing program.)
TV VIEWING OF COMPUTER SCREEN – You can view what is on your computer screen, on your TV. Watching YouTube videos with friends on a large TV screen is better than watching them on a small laptop screen. Just connect your computer and TV with an HDMI cable. Most modern computers and TVs have ports for an HDMI cable. Of course, you have to have the right buttons on your TV setup pressed, whatever your TV setup is, but it should be relatively easy. [For me, on my TV remote, it’s Source > HDMI2.] Note, however, that you cannot record what you see on your TV screen onto a DVD recorder, because it uses a different system. To record what is on your computer screen, you’d have to buy a separate software program, like “Snagit,” which I have and find quite good.
WEATHERBUG – SUDDENLY NOT WORKING – My weather desktop gadget that I like – “Weatherbug” – stopped working. Tried all kinds of things to get what I used to have. No luck. Finally went to Control Panel > Programs > Uninstall and started to uninstall Weatherbug, but instead of uninstalling it, I selected the "Repair" option > OK, and that got my old version back.
WIFI CONNECTION AWAY FROM HOME – My experience: Seems like a key thing, after clicking the Internet Access icon at bottom and connecting, is that it takes a minute or so to connect. It is great you can go into a McDonald’s and use your laptop. Of course these days it seems most everybody has a smart phone which connects to the net anyway. Myself, not yet. Maybe never. I think overuse of these machines can be dehumanizing. Just the other day, I saw two friends sitting at a restaurant table, facing away from each other, farting around with their cell phones.
WINDOWS – SIDE-BY-SIDE – Drag one window into the right side of the screen, the other into the left, and they set up side-by-side full screen. Note that as soon as your dragging pointer hits the edge of the screen, that’s when the window pops into exactly one half screen size.
WINDOWS 10 – I will be downloading Windows 10 in the near future. It’s free, if done before August 2016, I think. Early reviews are good. I think the “Charms” icons at right are done away with (I hope! I hate Window 8 with things jumping in from the edge all the time accidentally). Search is supposed to be much improved.
WINDOWS 8 – FLYING-IN ICONS (“CHARMS”) – One of THE most annoying things – the Windows 8 icons come flying in from the right if you touch something the wrong way. I will be switching to Windows 10 soon. Hopefully that problem will no longer be there.
WINDOWS OFFICIAL MANUAL – UGH – I had bought Step by Step Windows 7, the manual put out by Microsoft itself, written by two of their experts who have decades of experience in “development of training materials about technical subjects for non-technical audiences.” I went thru the book cover to cover, and I’m sorry, but I found it was horrible! Maybe I’m not that bright, or maybe my brain is wired differently, but I found everything was difficult to follow! ––– They present mountains of detailed information, without regard for how a non-expert encounters the material, and without providing a clear context for understanding the relevance of the information. For example, on page 210 they write, “You can change the labeling convention, and thus the width of the buttons.” OK, that’s not bad, but wouldn’t it be clearer if they said, “You can save room by making the buttons smaller.” ––– They write, “The Favorites bar and the Command bar appear above the Internet Explorer Content pane, below the navigation buttons, Address bar, and Search box.” I would have written: “The address bar is at the top. Underneath that is the Favorites bar, then the Command bar, then the actual page content.” ––– It’s hard to describe exactly what it is that I didn’t like about the book. I just know that I constantly found myself slogging thru a page only to find out that I already knew the content, but it took me forever to see that that was what they were saying. As I say, maybe it’s just me, but, I don’t think so. They have a disk included, with files you could practice on, but the process of how to do that was not at all clear to me. And I’m not a beginner, and beginners are who the book was written for!
WORD / CHARACTER COUNT – Your status bar (just above your taskbar at bottom) normally gives you a document word count at lower left. If you click on the word “WORDS,” it will also give you a character count, paragraph count, etc. And if you block a section of text and then click WORD, it will give you those stats on just that section. Very useful if you need to limit your word or character count.
WORD REPLACING – Be very careful when you do a “Replace All.” For an important document it might be better to do each replacement individually, to make sure you don’t make any mistakes. For example, if you want to replace all instances of “disc” with “disk”, you may unknowingly change parts of other words, and end up with “diskcovery” and “diskrepancy” and “diskussion”, etc. Putting a space before and after your word – space, “disc”, space – should eliminate this problem. But, you may still leave some instances not replaced (if, for example, you have instances of the word at the end of a sentence with a period following the word instead of a space). ––– So, if you have an important document, especially a long one with numerous instances of the word, it might be safer to do replacements individually.
AGGRAVATION – GENERAL PERSPECTIVE – Happened to get into a conversation with a dedicated computer guy (my age, over 60) who has been involved, professionally, in the computer world for years, at a very high level, and he said a friend of his is on the very cutting edge of computer stuff, and that this guy is frequently enthused about new developments, and that whenever he tries this guy’s stuff… it hardly ever works right! That really confirmed my conviction that computer problems have far less to do with my – and normal people’s – intelligence or lack thereof, than to do with the very nature of the beast: the stuff is technically very complex and things tend to go wrong practically all the time! Also, another smart guy told me that the computer world is interested in challenging projects, and new things, and is not focused on making things user friendly. As I wrote in the book, Microsoft is interested in appearing user-friendly, not in actually being user-friendly.
AUTOMATIC CAPITALIZATION – If you want get rid of automatic caps: Review tab > Spelling & Grammar > Options at lower left [Windows 8 route: File > Options > Proofing] > AutoCorrect Options at upper right > AutoCorrect tab at upper left > Uncheck “Capitalize first letter of sentences” > OK > OK. Now you’ll get caps when you type caps and lower case when you type lower case.
AUTOMATIC FUNCTION – UNDOING THE CHANGE – Most automatic functions that you have set, can be undone by Ctrl+Z for the thing you just typed. For example, the letter “I” typed by itself automatically changes from small i to capitalized I. If you want to keep a small i by itself, do an immediate Ctrl+Z.
BACKING UP – NOT LEAVING ACTUAL FILES ON THE DESKTOP – If you like to keep certain documents or folders on the desktop, fine, BUT, what you should do is: DON’T keep the documents or folders themselves on the desktop but only their shortcuts. Otherwise, when you go to back up your My Documents folder, you will miss backing up those files located on the desktop, because those files were no longer actually in the My Documents folder. With those file shortcuts only on the desktop, you can access them equally easily, yet will not accidentally leave the actual files out of a backup operation. Also, when shortcuts are included in your backup to an external device, it may be only the shortcut and not the actual file itself being copied! I still don’t know when it is and when it isn’t; I just try to deal with actual files, not shortcuts, in any backing-up procedure.
BROWSER vs SEARCH ENGINE – Pretty confusing, but it’s roughly this: A browser enables you to interact with the internet. A search engine searches for sites related to info you put into its search box. A browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, etc.) is for accessing the internet. A search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) is for searching the internet for specific websites.
