Toolbars

Many of today’s programs come with customizable TOOLBARs. You can have the TOOLBAR display the icons for the functions that you use repeatedly, and remove the other icons that are just in your way.

You will usually find the toolbars under VIEW – then TOOLBARS. Here you will find many toolbars listed. They all work as toggles. If you click on them, it will place a checkmark next to it and then display the toolbar for that function. You can have a number of these toolbars turned on at the same time --- but if you have too many on, it gives you less screen area for your work. To turn them back off, again return to VIEW – TOOLBARS and click on the name again – the checkmark will be removed and the toolbar will disappear.

Now turn on only the STANDARD toolbar and then choose CUSTOMIZE. The first tab entitled TOOLBARS again shows you all of the toolbars that can be displayed. The second tab entitled COMMANDS lists all of the possible icons that you can have on a toolbar. While you have this window open, left click on an icon in the Standard Toolbar that you never or seldom use and drag it down to this window. The icon will be removed from the Toolbar (but it is not lost – it can be added back at any time). To add an icon to the Toolbar, simply find it in the list, left click on it and drag it up to the Toolbar.

Setting Defaults in MS-Word

From the menu, choose TOOLS – then OPTIONS. Here you can determine where Word will look for your documents. The default is MY DOCUMENTS – but this can be changed to look where you wish to store your documents. The default only specify the first place that Word will look, but you can retrieve a document from any directory on your hard drive, from your floppy or from your CD. You can also tell Word where to look for your clipart files or set the number of recent documents that are listed on the FILE menu.

Mouse Click Speed

If you are having trouble opening programs because you can not double click fast enough, try setting the mouse click speed to SLOW. You do this from CONTROL PANEL – MOUSE – DOUBLE-CLICK SPEED. This is a slide bar that you set anywhere between slow and fast. There is also a jack-in-the-box to let you test if you can double click at the appropriate speed.

Creating A Log File

Here’s an interesting item that we recently discovered. If you wish to type information and have a date recorded automatically along with your notes for the day, try this.

Open NOTEPAD. On the first line type in capital letters .LOG (that’s a period followed by LOG).

Now test it out by entering data at various times and saving the file. You will notice that the next time you open the file, there will be a date for the last time that you entered data in the file.

Don’t know why this works. Notepad has been around for sometime. Maybe it is just true for Windows 98 – but try it anyway.

Have You Checked The Help File For The Online Manual

From the START button – choose HELP – then CONTENTS – then GETTING STARTED BOOK – ONLINE VERSION.

Recycle Bin

What happens to file that you delete? Normally they end up in the RECYCLE BIN. Does that mean that they have disappeared off of your hard drive and you now have more room? NO, they are still on your hard drive in the exact place that they were – only the directory name has changed.

If you wish to restore a file that you had deleted, right click on the recycle bin and choose OPEN. This will show you what is in the recycle bin. By right clicking on any one of these files, you will be given a choice to RESTORE it.

How big should your recycle bin be? The default is always 10 percent of your hard drive. If you think that is too much, then you can reduce this amount. Again right click on the recycle bin and choose PROPERTIES. Here you can adjust the amount of your hard drive that can be used for the recycle bin.

MouseKeys (Use number pad to control mouse cursor)

The shortcut to turning on the MouseKeys is ALT-left SHIFT-NUM LOCK. Write this combination down on a sticky note or piece of tape and stick it to the bottom of your keyboard (this is a handy place to put all of the important keyboard commands you seldom use).

If you lose the ability to use your mouse, you can control your mouse cursor by applying the above combination of keys. Then you can move the mouse pointer by pressing numbers on your numeric keypad. When using MouseKeys, the number "5" is used to left click, the INS key in used to hold down the button for dragging, and the DEL key is used to release the button.

If your mouse is working but a window has moved off the screen, hold down ALT and press TAB until the window you want to move is highlighted. Next, press ALT-spacebar and hit the Down Arrow key until Move is highlighted. Press ENTER, and then use the arrow keys to move the window back to the Desktop.

Enlarging the fonts in Netscape 4.0 and later

As a quick shortcut, you can use CTRL-] to enlarge your fonts and

CTRL-[ to decrease the size of your fonts.

Word Processor (MS-Word) --- Replace

Replacing a word that occurs many times in your document is quite easy in most new word processors. Look under EDIT – then REPLACE. You will be ask to type the word that you wish replaced and the word that will replace it. You can then replace them one by one or replace all at one time. It is usually saver to replace them one at a time, so that you get to make the determination each time.

Is Your VCR Y2K Compliant?

It doesn’t matter. When the year 2000 arrives, just set the date on your VCR to 1972. From then on, the days are identical for the next 28 years.

Troubleshooting Your Computer

When your START-UP files get in the way of helping you determine why your computer in not working, instead of moving or deleting everything in your START-UP directory, simply hold down the CTRL key when Windows 98 is booting and those files will be bypassed.