You certainly don't need me to remind you that Tuesday is election day. But are you sure you know where your polling place is? If you moved since you last voted, you may have to go to a different location. Even if you didn't move, the polling place may have moved.
To find out where to vote, go to
http://www.mypollingplace.com. Enter your street address and zip code, then click the Find button. It's just that easy.
Now let me climb up on my soap box for a minute: voting is quick and easy. It is not like going to the Motor Vehicles office, and it does
not increase your chance of being called for jury duty. If you think your vote doesn't matter, think again -- many races are decided by only a handful of votes. What the politicians do when they get into office affects your life, so don't you want to decide who the people are?
Thousands of people who came before us have fought hard and given their lives for our right to vote. Many millions of people in other countries still don't have that right. We should all be grateful that we do.
When I go to my polling place on Tuesday, I will have one clear thought in my head:
My vote is my voice, and I will not be silenced.
Do you ever need to find a file on your computer, but aren't sure of the file name or even where to start searching? Did I hear you say, "Yeah, every 10 minutes"? If you ever tried the Search feature (Ctrl + F orThe Windows Search works well only if you have an idea where to start looking, and some of the choices it asks you to make can be confusing. Even when you do get a decent list of results, you still have to open each file to see what's in it. And what's with the cartoon dog?
As we say in New Jersey: Fuhgetaboutit! There is now a better and easier way of searching, and it's free (though it only works with Windows XP and 2000). Go to Google (http://www.google.com), click the More link, then click the Google Desktop Search link (or just go to http://desktop.google.com). It will download a small installation file. Running it will place a Google Desktop Search link on your desktop and will put a Desktop choice on the main Google page (only you will see it). It will take several hours to generate an index of about 1 GB of disk space, but the indexing will only run when your computer is idle, so you won't see any slowdown.
Now, when you go to Google and click the Desktop link, you'll be able to search your own computer as easily as you search the Web. The results will give you excerpts of the files it finds, and, unlike the Windows search, the results come lightning fast and the results will even include items in Outlook, if Outlook is open. As you add and delete files, the Desktop page will display the number of items it has indexed.
Try it for a while and let me know what you think, good or bad. Leave your comments on this posting.
POSTED BY Bob Flisser, co-author, www.nerdybooks.com AT 3:20 PM 0 comments
If you needed to insert a decorative bullet or a special text character in a Windows program, could you find it quickly? Some applications, like Microsoft Word, have common ones at your fingertips (note to self.....Self, use that as a post for another day), but there are thousands of other programs that don't.That's where the Windows Character Map comes in. It's a little program that shows every character of every font. Many common fonts that you use every day have a lot more characters available than what you can type on the keyboard. Some fonts, like Wingdings, only consist of symbol or bullet characters.
To use it:
- Select Start/Run (or press
+ R) , type charmap, then press Enter. - In the Character Map, select a font (like Wingdings), then select a symbol (like
). - Click Select, then click Copy.
- Go back to whichever program you were using (Alt + Tab), then paste (Ctrl + V).
In some programs, such as Pagemaker, you may have to select the symbol you just pasted and format it with the Wingdings font (or whichever other font you took the symbol from).POSTED BY Bob Flisser, co-author, www.nerdybooks.com AT 10:53 AM 2 comments
Here's a quick way to hide the currently selected column(s) in Excel: press Ctrl + 0 (zero). Want to see the column(s) again? Select the columns on either side of the hidden column(s), then press Ctrl + Shift + 0 (zero).You can do the same thing with rows. Press Ctrl + 9 to hide the currently selected row(s). To unhide, select the row(s) above and below the hidden row(s), then press Ctrl + Shift + 9.
Wanna freak someone out? Press Ctrl + A to select all, then quickly press Ctrl + 9, then Ctrl + 0. They'll see a blank, gray screen below the menu and formula bars. (You can always select all, then press Ctrl + Shift + 0 and Ctrl + Shift + 9 to put everything back, again.)
So did I use enough parenthese(s) in thi(s) post? I almost feel like a lawyer.