BULLETED LISTS – AUTOMATIC – If you put in a dash (two hyphens in a row) and it automatically changes it to a heavy black bullet, to get rid of that and retain just the dash, click on the dropdown arrow that shows up just to the left of the bullet, and select “Stop automatically creating bulleted lists.” Or, do an immediate Ctrl+Z and that brings back the dash.
CALCULATOR – CONVERTING UNITS FUNCTION – Start > All Programs > Calculator (or type “Calculator” into Start search box) > click on Calculator > View > Unit Conversion (expands window) > select type of unit (like “temperature”) > select “from” and “to” > put in first value, and the converted value shows up below. Then, to get calculator back to its original unexpanded size, click on View and then “Basic.”
CAPITALIZATION OF FILE NAMES – Sometimes when you try to change a document or folder name into all caps, or from all caps, it keeps reverting back to the case it was in. But, if you close out the folder, then open it again, then the order takes effect and you get what you wanted. A delayed action.
CLOSING A SITE WHEN NO “X” SHOWS – If a devious site won’t LET you close it out because it doesn’t give you the X at upper right, Ctrl+F4 should close it. Or, you can right-click the taskbar > Start Task Manager > Applications tab > click on the site in the list given > End Task. Other times, the X appears only when you hover your pointer over the far upper right corner.
COMPUTER FREEZING – The usual fix is to close and restart your computer. I find that when I try to open up 2 or 3 programs too quickly, one right after the other, that often leads to a freeze or some other malfunction.
COMPUTER TUNE-UP – THINGS TO DO AFTERWARDS – It’s good to get your computer cleaned out once a year. However, when you get it back (from Best Buy or wherever), you may have to adjust things back to the way you had them. 1) Desktop icon arrangement (note that they may have put all of your desktop items into one folder called “Desktop Items”) 2) You may need to re-connect your router. I don’t know. I’d ask store geek about this. 3) Your email as homepage (Tools > Internet Options > General tab > Homepage > Enter your email URL address) 4) Your Favorites bar back up (right-click an empty spot at the top, and check the tool bars you want showing. 5) Your desktop gadgets back up 6) Passwords you had set for automatic, you may have to re-enter (Tools > Internet Options > Advanced tab > Reset > Reset again, and then restart the computer) and check “Keep me signed in” box, if that shows up, to get them automatic again. 7) Taskbar size. I had to right-click the taskbar at bottom > Properties > check “Small icons” which makes the taskbar a bit thinner, the way I had it before and the way I like it. ––– Note that when you bring your computer in for a tune-up/cleanout, you should plan for those few days to be without your normal computer: Make sure you have your files all backed up, and make a copy of your key documents onto a flash drive so you can work on them on another computer while yours is in the shop. Note that when they tell you how many viruses/malware they cleaned out, don’t get bent out of shape. They told me 40. I said, “Whoa!” But they dismissed my concerns, saying that they get many with 700 viruses/malware.
COPY – KEEPING A FILE IN TWO DIFFERENT FOLDERS – DON’T – If you want a copy of a document in two places – because you often forget just where you have it stored – the way to avoid confusion, is to not make a copy, but make a shortcut (right-click > “Create shortcut”) and move that shortcut to the other folder. That way you keep the original in its original folder, yet can access it from the other logical folder you happen to remember more easily at the time. YET, you are dealing with the SAME document each time; you’re not adding different things to two documents at different times and getting yourself into a mess.
CTRL+P WON’T WORK – After 16 years of using Ctrl+P to print a document, suddenly Ctrl+P wouldn’t work for me. Turns out I had accidentally pressed the “Num Lk” key at upper right, which makes a bunch of the letter keys turn into numbers instead, so that when I was pressing Ctrl+P, it was actually Ctrl+*. I just pressed the Num Lk key again and things were back to normal.
DESKTOP ORGANIZATION – MIGRATING ICONS – Lately my icons completely re-arranged themselves on their own, several times. Seems after I re-started the computer, it was OK. But, I’m tired of having to re-position them all to where I like them. Newest solution for me: I put the 50 or so icons into 15 or so folders, according to broad topics. Now if they migrate, it will be easy to put those folders back where I like them, because there are less of them.
DISK ERASING – DVD–RW or CD—RW – Usually: Double-click Computer > click on the disk Drive E > click Erase this Disc at top. But, oddly, sometimes that option does not appear at top. So, I found what to do is: Scroll down your panel of items at left, go to Computer and Disc E. Click on Disc E and the very same window comes up as clicking on Computer twice, but this time “Erase this disc” option IS there.
DISK-RIPPING TO COMPUTER – Open Windows Media Player > put disk in > click “Rip” tab at top (middle left). Tracks should land in your Music folder, under a folder titled the current date. Key thing is that that “Rip” tab does not show UNTIL you put the disk in. Note that you can’t use Windows Media Player to rip material from a DVD. To rip a DVD: Insert it > close it if it starts to play automatically > double-click Computer > right-click Drive E (your disk bay) > click Copy (note that nothing happens yet) > click onto a target (like the Desktop) > then do a Ctrl+V, at which point it starts to get ripped onto your computer.
DISPLAY FORMAT OF FILES IN FOLDERS – When in a folder, click View at top to show options for having your items in that folder displayed. I like “List” because it takes up the least room. The “Details” one is also good, because it shows dates modified.
DOCUMENT – FINDING WHAT FOLDER YOU ARE CURRENTLY IN – When you’re in a folder window, it shows you the progression of locations at top, but once you’re in a document, you no longer can see what folder you’re in. But one often wants to remember which folder it’s in, for future reference. To see the folder your current document is in: For Windows 7, click File at upper left, and over at the lower right, click “Open File Location”. ––– For Vista, to find where you are when you are already in a document: Click the colored “Office Button” icon at the very far upper left > Prepare > Properties > at the top is a yellow bar showing your location.
DOCUMENTS – PREVIOUS VERSION – Once you’ve changed or even deleted a document out of your Recycle Bin, sometimes you can retrieve a previous version if you realize you need it. But, I have no idea why it works sometimes and other times not. Right click the current document version you realize you do not want > Restore Previous Versions (if that option shows up… it may not) > it searches > if finds any previous versions > highlight the one you want (it shows dates) > Copy. (Changing the name of the doc back to its original name might help. It did, once, for me.)
DROPBOX – SHARING FILES – I don’t have much experience with this program but I found it very useful a couple of times. Basically it enables you to share larger files, like whole videos, through email. It’s relatively simple. You sign up for a Dropbox account (it’s free), you move a big file into your “dropbox” and include the email address of the recipient. The recipient gets an email with a link that the recipient just needs to click on to view the video. ––– To share a video: Sign in to your account on Dropbox.com > click Upload to upload your video or click Add a File, OK > that should land it into your Dropbox folder. Open dropbox folder > click on desired file > move pointer to right to get a “Share” option open > click on Share > that opens another dialogue box, in which it shows the URL of your video > enter the recipient’s email into the box just below (“Send this link to”) > OK. Then the receiver can watch it (or download it). ––– That’s it. But be wary of what you click and where you put things. Dropbox is a great free program, but like most programs, they try to get you to buy their more advanced versions that cost money, or it seems to me – this has happened to me several times – they try to get their toolbar installed as your default toolbar, which kind of works like free advertising for them. I don’t know. Basically watch what you are clicking, but otherwise, it’s very useful.
