Sometimes it is easier to navigate through your forms, documents, windows by using your keyboard.

Rather than typing three letters in one field, taking your hands off of the keyboard to click in the next field with your mouse, and then putting your hands back on the keyboard to type in that field; you can use the TAB key to move to the next field.

Notice that all (or at least 99 percent) of the menus at the top of your windows, programs you are working in, etc. have one of the letters underlined (example: File or Edit or Format). If you hold down the ALT key while you press the letter that is underlined (example: ALT and F or ALT and E or ALT and O) will open up the appropriate menu and allow you to make a choice from there. You can navigate through the open menu by using your arrow keys – or by again looking for the underlined letter and hitting that key (example – in the File menu – you might hit the O key if you wish to Open a document). Notice that you do not press the ALT key at this time. The ALT key is used to select (or place you in) one of the menus.

When you are working in a window that has many buttons or choices for you to select – you can TAB through them As you Tab through, you should be able to see a dotted box around the button or selection that is now the active button. Hitting the ENTER key will make this button perform as if you had clicked on that button with your mouse.

Here are some good key combinations to remember ----- they work in most applications.

CTRL-HOME

This will take you to the top of the document.

CTRL-END

This will take you to the bottom of the document.

HOME

Usually this takes you to the beginning of the line where your cursor is.

END

Usually this takes you to the end of the line where your cursor is.

PAGE UP

This will allow you to page up through your document (or the web site you are visiting).

A page is defined as what you view on the screen – not the pages in your word

This will allow you to page down through your document (or web site)

ARROW KEYS

By using your arrow keys, you can browse through a document (or web site) a line

at a time.

To select a portion of your document, hold the SHIFT key down while using your arrow keys.

To select from where the cursor is to the bottom of your document, hold the SHIFT key and then the CTRL-END.

If your document is many pages (or the web page is quite long), you can use the FIND command which is located under the EDIT menu.

You can look for partial words – it will ignore case – in some programs, you do have to indicate if you wish to search up or down from your cursor. For example --- if you are looking for the word programs, you can search for grams and it will find every occurrence of that letter combination even if they are off the screen.

To test your ability to play Midi files -- From the START menu, choose FIND – then select FILES AND FOLDERS. In the NAMED field, type *.MID Then in the LOOK IN field, be sure to have it say C:\ and not a directory (example – not C:\MY DOCUMENTS). Click on the button FIND NOW. If you have any Midi files on your computer, they will now be listed. By double clicking on one of the files, a player should open and after a few seconds, your Midi file should begin playing .

The ability to play Midi files is what you need for having sound when you receive a greeting card via the web (like BlueMountain).

You can test your ability to play WAVE files this way also. Instead of typing *.MID change it to *.WAV

IF YOU HAVE NO SOUND AT ALL, BE SURE TO CHECK WHERE YOU HAVE YOUR SPEAKERS PLUGGED INTO YOUR COMPUTER. MANY COMPUTERS HAVE TWO SPEAKER CONNECTIONS ON THE BACK (ONE IN THE SOUND CARD AND ONE IN THE MODEM). YOU DO NOT WANTED THEM PLUGGED INTO THE ONE THAT YOUR TELEPHONE WIRE IS ON !!!!!!!

The F1 key will usually bring up your HELP files. If you are in WORD, the help files will deal with WORD – if you are in one of the Windows screen, the help files will deal with WINDOWS.

Help with Windows can be found on the START menu, and choose HELP.

If you see a question mark (?) on the top right corner of the window, you can click on the question mark. You will notice that your cursor changes shape (you will have an arrow and a question mark together). Now you can move your cursor to one of the places where you have to make a selection – and click there. It will give you a brief description of what that selection will do.

When your computer stops responding to your mouse or your keyboard, what should you do? One of the first things to try is press the key combination of CTRL – ALT – DELETE. This should open a window entitled CLOSE PROGRAM. In this window is listed the programs that are currently running on your system. Most of them are hard to recognize what they are – they could be the driver for your scanner, the word processing program that you were working it or a number of other little utilities that run in the background without you even knowing. Usually the program that has hung up the computer will be shown with a NOT RESPONDING to the right of it. You can then highlight that program (if it is not already) and click on END TASK. Possibly this will solve your problem and you will not have to reboot the computer.

You can shut down every program in the CLOSE PROGRAM window with the exception of EXPLORER and SYSTRAY.

By pressing the key combination of CTRL – ALT – DELETE – which opens up the CLOSE PROGRAM window ------- and then again pressing the key combination of CTRL – ALT – DELETE while this window is open ----- will restart the computer.

The SHUT DOWN button in this window will shut down the computer.

Many of the new computers are coming with DVD (Digital Video Disc) drives. One good use for these drives is reference material. Encarta Reference Suite 99 comes on a DVD – it includes 41,000 articles, Virtual Globe atlas, a dictionary, a thesaurus, an almanac, time lines, quotations, and a writing guide. The suggested price for this is $99.00

To err is human - to blame your computer for your mistakes is even more human; in fact it is downright natural.

When you get to the point where you really understand your computer, it’s probably obsolete.

He who laughs last probably made a back-up.