Look down at the bottom of your screen. Is Internet Explorer displaying the status bar? It has an annoying habit of disappearing. This is an old problem, and I can't figure out why, with all Microsoft's resources and talent, they haven't been able to fix this one problem.
If your status bar has been disappearing, maybe these steps will help:
- With only one IE window open, select View/Status Bar.
- Right-click the toolbar and select Lock the Toolbars.
- Ctrl + click the Close button in the upper right.
- Open My Computer (
+ E), then select View/Status Bar. - Right-click the toolbar, then select Lock the Toolbars.
- Select Tools/Folder Options/View.
- Click Apply to all folders.
- Ctrl + click the Close button in the upper right.
- Open Internet Explorer, right-click a link and select Open in New Window from the pop-up menu.
- The status bar should (hopefully) be there.
Regardless which version of Word you use, there are two standard settings you probably want to change for the better: font and margins. Word's default font is Times New Roman 12 points, which is a big, ugly font if there ever was one, and Word's default left and right margins are 1.25", which are too wide. Fortunately, it takes just a few steps to start getting a nicer font and thinner margins in all new documents you create.To choose a different default font:
To make the default left and right margins 1" wide:
POSTED BY Bob Flisser, co-author, www.nerdybooks.com AT 1:14 PM 0 comments
If you ever tried customizing Outlook screens, you know it isn't difficult. With any "item" screen open -- Contact, Message, Appointment, etc. -- all you have to do is select Tools/Forms/Design This Form. Make the changes you want, then select Tools/Forms/Publish Form to make it available. OK, it can get more complicated than that, if you want to have your own database of forms and make wholesale changes to existing items, but that's the gist of it.Since many of my business contacts are vendors and service providers, I added three fields to the first pane of the Contacts screen in Outlook 2000 and 2002: Account number, User ID and Password. Those showed up next to the Name and Address fields.
When I upgraded to Microsoft Office 2003, I kept my Outlook 2002 database (.pst file), and everything worked just fine and my 3 custom fields were there. But the Contacts screen was still the old style, held over from the previous versions. Since I do Outlook training (and yes, we do have an Outlook book in production), I wanted to use the newer Contacts screen, but with my 3 customized fields.
But when I selected Tools/Forms/Design This Form, it switched over and showed me the design mode of the old format screen! I deleted all vestiges of my custom form (I didn't lose any data, and the 3 fields were still held in User Field 1, 2 and 3, though I now have to click the All Fields tab and choose Miscellaneous Fields from the drop-down list to see them), but that still didn't work. I saw an article in a newsgroup that said to update to Office XP Service Pack 1. I did, but still no luck.
This morning, I saw another article saying that "No, you can't modify this screen, period." That's a terrible oversight on Microsoft's part, if you ask me (read: bug). For me it isn't a huge deal, but some companies heavily depend on customized Outlook forms.
POSTED BY Bob Flisser, co-author, www.nerdybooks.com AT 1:06 PM 0 comments
You probably get plenty of commercial e-mails that have regular Web pages in them, rather than plain text. Most of these are sent out using special bulk-mail software, but what if you want to send just one or two, yourself?
It's easy to do, but most people don't know the capability is built in to Internet Explorer: select File/Send/Page by E-mail. If you're using MAPI-compliant e-mail software (like Outlook or Outlook Express), a new message will open up with the Web page in it. All you have to do is address it, type a subject, then send.
If you create a Web page to send by e-mail, you first might want to upload the graphics to your Web server and make all links to the graphics absolute, rather than leaving the graphics on your own computer and hoping they get embedded in the message. Not every e-mail system will recognize embedded graphics.
POSTED BY Bob Flisser, co-author, www.nerdybooks.com AT 1:27 PM 1 comments
How many times do you copy normal-looking text from one application, and when you paste it into another, the formatting gets funky? It happens to me a lot in Outlook, when copying part of an e-mail message and pasting it into a contact item or appointment item. Or copying from almost anywhere and pasting into an e-mail.If you're pasting into a sophisticated application like Word, there's an easy way to let the text pick up the destination's formatting. Either choose it from the SmartTag that pops up (in Word 2002 and 2003), or do it by selecting Edit/Paste Special. Since I do that often, I wrote a macro for it. I'll post it later, so remind me.
But what if you're pasting text into a window (like Outlook, as we said before) where you don't have that option? It's good, old-fashioned Notepad to the rescue. Here's all you gotta do:
The reason this works is that Notepad handles only text; it has no capability to apply formatting. When you paste into it, the formatting gets stripped out (if you paste text that has graphics mixed in, it will strip out the graphics, too). When you paste into your second program (Outlook calendar, for example), it goes in as default text, with default formatting.
I use this tip several times a day.
POSTED BY Bob Flisser, co-author, www.nerdybooks.com AT 4:33 PM 1 comments
For what reason I cannot understand, Microsoft screwed up the Ctrl + A (Select All) shortcut in Excel 2003. (Maybe they needed another change to justify coming out with the new version.)It used to be that pressing Ctrl + A would select all 16.7 million cells on the worksheet (unless you used the Protect Worksheet feature to prevent it). But now, Ctrl + A selects the current region -- a contiguous area of cells that have something in them. There was no need for Microsoft to do this, since the Ctrl + * (asterisk) shortcut already did this, and still does.
There are three workarounds:
POSTED BY Bob Flisser, co-author, www.nerdybooks.com AT 3:24 PM 3 comments