DVD COPYING TO COMPUTER – This is what worked for me. Good luck. Put the disk in, turn it off after it starts to play, then, under Computer, right-click the icon for the DVD (Drive E), and then click Copy. But, note that after you click Copy, it doesn’t do anything yet! You go to your Libraries > Videos folder, and do a CTRL+V there, THEN it starts to copy, showing a green progress bar. It ends up in your Videos folder, inside a folder called “DVD Video Recording”. You have to search around inside that folder to find the actual material; there are other files associated with it; the largest file would be the actual material (“Video_TS” or “VTS_01_1″). And, you may not be able to find that “DVD Video Recording” folder in the first place until you close and then re-open your Videos folder; then it suddenly appears there. (I’m pretty sure they deliberately make it hard to copy videos, to minimize piracy. But here I’m talking about personal video material, not commercial movies. Although there’s all kinds of gray areas. I typically do stuff like record an episode of Seinfeld onto a DVD and want to transfer it to my computer.)
E-MAIL – AUTOMATIC SIGNATURE – You can have all your email that you send out, end with your signature (or website, or whatever you want) automatically. This may vary among email programs, but for me: Gear icon at upper right > Settings > Writing Email (not Accounts) > at bottom of that page is another link to a different “Accounts” [“Note: to edit your signature, go to accounts”] > click on that and it’s there, to change and save.
E-MAIL – DISAPPEARS – Don’t know if anyone experiences this but me. In clicking on an email to open it, if I accidentally double-click it, it simply disappears. Yikes! Lost forever? Turns out, for me, double-clicking sends an email to the bottom of my Spam folder, where I can find it and send it back to my Inbox.
E-MAIL – MULTIPLE – Varies with the program. With me, I think it’s: Go to your Contacts list, check the desired ones, and click some option somewhere that says something like “Send an email to your selected contacts.”
EXCEL – MICROSOFT EXCEL – If you do a lot of tables, stats, record-keeping… like if you run a business, MS Excel is a very useful program. As you enter data, it will do many operations automatically for you. But, for the average person, I think just using the Insert > Table feature of MS office and manually entering data works fine.
EXTERNAL DVD PLAYER – The disk bay on my laptop went bad. Had to buy an external DVD player to play disks on my laptop. You just connect it with its USB wire to a USB port. Only costs about $40. But, it does not record DVDs like the original bay did. To get one that records DVDs also, I think it’s more in the $100 range. I believe the trend is for laptops to no longer include a disk player (to make laptops thinner and cheaper); so external players may be the norm now.
FAVORITES – NEED MORE ROOM ON TOOLBAR – If you have a lot of favorite sites up on your internet Favorites toolbar, you might start running out of room and those at the end of your list won’t show unless you click the double angle brackets at the end. To get more room, right-click, not an empty spot on the toolbar, but right on any of your favorites tabs. That brings up an option list including “Customized title widths.” Click choice of long titles, short titles, or icons only. That way you can fit more on the Favorites toolbar.
FAVORITES – TOOLBAR DOESN’T SHOW – Note that when you have a website up in a reduced-size window, the favorites bar at top doesn’t show. Maximize the window and then it shows.
FILE – OLD FILE DATE STILL SHOWING – I noticed, when backing up on a flash drive, that when I replace an old file with the updated one of the same name, the date of the file sometimes shows as the old date rather than the new one, even though it IS the new file! Can be very disturbing to see the old date, because you think, oh no, my latest version didn’t get backed up! BUT, when you close the flash drive and open it up again, the new date then shows correctly. Sometimes, due to some odd combination of operations, the proper date shows only on a delayed basis!
FILE LOCATION FROM SHORTCUTS – Very useful feature. Right-clicking a shortcut on the desktop and clicking “Open file location” finds the location of the file in its folder and not of the location of the shortcut on the desktop, which you already know and is useless info.
FIND / REPLACE FUNCTION – MATCHING CASE MODE LEFT ON – If you use the “Find” or “Find and Replace” function and specify matching case, DO NOT FORGET to undo that matching case checkbox, or it will stay in matching case mode for the next time and will not find or replace non-matching words! Can be a major disaster, like editing out foul language and inadvertently leaving a lot of it in, because caps did not match.
FINDING DOCUMENT LOCATION WHILE IN THAT DOCUMENT – For Windows 7, click File at far upper left, then “Open File Location” at lower right. ––– For Windows Vista, click the big colored “Office Button” at far upper left > Prepare > Properties (shows locations at top bar). Or, click the Vista “Office Button” > Save As > in the panel at left, the folder the document is in will be highlighted slightly. Then, once you see which folder the document is in, you can simply return to the document by clicking “Cancel” at lower right, canceling the “Save As” action.
FLASH DRIVE – “SHORTCUT” BACKUP CAUTION – If you back up a shortcut onto a flash drive, you’ve only backed up the shortcut, not the file itself. It may seem you have the file itself there because if you put the flash drive into your own computer, it will open up to the actual file; but, that is only because you are using your own computer. If you use the flash drive in some other computer, you do not have the file, only the useless shortcut. Now, I am not sure at all about what I just wrote, but that’s what seemed to be the case when I experimented. Yet other times backing up a shortcut onto a flash drive did back up the actual file also. So I don’t know. Whatever is the case, double check to make sure you did back up the actual file.
FLASH DRIVE LIFE – Recently heard someone talk about his flash drives suddenly expiring. Did a little research on the internet. Seems flash drives will last maybe 10 years before dying. They last longer than hard drives. And they can be erased thousands of times with no negative effect. Outside of physical abuse, I find flash drives to be very stable and dependable. Biggest danger is probably simply losing them, because of their small size.
FLASH DRIVE SENSITIVITY – Instructor of a computer course told us not to remove a flash drive while it is in a transferring process. Not only will that info not get transferred properly, but the material already on the flash drive could get ruined! Need to cancel the transferring process if you want to pull the flash drive out, or, wait till the transfer finishes. ––– He also said that there is an industry trend to get rid of the standard hard drive in computers (with the spinning disk and the reading beam) and replace it with a flash drive type device, which is not as sensitive to bumps and jolts. Dropping a traditional laptop onto the floor will damage the hard drive, but dropping a flash drive rarely causes damage. ––– At Walmart recently, I noticed they sell 64 GB flash drives for $40. So I’m thinking eventually I’ll buy a couple, rather than another external hard drive. As an external storage device, it takes up less space, and is not as sensitive to damage.
FORMATTING – REMOVING – Block the section > press CTRL and the space bar. Or, block the section > Home tab > Font box > click eraser icon at upper right of box.
