UNHCE Information Technology & Distance Education Blog: March 2004 Archives

When creating PDF documents for the web it is important to remember to add key descriptive elements to the document properties. Doing so enhances the chances of users finding your information via search engines. To enter key descriptive elements:
1. Open the PDF file
2. Left Click on "File" (located in the upper left corner)
3. Select "Document Info" and then select "Summary" or "General" (depending on your version of Acrobat) You will see the following dialog boxes: Title, Subject, Author and Keywords.
Title: The title will default to whatever the original file was named (ex: staff01.doc, dtfcitminutes.doc, etc.) which could mean little or nothing to the viewer when it shows up in a search. By entering a title, in the PDF title field it will appear in the search results instead of the filename. Example: Staff Roster 2001 instead of staff01.doc and Communications/Technology Team Meeting Minutes 12/12/01 instead of dtfcitminutes.doc.

Subject: Enter a brief description of the subject. Author: The author will default to the computer/username of the person who entered the document . If necessary, change the name to the true author.

Keywords: By adding keywords you enhance the ability of a search engine to find your document. Enter as many keywords as you wish, separated by commas.

Microsoft Office XP programs have a useful new feature for documents being edited by several people. The Track Changes tool, located under the Tools Menu at the top of the toolbar in all Office XP documents will underline newly added information, and create dialogue boxes visible only in the editing stages, tracking any word and formatting changes, as well as keeping track of deleted text.

By selecting the “Track Changes” option in the Tools menu, an editing toolbar will appear with icons for “Previous”, “Next”, “Accept Changes”, and “Reject Changes”, shown as pieces of yellow “scrap” paper with various symbols indicating which tool is represented (a red x lies across the yellow sheet for rejecting a change, for example). You also have the option of adding notes, both written and audio, to your document to be viewed by whomever else is working on the edits, giving you the option of making editorial suggestions, or explaining why you have rejected a particular change.

The toolbar also includes a “Review Pane” icon which looks like a split window with a heavy blue arrow pointing upward which brings up a dialogue box at the bottom of the screen that notes all changes in a narrative fashion, separating changes by the nature of the change, “Inserted” or “Header and Footer Changes”, for example.

As the document is edited, the contributors can accept and reject changes in an item-by-item manner or select “Accept all changes” or “Reject all changes” from the accept or reject dropdown menus to finalize edits or send them back to the drawing board.

Check out http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;enus;q305216 for additional information on Track Changes.

Creating a filter in Eudora
There are a couple of different ways to create a message filter in Eudora. These instructions refer to the manual method as that is the most straightforward. Making filters automatically can easily result in your filtering unintended messages. For the example we will create a filter that will send messages to a junk mailbox if they contain the words turkey or stuffing in any of the message headers.

1. In Eudora go to the Tools menu and down to Filters. In the dialog box, click on the New button in the lower left-hand pane.

2. In the Match section (upper right-hand pane) click on Incoming. Then, using the pull-down menu make a selection in the Header box. Using will catch all headers, even those that are hidden.

3. The next selection box defaults to contains. This is the most common kind of filter, but there are other selections there that you can use to customize your filter.

4. In the field to the right of contains, enter the word to filter - turkey for our example.

5. If the word turkey were our only filter criteria, we would leave the next field set to ignore. Since we also want to catch the word stuffing, we would change this field to say or. Then, select in the next box and enter stuffing in the box to the right of contains.

6. In the Action box (lower right-hand pane) set the Action to Transfer to - A button will appear to the right that defaults to the In mailbox - Click right on the In button and go to New in the menu. The New Mailbox window will appear. Type in Junk for the name of the mailbox and click OK. Do not put a check in the box for "Make it a Folder".

7. Go to the File menu and click Save.

You have just created a filter that will automatically send any email with turkey or stuffing in any of its headers straight to your Junk mailbox. It is safer to direct your filtered mail to a mailbox other than Trash so that you do not automatically delete all the messages in there. This affords you the opportunity to review the mail that has been trapped by the filter before you dump it, just in case you've caught something that was legitimate.

One final caution - do not attempt to setup a filter for the phrase xxx using the option . Often xxx is used internally in headers as a result of timing errors, routing options, etc. If you would like to filter out this phrase, please limit it to the Subject header.