POSTED BY Bob Flisser, co-author, www.nerdybooks.com AT 7:20 PM 0 comments
When you open a Word document -- before you do anything else -- press Shift + F5 a few times. The cursor will go to the last, few locations where the document was edited. This is great when you were editing a document but forgot where you left off.Word only remembers a few of these locations with Shift + F5. So if you want it to remember more locations, permanently, use bookmarks: position the cursor at a location you want to remember, or select some text or a graphic, then press Ctrl + Shift + F5. Type a name for the bookmark (no spaces allowed), then press Enter. To go to one of those bookmarks later, press Ctrl + Shift + F5 , then double-click a bookmark in the list. Notice in the bookmark dialog that you can sort by location or by name.
Later, I'll show you a macro you can write that will let Word always remember one specific bookmark in the list. With one keystroke, you'll be able to set it, and with another keystroke, you'll be able to go to it, all w/o using the bookmark dialog.
POSTED BY Bob Flisser, co-author, www.nerdybooks.com AT 11:08 PM 2 comments
There are a few Word documents I use often, and they are in different folders, different drives and even on different computers. It was getting tiring hunting for any of them when I needed them. But no longer, since I discovered the Work menu.The purpose of the Work menu is to give you quick access to any documents. But by default, this menu isn't on the menu bar. Here's how you make it available:
To use it, open a document. Click the Work menu, then select Add to Work Menu. Close the file (Ctrl + F4). Next time you want to open that file, click the Work menu, then click the document's name. Unlike the file names on the bottom of the File menu, the names on the Work menu stay put.
To remove one, press Ctrl + Alt + - (minus key, near the Backspace key). The mouse pointer will turn into a big minus sign. Click the Work menu, then click the file name you want to remove. The document itself isn't affected; only the reference to it on the Work menu is deleted.
There isn't any way (that I know of) to change any of the entries on the Work menu. If a file's name or location changes, remove it, then add it back.
POSTED BY Bob Flisser, co-author, www.nerdybooks.com AT 4:26 PM 0 comments
Here's one of my favorite Excel tips. I showed it to several people today and they all loved it:Let's say you have a basic sheet where you want totals of columns and rows. For example, you have an expense sheet where you want to add types of expenses and you want to add the expenses in each month. Cells B:2, C:2, D:2 and E:2 are labeled January, February, March, and Total and A:3, A:4, A:5, A:6, A:7 and A:8 are labeled Telephone, Airfare, Parking, Meals, Postage and Total. Cells B:3 through D:7 show the dollars you spent.
Here's all you have to do: select all 15 numbers, plus the blank Total column and the blank Total row -- from B:3 through E:8. Then click the AutoSum tool or press Alt + = (equal sign). Bam! The last column and the last row will contain column totals and row totals, and you didn't have to write a single formula.
How long do your co-workers take to calculate this sheet?
POSTED BY Bob Flisser, co-author, www.nerdybooks.com AT 1:02 AM 0 comments
There's a great and simple Windows feature I've been using a lot in writing our Nerdy Books (www.nerdybooks.com) that you might find helpful. And you can use it in any version of Windows.Here's the scenario: each of us on the network shares our D drive with everyone else and the networked drives are mapped to letters on our own machines (so Wendy's D drive is my G drive, for example). To keep from getting too confused, we all have the same folder structure on each computer. If I'm in My Computer (
Step 3 immediately puts me in the g:\nerdybooks\word2003\graphics folder. This way, I don't have to start hunting for the folder manually. This also means I can switch back and forth between these two folders by clicking the Forward and Back buttons in My Computer (or press Alt + Right Arrow and Alt + Left Arrow).
If you don't see the Address bar in My Computer, display it by selecting View/Toolbars/Address Bar.
POSTED BY Bob Flisser, co-author, www.nerdybooks.com AT 10:37 AM 0 comments
A question I get asked every so often is, "I have a PowerPoint presentation that I'd like to distribute on a DVD, so anyone can play it in a home DVD player. How do I convert it?"Take a look at www.awesomebackgrounds.com. They have illustrated instructions with screen shots, and even a sample presentation you can use. You'll need a few special utilities, but they aren't expensive.