FULL SCREEN – Press F11. Toggles back and forth. (Remember, that’s for when you are on the internet, not for Word documents.)
GADGET SIDEBAR – DISAPPEARED – Had a tune-up done for my old computer. When I got it back, the gadgets were gone from the desktop. I put “gadgets” into the Start search bar. Nothing, except documents. I put “sidebar” in; then it showed “Windows Sidebar.” I clicked on that and the gadgets came back onto my desktop.
GADGETS – DESKTOP – My "Weatherbug" gadget deteriorated, then simply stopped working. Googled "weatherbug” and downloaded it. Different setup, but, it has the same info, and I'll be used to it in no time. "Hourly" and other options are at top. Also, I googled "clock desktop gadget" and downloaded a clock (had been missing the physical clock one for months).
GADGETS – STOCK MARKET and the FREE STUFF TRAP– My stock market gadget stopped working fully. Microsoft says they are no longer supporting their gadgets (they want to transition to Windows 8 procedures instead). I checked with a Geek Squad guy and asked him if there is any way, now, to simply get a stock market gadget by itself WITHOUT all the stuff they bundle in with it (all kinds of programs automatically included, and a default toolbar of theirs that takes over your computer, etc., etc). He said no, there isn’t. And he rolled his eyes when I mentioned how it seems to me that when you try to download something free, all these companies install THEIR toolbars on your computer, to take over your computer operations. He said, “Yeah, we know all about that,” implying that that is absolutely what they do, and they hate it also. ––– I had spent a lot of time much time searching unsuccessfully for a simple stock market gadget, like the one I had with MS before it ceased working fully. So this Geek Squad guy confirmed for me that any such item is no longer available out there, and that virtually all the free stuff out there is designed to trap you into buying other stuff. I’ll just have to do another click or two each time, to get to a financial website and see the current Dow Jones average there, instead of more easily on a desktop gadget. ––– Again, for another item I tried to download free, I had to spend half an hour getting rid of their intrusive extra stuff. They had more than one program bundled in with that program and each one had a different name that I had to research to establish which one it was, so I could go ahead and uninstall it! At this point, I’ve decided to virtually never download free stuff; it’s far more hassle than it’s worth. ––– Solution: Here’s a good solution, instead of a gadget: I googled “DJIA” > it immediately shows the current average, with a graph that can be viewed for daily, monthly, yearly, etc. periods > I clicked on the yellow star at the left of my Favorites bar to put that site onto my Favorites bar (the icon is a blue g, called “DJIA – Google Search”) > once the icon was in the list, I dragged and dropped it onto my desktop, thus making a shortcut there. Now I just need to click on that icon to get the current number, along with the graphs. Works just like a gadget.
GADGETS – WINDOWS 8 – If I use the swipe-in search at right, and enter Gadgets, the top one gives 3 pages of gadgets, including clock, calendar, stocks, weather. Or, Start > Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization > Desktop Gadgets > right-click > Add.
GADGETS FOR WINDOWS 8 – CLOCK – Had to go all over the place to finally, finally, get what I want – a simple desktop clock. (Time is given at the lower right of your taskbar at bottom, but I like a visual clock on my desktop.) According to one site, to enable Windows 8 gadgets, you have to run third party software, called “8GadgetPack”. So I clicked on that link, downloaded it (took two full minutes), installed it. It put stuff up on a sidebar at right immediately, including exactly the simple clock I always liked, plus other gadgets below it. Dragged the clock out onto the desktop, right-clicked the sidebar and clicked “Close Sidebar.” Voila, finally have my clock. Other sites warn that downloading gadgets can be risky, with malware. And, going thru Windows 8 directly in my computer got me nowhere, despite some sites telling you how (just led to complex garbage, as other commenters angrily noted.)
GEEK SQUAD PEOPLE – Was talking to a couple of Geek Squad guys at Best Buy. They have to do thru rigorous courses and training to get – and to keep – their jobs. Confirms my experience that Geek Squad help is pretty solid.
GRAMMAR FUNCTION – At this point I favor keeping the grammar function on. It is helpful. For example, I noticed a word at the end of a sentence was underlined in green, yet I knew it was spelled correctly. Turns out that sentence was in the form of a question, and therefore needed a question mark at the end. I had a period. I put the question mark in, and the green underlining disappeared. So I do find the grammar function helpful. File at upper left > Options > Proofing > “Check grammar with spelling” > OK. Of course, right now, for who knows what reason, the grammar function is not working for me. Hate the computer world. Things constantly work intermittently! ––– Hah, just figured out one key factor: You have to start the next sentence before a grammar error gets underlined in the previous sentence! Note also that the grammar correction function is helpful but not consistent. Like, right now, I can type in “We is going to the store” and the singular/plural verb error is not underlined. Hah, wait a minute. I went File > Options > Proofing > (lower down) Writing Styles: Settings > Grammar > check Subject-verb agreement > OK. Now it works; the incorrect verb is underlined. I had had that box unchecked. (Or a cyberspace ghost unchecked it. I know I myself never did.)
HIBERNATE vs SLEEP – Not sure, but I think the key difference is that Hibernate automatically saves your work, whereas Sleep doesn’t (if you forget to manually save it). And then Hibernate takes a bit longer to get the computer going again compared to Sleep. I personally prefer Sleep to Hibernate, simply because I like the computer to be ready to use in two seconds, rather than the 10-15 seconds boot-up time for Hibernate. A key factor for me is that no one else uses my computer, so I don’t have to worry about losing unsaved material because of other people. But if you have other people using your computer, you may be better served using Hibernate, so that you get the automatic saving. ––– I read that a laptop unplugged uses only 2% of its battery power per hour, when in Sleep mode. So that means maybe after 2 days the battery will run out. I frequently plug in my laptop every day, so it rarely runs out, and even if it does, so what. I just plug it in and it’s up and running instantly.
HIGHLIGHTING vs SHADING – When you shade a text, with the paint can icon in the Paragraph box, you can press the F4 key at top to repeat that action. But, the F4 repeat function does not operate to repeat a text highlighting action (the crayon icon in the Font box); for that, you have to do it again. The F4 key does not work for the crayon icon.
HOMEPAGE – SETTING – When I got a new computer, I wanted Yahoo.com as my homepage, so that I always open up the internet directly to my email on Yahoo.com. Procedure: Internet Explorer > Tools dropdown arrow at upper right > Internet Options > in the Home Page box type in http://mail.yahoo.com > then go right to the bottom and click Apply and OK. If you want a different home page, get on the home page you want, copy its URL address in the upper left box, and then go thru the above procedure, and paste the address into the Home Page box, click Apply and OK.
HORIZONTAL LINE – GETTING RID OF – If you accidentally get a horizontal line that you can’t delete (it keeps moving along or ahead of the text you type), it’s probably a border line you need to delete: Home tab > Paragraph box > Borders dropdown arrow > at very bottom is “Borders and Shading, click that > select None > OK.