Did you know that you can send a file as an attachment in Eudora when you are in WordPerfect? Follow these easy steps.

1. Open WordPerfect and find the file you wish to attach in the "File" menu (the first key in the top left of the menu bar). Open the file you wish to attach. If you have just created a file and want to send it, you must save it first.
2. Also under file, choose the "Send to" selection about half way down the menu.
3. One of the choices under "Send To" is "Eudora". Click on that.
4. Eudora will be opened and the file that you were in will be listed as an attachment!
5. Just address and write your email as you would normally!

How often have you been in WordPerfect, or even one of the other word processing programs, and find that no matter what you do the document, it seems to have a mind of its own? Perhaps you tell it to underline or bold a line and it flatly refuses. Or even worse, the computer does more than you asked for and you are stuck trying to reverse what it has liberally opted to do. One of the most effective ways of troubleshooting your uncooperative document is to use the "reveal codes" option in WordPerfect to clean up the text. (Sorry Word users there is no corresponding option, though it is possible to import a Word document into WordPerfect and then clean it up. After you are done, you can then export it to Word, or keep it as a WordPerfect file and save an extra step if you need to update or change the file at a later date). To activate the Reveal Codes option, select this menu choice under the View menu in the upper left of the WordPerfect screen. You will now be able to view and modify the various formatting and function codes that instruct your document to perform functions at certain locations.

Although working in the reveal codes window does seem a little frightening at first, it really is very easy. The first thing to remember is that all of the text in your document is in the reveal codes window along with the formatting codes. You can enter and delete text in the window. In fact, you can do anything in the codes window that you can do in the normal view window. For instance, the Bold function is represented as two small boxes with arrows (what we call "tags") with the word "bold" in them. The underline command shows an "und" in the tag box. The tag pointing to the right is the beginning tag and the one pointing to the left is the end tag. The tags indicate that the commands effect whatever text falls between them. By deleting the beginning tag you effectively delete that action. Spaces, punctuation and tab markers are also visible in this window, and are far easier to modify or eliminate when faced with a formatting problem. Once you have a sense of what the codes mean, you will surely find the reveal codes option to be a helpful tool in formatting your work for a desirable finished product. One last tip, when saving your document, it is helpful to "clean up" unnecessary codes, as this not only eliminates any current problems, but also saves against future problems when returning to the file at a later date.

Office XP lets you dock the Office Clipboard in the Windows taskbar so that you can use it with any application. As long as the Office Clipboard remains open in the taskbar, users can cut or copy multiple items from any file and paste one--or all of them at once--into any Office application.

For example, suppose you found three items on the Web that you want to save to a Word document. Using the system Clipboard you would need to copy and paste each item individually, but that's unnecessary when you use the Office Clipboard.

Follow these steps to cut and paste between applications:

1. In Word XP, press [Ctrl]C twice to dock the Office Clipboard icon in the status section of the Windows taskbar.

2. Minimize Word on the desktop.

3. Open Internet Explorer and copy the first item. The following message is displayed next to the Clipboard icon: "1 of 24 - Clipboard item collected."

4. Continue copying items. As each item is copied, Office displays a message indicating the number of the item on the clipboard.

5. Open the Word document into which you want to paste the items and, in the taskbar, double-click the Clipboard icon to display the task pane containing the items copied to the Clipboard.

6. In the Word document, position the cursor where you want the copied items to appear. 7. Click Paste All to paste all items at once. To paste one item at a time, position the cursor where you want the item to appear in the document, and double-click the desired item in the task pane.

Tip #1:

Remove Formatting To remove style formatting from text, highlight the text and press Ctrl + Q to remove a style's paragraph formatting or Ctrl + spacebar to remove a style's character formatting.

Tip #2: Use Format Painter You can use the Format Painter to apply the same formatting to multiple sections of a document. First, copy the text with the character formatting you want to replicate (copy the entire paragraph, including the ending paragraph mark, if you want to copy paragraph format properties), then double-click on the Format Painter icon. Next, select the text you want to apply your format to, repeating until all text has been formatted. When you're done, press the Esc key to disengage the Format Painter.