POSTED BY Bob Flisser, co-author, www.nerdybooks.com AT 7:10 PM 1 comments
If you use Outlook to send messages to the same people over and over, put those addresses on your menu for quick access. Here's how:- Right-click Outlook's toolbar, select Customize, then click the Commands tab.
- Scroll to the bottom of the Categories list on the left, then select New Menu. From the right side, drag New Menu from the Commands list onto the menu bar or any toolbar.
- Right-click the new menu, rename it (VIPs, for example), then press Enter.
- Click the File category in the Customize dialog box, then drag the Mail Message command on top of your new menu (don't let go of the mouse button, yet!). When the blank box drops down, drag the Mail Message icon onto it.
- Right-click the Mail Message icon in the menu, then give it a recipient's name (Professor Lester, for example).
- From the same pop-up menu, select Assign Hyperlink/Open. Click the E-mail Address icon, click in the E-mail address box, then type an e-mail address or the name of an existing distribution list (info@example.com or Poker Buddies). Click OK.
- Repeat steps 4-6 for each additional person. When finished, click Close.
To send a message to one of the people you just addded, just click the VIP menu, then select their name from the list. Outlook will create a new e-mail message with the person's name in the To field.POSTED BY Bob Flisser, co-author, www.nerdybooks.com AT 2:26 PM 0 comments
The other day, I was in a classroom with several other trainers, teaching demo classes on a few different topics. Almost everyone had a short PowerPoint presentation, and we had a video projector, which was projecting onto a white board.When it came time to write on the white board, the other trainers either ducked out of the way of the projection on the screen or walked over to the side of the board to write. But I had another idea: when I wanted to write on the board, I simply pressed B on the keyboard to black out the screen. When I was done, I erased the board and pressed B again to un-black-out the screen (i.e. show the slide again). If I wanted to, I could have pressed W to white out the screen, but I didn't have a pair of sunglasses handy.
Two other handy tips I used: at one point, I needed to go to a specific slide, and didn't want to keep paging up to get to it. But I knew it was slide #2, so I just pressed 2 on the keyboard to get there. After using slide 2, I wanted to finish my presentation and go to the ending "Thank You" slide. All I had to do was press End to get there.
POSTED BY Bob Flisser, co-author, www.nerdybooks.com AT 2:25 PM 1 comments
Welcome! You are looking at a new feature on www.nerdybooks.com -- a blog of software tips from me and a blog of environmental tips from my co-author, Wendy. (We're currently working on a Just the tips, man e-book of environmental tips, which we will distribute for free.)Do you already subscribe to our Tip-of-Day? If not, you can subscribe by sending a blank e-mail to subscribe-tod@nerdybooks.com and replying to the confirmation e-mail. The daily tips are sample pages from our books, and these blogs will give you a little more detail and will be more current.
So it seems the most appropriate topic to begin with is blogs themselves. If you're new to the concept of blogs and blogging, here it is: blog is short for Web log. It's an online journal, and you can find them on any topic you can possibly think of. Publishing a blog can be as easy as sending an e-mail and there are a number of services and programs you can use.
We are using Blogger (www.blogger.com), which is the free service that invented blogging. Signing up with Blogger, you can be a publisher within minutes and you don't even need a Web site and don't need to know anything about programming or Web design. If you want heavy-duty features, you might want to look at MovableType (www.movabletype.com), Manila (www.userland.com) and TypePad (www.typepad.com). They all have varying degrees of cost and speed, though they all have steeper learning curves than Blogger.
But wait, there's more! Do you see that little
Yes it sounds complicated, but it's easier than it looks. And the great thing about blogs and aggregators is that you don't have to worry about getting spammed, the way you can if you subscribe to e-mail newsletters and listserves.
POSTED BY Bob Flisser, co-author, www.nerdybooks.com AT 2:22 PM 0 comments