ICON MISSING – Every so often you simply cannot find the correct icon to click on because the icon only shows up if you hover your pointer over a particular spot. So, you might want to hover your pointer over the edges and corners of your screen and the desired icon may pop up to click on.
INTERNET – GONE WHEN SWITCHED COMPUTERS – Couldn’t get the internet, or my wireless connection to my printer, when I connected my old computer. Long story short, when you switch computers, sometimes settings get automatically changed and you have to reset your settings. In my case the computer had gotten set back to USB (wire) connection, instead of the Network Connection (wireless, router). [Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center > Connect or Disconnect.] I also had to re-install my printer program.
INTERNET NOT WORKING – You get the dreaded “This page cannot be displayed” message. The three most common fixes for me: 1) Making sure my wireless connection button at front of my computer is in the ON position. 2) Turning off my modem and router for 10 seconds and then back on. 3) Just waiting; sometimes it is the internet provider that is down temporarily, and it has nothing to do with your computer or setup.
iTUNES – There seems no end to iTunes complications for me, since I am fussy with my music. I won’t go thru all the stuff, especially because procedures seems to change every year. I just keep at it until I get what I need, cursing all the way. One good thing I will mention is that if you misplace or lose a song you’ve bought, if you try to buy it again, iTunes will inform you that you already bought it and will offer you an immediate free re-download.
iTUNES SEARCH TECHNIQUE – Because it's often tricky and difficult to ascertain the latest album by an artist in the iTunes program, I find it's very helpful to FIRST go to Wikipedia for the artist, because they always list all the artist's albums chronologically. So you can see the latest album there, and then go on to iTunes and find it under the name of the album.
KINDLE – NOTE-TAKING / HIGHLIGHTING – Excellent change in my intellectual life procedures: I used to read a book, take written notes on key points, then type them into my computer, for future reference before interviewing or debating a particular author. Now, with Kindle, it’s much easier. I highlight the key passages, which puts them into My Clippings. I attach my Kindle to my computer and transfer (block, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V) those passages. Thus, I have maybe 2 or 3 pages of key notes easily accessible from my computer. No need to write out or type notes on passages, and, no need to have a physical book taking up space in my apartment.
LINE SPACING – I generally like a line space between paragraphs, but not a full line space, so I go: Block the text > Paragraph box at top > Line and Paragraph Spacing dropdown arrow > Line Spacing Options > Spacing, Before 0 pt, After 6 pt > Line Spacing: Single > OK. (And, “don’t add space between paragraphs” box unchecked.)
LINK – MAKING A LINK FROM A WORD DOC TO A WEBSITE – Highlight the source word or phrase > right-click on the highlighted section and select “Hyperlink” from the dropdown menu > copy the URL address of the website, and paste it into the address box at the bottom of the window that opened up > click the OK button at lower right (the source word or phrase turns blue, indicating an internet link has been created. To use the link, press the Ctrl key and click on the source word.
LINK – MAKING A LINK IN AN EMAIL TO A WEBSITE – Actually pretty simple: Make a copy of the website’s (or YouTube video’s) complete URL address at upper left (highlight it and Ctrl+C to put it onto your clipboard, unseen), then paste it (Ctrl+V) into the desired spot in your email text. The web page address now appears as an active clickable link that your recipient can just click on to visit that site. ––– Another way is to make a copy of the URL > open Compose > click Link icon at bottom > paste in URL into “Edit Link” box > OK > send email.
MAPS – I used to use Yahoo maps but suddenly they are not there anymore. I now google “Google Maps” and I find it’s quite good.
MARGIN STUCK AT VERY TOP – There may be other situations, but I recently found that if I see that the side margins are as ordered but the top and bottom ones are stuck right at the top and bottom, the explanation is that I accidentally clicked the “hide white space” option. If you hover your cursor directly over the top or bottom edge of the page, a double arrow shows. Double-click on that to either hide or show white space between pages and the white space of the margins. If the top margin for example seems stuck at the very top, it really is not; it’s just that your “hide white space” viewing option is ON. Double-click that two-arrow icon that pops up and that will put things back to normal, with top and bottom margins showing properly at their chosen setting.
MARGINS NOT LOW ENOUGH AT BOTTOM OF PAGE – Usually it’s because, even though you’ve set the margin low, your Widow/Orphan control box is checked (this feature prevents single lines at the beginning or end of a paragraph from displaying by themselves, thus causing the extra white space at page bottom). To turn this feature off: Paragraph box dropdown arrow at lower right > Line and Page Breaks tab > Pagination, uncheck “Widow/Orphan control” > OK.
MOVIE REVIEW WEBSITES – I like the website “Metacritics.com”. Other sites are hard to navigate or have too many ads. This one is comprehensive yet easy to navigate. I usually click “See all” and then order them by rating, so that I see what the current best rated movies are. ––– The prefix “meta” is an interesting word. It means one level of description higher, or a broader more general perspective on something. A meta-study of breast cancer means a study of many studies on breast cancer. So, “metacritic” would refer to a bigger, broader, overall view of the material of critics – which is what I like, so I don’t get mislead by the skewed perspective of just one or two critics.
MOVING vs COPYING – WARNING – A key difference to keep in mind is this: When you drag a file from your computer to an external device, you are making a copy. But if you are dragging a file from one place within your computer to another place within your computer, you are moving it, not copying it! This is critical, because if you are working within your computer and assume you’re making a copy, when you are actually moving the file, you may end up deleting it, thinking you have a copy, but you don’t!
MUSIC – DOWNLOADING FROM AMAZON – Sometimes iTunes doesn’t have a song I know exists, and I can find and download it from Amazon.com instead. Here’s the procedure that worked for me (I already have an account with Amazon, a prerequisite): Amazon.com website > at left of search box at top, click dropdown arrow > click “MP3 Music” > then put the name of the artist or song into the search box > click “Go” > when you’ve found the song, it has a Play button at the left of the song, so you can hear a 30-second sample > if you want it, click “Buy MP3″ at right. (At some point earlier, I had to download an MP3 Downloader from them, free. There is a button somewhere for “Need download help?”) > sign in with email address and password > “Sign in using our secure server” > “Continue” > “Download to your computer” > click Save on bar window at bottom > click Open Folder to see where it landed, and then move it to wherever you want (like your normal big Music folder under Libraries or Owner).
MUSIC – LYRICS OF SONGS – The downside to the site Lyricsmania.com is that you gotta fend off all sorts of ads flying in on you. Lately, I find it easier to simply google the name of the song, comma, lyrics. Note that you usually get someone’s version of the lyrics, not necessarily the “official lyrics.” You’ll see lots of small differences among sites.
NUMBERING – AUTOMATIC INDENT – If want automatic numbering more to the left, click the "Decrease Indent" icon in the Paragraph box repeatedly. If want the numbers to be closer to the first word: Paragraph box at top > Numbering dropdown arrow > Define New Number Format (at bottom) > Alignment, Left.
