You can underline a cell or group of cells in Excel through the toolbar or the format menu. On the formatting toolbar you will see an icon that looks like a grid and when you place your cursor over it, it will say OUTSIDE BORDER. If using the menu, you would choose FORMAT – CELLS – and then the BORDER tab. Through the border option, you can place a border (or line) on any side of the selected cell (or cells) – top – bottom – left side – right side – or any combination of cells.

• You can add your bullets or numbering as you are typing your letter – or select the text and then add the bullets or numbering. If you have your formatting toolbar turned on, you will see the two icons there. To choose the style of bullet or numbering that you like, from the FORMAT menu, choose BULLETS AND NUMBERING. There you will find numerous choices, including using other little characters as your bullets.

• The word modem comes from modulator/demodulator. A modem modulates outgoing digital signals from a computer or other digital device to analog signals for a conventional copper twisted-pair telephone line and demodulates the incoming analog signal and converts it to a digital signal for the digital device. This is the part of our computer that is needed in order for us to connect to the internet.

• Notice all of the little moving clipart pictures on the Internet. If you rightclick on them, one of the menu choices might be SAVE IMAGE AS. If you save this image to your hard drive, you can then use this animated picture as part of your email. All of the internet browsers and latest email software support the viewing of animated gifs. To place the moving picture into your email – start a new message as you usually do. Then notice the menu choices at the top of the window. Choose INSERT – then IMAGE. Locate the picture that you saved and then determine the placement of the picture. Just remember that all of these things are cute, but make the email much larger – depending on the size of the picture that you saved. If you view the animated (or moving) gif in a program that does not support the animation, then you will just have a regular picture.

Windows 98 includes a helpful tool called SYSTEM INFORMATION. You can find this by clicking START – then PROGRAMS – ACCESSORIES – SYSTEM TOOLS – SYSTEM INFORMATION. If you look under TOOLS in this program, you will find a listing for SYSTEM FILE CHECKER. This program is designed to scan your system for corrupted system files or to let you know if a system file is missing. It can be directed to extract a good copy of the specified file from your Windows 98 program CD.

To see what Windows loads at Startup, go to START – PROGRAMS – ACCESSORIES – SYSTEM TOOLS – SYSTEM INFORMATION. If you look under TOOLS in this program, you will find a listing for SYSTEM CONFIGURATION UTILITY. Click on the Startup tab. This will show you all of the applications that Windows loads when you start your computer. Sophisticated users can tweak Windows 98 by removing the checkmark from various boxes – but you should have an understanding of what the various applications are for.
 
 

Minor crashes, which are the easiest to fix, affect just one program. For unknown reasons, your Internet browser, word processor or whatever suddenly stops working. The mouse pointer still moves around but none of the buttons respond and you can't close the program.

This can be very disconcerting but likely can be corrected with something veteran computer technicians call the three-finger salute. Simply press the CTRL, ALT and DEL keys all at the same time - two hands work best. If you are lucky, a little box will pop open on your screen labeled "Close program." In the box are a list of programs currently running on your computer. Sometimes they are in plain English and sometimes they are something more cryptic like "rundll." In a best-case scenario, the program that has stopped working will have a helpful parenthetical notation after it that says "not responding." If so, click on the offending program and then click the little box a the bottom that says "End task." If you are lucky, that will shut down the balky application almost instantly and everything will be fine.

Another possibility: When you click "End task," nothing happens right away. Wait up to a minute to see if another box pops open that says something like "X program is not responding." It may be waiting for input or it may be totally screwed up. You can wait if you want but if I were you, I'd click the little box below that says "end task." That done, you should be back in business.

Other examples of minor crashes are times when little error boxes pop up with labels like "illegal operation" or something equally meaningless. In most cases, just click the OK box and move on.

But say things are little more serious and you have a major crash. In this scenario, you might see something more ominous like the dreaded "blue screen of death." When this happens, your pretty Windows desktop is replaced by a solid blue screen with some big ugly text detailing a problem at some obscure memory location. If you are lucky, you can just hit the "enter" key and everything returns to normal. If not, the three finger salute may be required, which basically means you are going to restart your computer.

Which brings us to catastrophic crashes, also known as hard crashes. When they happen, nothing works. The mouse freezes. The three finger salute does nothing. The screen is simply frozen. The solution here is simple: Turn off the computer, wait 10 seconds, then turn it back on. This reboot process will clear the problem but also wipe out any work you may have been doing prior to the crash. (Cursing is appropriate at this point.)

Generally speaking, almost anytime a computer begins acting strangely, it's a good idea to close everything down and reboot. This is the universal solution to a lot of problems, although if crashes become chronic, you need to think about looking deeper for what's causing them. Often, it's not a program at all causing the crashes but some problem with Window's complex internal plumbing - a conflict with a device driver, .dll file or something worse. You might see one of these problems when you install new hardware or

software. Explaining how to fix those is more complicated and takes more space than I have today. So that'll be a later column.

You can order Internet Explorer 5.0 on CD-ROM for $6.95 by calling (800) 485-2048 – It looks like this is a 40-bit encryption version. In order to upgrade to 128-bit encryption, you will need to install it and then visit this page --- (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/download/128bit/intro.htm)

Microsoft will include Internet Explorer 5.0 in Windows 98 Second Edition which is expected to be available to consumers by later this fall.

The biggest secret to copying a file from your hard drive to a floppy is finding the file on your hard drive. But let’s assume that you know where it is. From the START button – choose PROGRAMS – then WINDOWS EXPLORER. Now locate your file. Right click on the file and choose SEND TO – and then FLOPPY A. Be sure you have your floppy disk in the drive. The file will then be copied unto the floppy disk. This method is used for copying FILES not PROGRAMS!