ONLINE SHOPPING – CREDIT CARD NUMBER – I filled everything out correctly but got a “format error” message. Tried putting my credit card number in WITHOUT the spaces. That made the difference. It went thru OK then. Some sites will tell you if you should include the credit card number spaces, or not. This one didn’t say anything.
OPENING A PROGRAM – DELAY – Sometimes a program takes a long time to open. Often, as you wait, you can hear the hard drive making slight sounds; that’s usually a good indication that it IS in the process of opening. QuickTime is a good example of a program that takes a while to open (sometimes a good 30 seconds) and makes you think nothing is happening.
OUTDOOR COMPUTER USE – Originally, I had decided outdoor use of a laptop was not worth the effort, because the screen was just too hard to see, with too much light reflected off it. But, with further experimentation, I’ve changed my mind. If you set up the proper conditions, it’s quite feasible. 1. Make sure the area at your back is fully shaded. No dappled light spots coming thru the trees. 2. Wear a dark shirt. 3. Increase the size of your font, or zoom up your screen. 4. Make the font bold, and white on a black background (Ctrl+A > font box at top > Font color > white; and Paragraph box at top > Shading paint can icon > black). With this setup, your text becomes pretty readable after all.
PAGE NUMBER – LOWER POSITION – I usually like it very low so I can get full use of page space. Double-click the page number > brings up Header and Footer Tools > at right, put “Footer from Bottom” to “0” > close Header and Footer. Sometimes it won’t go lower because you accidentally put an extra line space in, under Header and Footer Tools, and you need to delete that line.
PAPER-FEEDING – PHOTO PAPER – For heavy photo paper, I think it’s better to have the feeder tray fairly empty. If it’s near full, the top sheet rests too close to a side rail; the paper is too stiff and the suction is not strong enough to pull the paper up past the rail. But when the paper load is minimal, the paper bends more and the side rail is not as much a factor in holding back the sheet from being pulled up. At least that’s what it seems like, to me. I used to have a printer that gravity-fed down from the top (angled tray). And it seemed to have far less feeding problems that the “suction-fed up from a bottom tray” type printers.
PASSWORD TIPS – The length of a password makes it stronger, so that, instead of having a hard-to-remember shorter password, it makes sense to simply have a long phrase that’s easy to remember. Like “thecowjumpedoverthemoon.” Just make sure it’s not a common phrase like the one I just gave. Make it an odd phrase that only you yourself would remember. Or, you can take your basic password that you always use, and just add easy-to-remember stuff to the start and end of it. Instead of “house”, make it “123house123″ or “xyzhousexyz”. I find passwords are horrendously annoying. Can never remember which of three I used. Good to keep a list somewhere (hidden) on your computer.
PASSWORDS – SQUIGGLY, UNREADABLE PASSWORD – Sites will sometimes require you to enter a password they provide, which is in squiggly, hard-to-read characters. Rather than guessing and having to do the whole thing over and over till you get it right, there should be a button right near there to click on and give you another such password. Keep clicking on it till you get one you can read.
PDF CONVERSION – If you want to convert a Word doc to a PDF doc, you can use the website “Freepdfconvert.com”. Orange title. Nice and straightforward. There is a spot where it mentions “membership,” but it’s not required. Or, you can do the conversion right in your computer, at least in MS Office 2010. Open your Word doc > File at upper left > Save As > at lower middle center of window, Save As Type dropdown arrow > PDF > Save. The PDF document lands into the same folder as your original Word doc.
PHONE NUMBERS – If you google “White Pages” and enter a person’s name, it gives you the phone number and address (might have to click on a few things, including “Full Info”). So this site serves as a phone book. I no longer feel the need for a phone book, or want one taking up space. Most everything can be found on the internet these days.
PICTURE – WON’T PASTE IN – One time I couldn’t seem to get a picture pasted into a document. Turns out it WAS getting pasted in, but lower in the page so that I couldn’t see it until I scrolled down.
PICTURE CROPPING IN PAINT PROGRAM – Cropping is one of the functions that works differently in Paint than in other programs. To crop in Paint: “Select” dropdown arrow at upper left > Rectangular Selection > then drag and draw a rectangle around the portion you want to keep > click “Crop” up at top.
PICTURE CROPPING IN WINDOWS PHOTO GALLERY – The technique is a little different from either cropping pictures in a Word document, or in the Paint program. In Windows Photo Gallery: Edit at top > Crop > Proportion > Custom, which puts a grid over the picture > drag the grid edges to get your desired size > Edit again > Crop again. It’s done.
PICTURE DELETING – There are all kinds of odd things that can go wrong, so be very careful in deleting copies of desired pictures. After deleting a copy, make sure you still have the original. If you don’t, then go to your Recycle Bin to retrieve it.
PICTURE FLIP (LEFT-RIGHT) – Highlight picture > go to Picture Tools at top > Arrange box > Rotate Objects dropdown arrow > flip horizontal.
PICTURE OPTIONS – If right-clicking doesn’t give you your options like it usually does (especially Save As), then go to top of pic, on the circle handle and right-click. That usually gives you the options. Or, just keep fiddling around, again and again, and then suddenly the options show up. The curse of the computer world – things work INTERMITTENTLY.
PICTURE STRAIGHTENING IN WINDOWS 7 – You probably have your picture already in your Pictures folder, but if not, and you only have it in a Word document, here’s the whole procedure for cropping and then straightening that picture: Right-click the picture > Save as Picture > name it > click Pictures folder at left > Save. Then go to Pictures folder and right-click the picture there > Open with > Windows Live Photo Gallery > crop the picture (Edit, Crop, Custom) by dragging the grid over your desired section of the picture > click Edit again, Crop again > Apply crop, and that crops it. Now double-click the picture > Straighten. That should straighten it. Then make a copy back to the document you want it in. (Windows Vista does not have the straighten feature.)
PICTURES – CHANGING PICTURE FILE TYPE – Often a picture can’t be used for other purposes once it’s embedded into a Word document. You have to convert it to a usable format, like JPEG rather than Word document. There may be other ways to do this, but using the Paint program is how I did it: Go to the document with the desired picture > right-click the picture > Copy > open Paint program > CTRL+V it into there > click Paint dropdown arrow at far upper left (above the Paste clipboard) > highlight but don’t click Save As > move to right and select JPEG > Name it and land it into your Pictures folder, by clicking on Pictures folder in your list over on the left and then clicking Save at lower right. Should be usable now.
POINTER – MORE VISIBLE – I had settled on a pointer style of “Windows black (extra large)(system scheme)”, because it’s more visible. But then I realized that the style you choose comes with its own associated I-beam pointer style. And although this style had a better I-beam pointer also, it was not as good as another choice, which had better visibility for both pointer and I-beam, namely, “Windows Inverted (extra large)(system scheme)”. So now I use that style. Start > Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Devices and Printers > Mouse > Pointers tab > Scheme dropdown list > select “Windows Inverted (extra large)(system scheme”) > OK.
PREVIOUS VERSION OF A FILE – All of this I’m not sure of, but I think: Windows 7 you could right-click and get a “restore previous version” option, but Windows 8 does not have that option (you have to set up some system option that saves your versions in the cloud), or you have to do a System Restore to a previous date. Bottom line, I will do a System Restore if I find I desperately need a previous version, and hope for the best, or, maybe when I get Windows 10 it will have a restore feature. This is actually important because every so often I really badly want an old version of a file.
PRINTER NOT WORKING – Find your printer under Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Devices and Printers, and make sure it is checked as your default printer. Sometimes a new program will automatically change your settings.
PRINTING – BIG TWO-SIDED JOBS WITH MULTIPLE SETS – If your printer tends to misfeed frequently, a misfeed can mean a cascading series of incorrect back sides (page 7 is backed up with page 9, etc.)… a real nightmare. One way around this is to not print a set of pages in numerical order, collated by the printer as they print, but rather, to do each page separately, front then back, and then collate the piles manually into sets at the end. For example, do all your pages 1-2, then all your pages 3-4, etc. Then, at the end, manually collate them into sets of 20 booklets or whatever. That way a misfeed means just a blank side or individual sheet needs to be done over, rather than a whole series of sheets with incorrect backs. The collating is extra work, but not as much work as redoing whole booklets with pages out of order due to one misfeed.
PROGRAMS – DOWNLOADING OR BUYING THE SOFTWARE DISK? – Your choice. The advantage of downloading is that the fixes and patches are right up to date. The advantage of having a physical disk is that if you have a major problem, you can un-install it and then install it again, and there’s a good chance that will fix the problem, and you don’t have to go through the aggravation of making phone calls or searching for the right (and safe) place to download from the internet. Myself, I prefer to have the physical disk.
PROGRAMS – DOWNLOADING vs BUYING PHYSICAL DISK – One advantage of downloading a program is that you get it right away, and don’t have to pay postage. BUT, for certain programs, you might be better off buying the actual physical disk, inserting it and installing it that way. For example, for me, my Pinnacle/Studio movie editing program often has things go wrong, or the whole program crashes, and it is absolute hell to try to get help. They consistently send you in circles; you constantly run into catch-22 situations. I finally gave up and simply ordered their newest version (Pinnacle Studio 16), the physical disk, not the download. That way, any major crash, I can just re-install it myself, without trying to contact their horrible help system.
PRONUNCIATION WEBSITE – Came across a site that audibly gives you the correct pronunciation for words – Howjsay.com. Very simple and straightforward: Google the site > type the word into the box > click “Submit” > and the word gets pronounced clearly.
READ ONLY – If you click twice to open a document and get impatient and click twice again too soon, it will often bring up the “Read-only” window saying someone else is already using the document. What you should do then is, in that very same small window, click “Cancel” at lower right. That cancels the second opening of that document and just leaves the first one as a normal document you can work on, as not a “Read-only” document. Basically, to avoid the “Read only” message, when you open a document, be patient and wait for it to open. Don’t try to open it again as it is in the process of opening. You can open a doc twice, but when you do it before it finished opening the first time, you get the annoying “read only” message.
RED CORRECTIONS (“TRACK CHANGES”) – Don’t know what the latest thing is. If you clicked Track Changes under the Review tab, I think it used to enter new text in red and underlined. Now it seems it just puts a vertical red line in the left margin of any changes to the text. At any rate, you have to move over a bit at top and click Accept to accept the changes, and you have to click on Track Changes again to get rid of the function and get back to normal. Keep clicking those two spots till you get the right order to get what you want. Suggestion: Professional writing editors, learn this feature. All other humans, avoid it; not worth learning.
RED SHADING DISAPPEARS – Often, for me, the standard color choices under the Shading dropdown arrow has the red column turned into yellow/tan, instead of red. To find the red, go to More Colors at bottom > Standard tab, and the pink shading I like is the hexagon very closest to the white center of the color hexagon in line with that red point of the hexagon.
RELIGION STUDY – I find there is no longer a need to buy expensive programs to study religion. A website called “Biblegateway.com” provides all the different versions of the Bible, with an easy to use interface. “Strong’s Concordance with Hebrew and Greek Lexicon” gives you Strong’s classic Bible word study book. "The Koran – Browse" gives you the Koran. Etc.
RESTARTING COMPUTER – FREQUENT FIX – Once again, restarting my computer proved to be the solution to miscellaneous problems that pop up out of nowhere. Suddenly my Start search box was not working, suddenly my screen was showing two water-blob-looking spots, suddenly my pointer disappeared and I could not get it back… all these were fixed by simply restarting my computer each time.
RUN OR SAVE? – Definitely Save, then Run (which means Install) later. Otherwise, you don't have it; you just ran it once and the program didn’t get installed. So that’s the normal thing I should do: SAVE, then RUN, then wait for a window to pop up for INSTALLING.
SCAMS – AVOIDING – If someone on the phone is too pushy in trying to sell you something, be wary. Seems the most common scam is trying to sell you some program to fix your problem, when that is not really the solution to your problem, and the worst is buying a program that only infects your computer, making it worse, so that that scammer can assure you that you need to buy an additional more expensive program to fix the problem. In general I find going to Best Buy is so much safer than trying to solve a problem over the phone with a stranger, who suspiciously repeats the claim that he is “certified Microsoft technician.”
SEARCH ENGINE – GETTING YOUR OLD ONE BACK – MS’s damn “Bing” browser somehow installed itself onto my screen. To get rid of it, I did this: While on the internet, click dropdown arrow of Tools at upper right > Internet Options at bottom > General tab > Search > Settings > Search Providers at left > highlight the one you want (Google, for me) > Set as Default > Close.
SHADING A HARD SPACE – If you enter a “hard” space (Ctrl+Shift+Spacebar), you can’t shade that space using the Text Highlight Color icon in the Font box. You need to use the Shading icon in the Paragraph box.
SHOPPING ONLINE – I subscribe to Consumer Reports magazine because I like to know what actual customers and objective tests have to say about products. I note that a very good free alternative to this magazine is to look up a product on Amazon.com (they sell just about everything) and check the reviews there. You get a good idea of the positives and negatives of a product, as experienced by actual consumers.
SNIPPING TOOL – I’ve become a big fan of this tool. It’s just like the Print Screen key at the top right of your keyboard, except that instead of taking a picture of the whole screen, you can draw a rectangle around the small part of the screen you want a picture of. Start > All programs > Accessories > Snipping Tool (the screen becomes dimmed) > drag the cursor around the area you want to capture (the captured area becomes no longer dimmed) > File at upper left > Save as > send it to desired location > Save. Then when you click on that file, it shows you your captured rectangle of material, which you can right-click and copy and land in a Word document and adjust to your tastes there.
SPELLCHECK IGNORE – If want no more constant red underlining for an apparently misspelled word (like your own name, if it’s not a common name), put your cursor in the word > Review tab at top > Spelling and Grammar > it shows up at right > click “Ignore All”. Be sure to click “Ignore All”, not just “Ignore” or it will ignore just that one instance but not future ones. [You can scroll your cursor through your document text at left, with that pane up at right, and as your cursor scrolls through any misspelled words underlined in red, THAT word shows up in the pane to correct or to “Ignore all.” If the word is underlined in red because it was a repeated word, the pane tells you that (“Repeated word”).]
SPELLING AND GRAMMAR CHECK – ON/OFF – File at upper left > Options at bottom left > Proofing > and that gives you all your options to check or uncheck. As usual, it’s total overkill, half the stuff you don’t know what they’re talking about. For me, under “When correcting spelling and grammar in Word”, I check the first four out of the five there. [Also I unchecked ignore words in upper case, so if I misspell something in upper case, it will show me (underlined red). I think the default setting ignores misspelled words in caps.]
START SEARCH BOX INDEX UPDATING – Using the Start search box to find a file is very useful, but its Index needs updating occasionally to run better. For Windows 7, here is how to reach this feature (other than typing in “Indexing Options” into the search box): Start > Control Panel > System and Security > System > Performance Information and Tools at lower left > then at upper left “Adjust indexing options” > Advanced > Rebuild > OK. May take a couple of hours. And, I believe the computer has to be plugged in; I don’t think it will rebuild the index if it’s just on battery power (?).
TOOLBARS FOR INTERNET – UNWANTED – If it’s an unwanted standard toolbar, right-click an empty spot up top there, and it gives you options for the various toolbars to display (Menu, Favorites, etc.). If it’s a toolbar some company has foisted upon you – so aggravating! – Start > Control Panel > Programs > Uninstall a program (the program or company that stuck their toolbar up on your computer) > restart the computer. My experience in trying to get a new stock market desktop gadget: I kept encountering sites that send you ads, or add additional stuff, or try to add their toolbar onto your computer as a default toolbar, etc., etc. All the invasive complications that I find SO aggravating. I couldn’t get anything to download simply, as I did originally. It’s always 20 steps, downloading a downloading manager program so I can download a download. So crazy. Seems like there’s no longer such a thing as a simple download, because companies use popular downloads as baits to pull you into all kinds of other things. Absolutely hate it. Man, I’m not going to download any more %&#%&# free programs. Not worth the aggravation. (Rare exception – Audacity audio editing program.)
TV VIEWING OF COMPUTER SCREEN – You can view what is on your computer screen, on your TV. Watching YouTube videos with friends on a large TV screen is better than watching them on a small laptop screen. Just connect your computer and TV with an HDMI cable. Most modern computers and TVs have ports for an HDMI cable. Of course, you have to have the right buttons on your TV setup pressed, whatever your TV setup is, but it should be relatively easy. [For me, on my TV remote, it’s Source > HDMI2.] Note, however, that you cannot record what you see on your TV screen onto a DVD recorder, because it uses a different system. To record what is on your computer screen, you’d have to buy a separate software program, like “Snagit,” which I have and find quite good.
WEATHERBUG – SUDDENLY NOT WORKING – My weather desktop gadget that I like – “Weatherbug” – stopped working. Tried all kinds of things to get what I used to have. No luck. Finally went to Control Panel > Programs > Uninstall and started to uninstall Weatherbug, but instead of uninstalling it, I selected the "Repair" option > OK, and that got my old version back.
WIFI CONNECTION AWAY FROM HOME – My experience: Seems like a key thing, after clicking the Internet Access icon at bottom and connecting, is that it takes a minute or so to connect. It is great you can go into a McDonald’s and use your laptop. Of course these days it seems most everybody has a smart phone which connects to the net anyway. Myself, not yet. Maybe never. I think overuse of these machines can be dehumanizing. Just the other day, I saw two friends sitting at a restaurant table, facing away from each other, farting around with their cell phones.
WINDOWS – SIDE-BY-SIDE – Drag one window into the right side of the screen, the other into the left, and they set up side-by-side full screen. Note that as soon as your dragging pointer hits the edge of the screen, that’s when the window pops into exactly one half screen size.
WINDOWS 10 – I will be downloading Windows 10 in the near future. It’s free, if done before August 2016, I think. Early reviews are good. I think the “Charms” icons at right are done away with (I hope! I hate Window 8 with things jumping in from the edge all the time accidentally). Search is supposed to be much improved.
WINDOWS 8 – FLYING-IN ICONS (“CHARMS”) – One of THE most annoying things – the Windows 8 icons come flying in from the right if you touch something the wrong way. I will be switching to Windows 10 soon. Hopefully that problem will no longer be there.
WINDOWS OFFICIAL MANUAL – UGH – I had bought Step by Step Windows 7, the manual put out by Microsoft itself, written by two of their experts who have decades of experience in “development of training materials about technical subjects for non-technical audiences.” I went thru the book cover to cover, and I’m sorry, but I found it was horrible! Maybe I’m not that bright, or maybe my brain is wired differently, but I found everything was difficult to follow! ––– They present mountains of detailed information, without regard for how a non-expert encounters the material, and without providing a clear context for understanding the relevance of the information. For example, on page 210 they write, “You can change the labeling convention, and thus the width of the buttons.” OK, that’s not bad, but wouldn’t it be clearer if they said, “You can save room by making the buttons smaller.” ––– They write, “The Favorites bar and the Command bar appear above the Internet Explorer Content pane, below the navigation buttons, Address bar, and Search box.” I would have written: “The address bar is at the top. Underneath that is the Favorites bar, then the Command bar, then the actual page content.” ––– It’s hard to describe exactly what it is that I didn’t like about the book. I just know that I constantly found myself slogging thru a page only to find out that I already knew the content, but it took me forever to see that that was what they were saying. As I say, maybe it’s just me, but, I don’t think so. They have a disk included, with files you could practice on, but the process of how to do that was not at all clear to me. And I’m not a beginner, and beginners are who the book was written for!
WORD / CHARACTER COUNT – Your status bar (just above your taskbar at bottom) normally gives you a document word count at lower left. If you click on the word “WORDS,” it will also give you a character count, paragraph count, etc. And if you block a section of text and then click WORD, it will give you those stats on just that section. Very useful if you need to limit your word or character count.
WORD REPLACING – Be very careful when you do a “Replace All.” For an important document it might be better to do each replacement individually, to make sure you don’t make any mistakes. For example, if you want to replace all instances of “disc” with “disk”, you may unknowingly change parts of other words, and end up with “diskcovery” and “diskrepancy” and “diskussion”, etc. Putting a space before and after your word – space, “disc”, space – should eliminate this problem. But, you may still leave some instances not replaced (if, for example, you have instances of the word at the end of a sentence with a period following the word instead of a space). ––– So, if you have an important document, especially a long one with numerous instances of the word, it might be safer to do replacements individually.