Tip #3: Copying Formats with the Keyboard To copy text formatting from another position, you can use the Format Painter (see Tip #2). Alternatively, select the text with the format you want to copy and press Ctrl + Shift + C, then select the text to receive this formatting and press Ctrl + Shift + V. (An easy way to remember these shortcuts is that they are the keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste, but with the addition of the Shift key.) You can continue to press Ctrl + Shift + V to multiple sections of your document.

The In, Out, and Trash mailboxes are the primary mailboxes in Eudora. These mailboxes are loaded into memory upon startup of Eudora - so if they get excessively large, you risk causing slowdowns in Eudora and you may increase the chances of Data corruption. It is a good practice to routinely Empty Trash and to transfer old messages from the In and Out boxes to other mailboxes in Eudora.

Most importantly, remember to make regular backups of all your important data.

Here are some shortcuts to dialog boxes and functionality you can invoke by double-clicking your mouse:

1. Open the Page Setup dialog box, which provides access to margin, paper size and orientation (portrait and landscape), and layout options (section start, header/footer control) by double-clicking on the ruler bar. (If the ruler isn't shown, use the View/Ruler command.) Note: If you do not have a printer installed, the Page Setup dialog box may not appear. (Alternative: Use the File/Page Setup command.)

2. Double-click "TRK" in the status bar at the bottom of the work area to turn Track Changes on. This feature triggers Word to use a different color when displaying your changes, so the document's author can easily spot your work. (Alternative: use the Tools/Track Changes command.)

3. Double-click in the location information in the status bar (any spot within the area that shows the page number, section number, vertical position, line number, and column number of the blinking insertion bar) to open the Go To menu. By default, the dialog box is ready with "Go to Page" (you enter the page number). The tabbed dialog box also provides access to Find as well as Find and Replace commands. (Alternative: Press F5, Ctrl+G, or use the Edit/Go To command.)

4. Double-click in any empty area surrounding the top toolbar to open the Customize dialog box to tailor the toolbar to your liking. (Alternative: Right-click in the same area and choose Customize.)

5. Double-click on the speller icon in the status bar to begin the spelling checker. (Alternative: Tools/Spelling and Grammar menu command, or press F7.)

6. Double-click on the splitter bar (just above the up- pointing arrow in the vertical scrollbar) to open two equal- sized panes for the same document. This allows you to edit two different areas of the same document. (Tip: Double- click on the border between the two panes to return to a single-pane view.) (Alternative: Window/Split menu command.) 7. Select a word by double-clicking it. (Triple-click to select the current paragraph.)

RESIZING COLUMNS

By selecting any cell in a table, you can, of course, drag the big blocks in the ruler to the left or right to change the column widths.

Here are some mouse/keyboard shortcuts you may also want to try.
1. Press Alt and drag the right border of a column and the column won't snap to a point on the ruler. That is, when you move the column border, it doesn't automatically snap to a division on the ruler (such as 1/10 of an inch). Note that as you resize the selected column, the column to its immediate right is also changed by a like amount, in the opposite direction. (Thus, if you make the selected cell smaller, the cell to its right is made larger.) Also note that you'll be able to precisely size the column width: the ruler shows the exact width of each column.
2. Press Shift as you click and drag the right border of a column to resize only the selected column. If you make the column smaller (larger), the table as a whole becomes narrower (wider). (If you also press Alt at the same time, you can precisely position the column width -- the ruler shows each column's dimension.)
3. Press Ctrl and drag the right border of a column to resize the selected column and resize all columns to the right of that column by the same amount. If you make the column smaller by a quarter of an inch, for example, all columns to the right are made narrower by a quarter of an inch. (If you also press Alt at the same time, you can precisely position the column width -- the ruler shows each column's dimension.)
4. Press Ctrl + Shift and drag the column's right border and the column's width is changed. All cells to the right of the selected cells are automatically resized so they are all the same width. (That is, the space to the right of the selected column is apportioned evenly among the remaining columns.) (If you also press Alt at the same time, you can precisely position the column width -- the ruler shows each column's dimension.)

To make all columns the same size, select the entire table (or just select the columns you want to be the same width). Choose Table/AutoFit, then Distribute Columns Evenly. Note: Only those rows selected will be affected. Therefore, to change all cells in all columns in a table, be sure you first select the entire table.
RESIZING ROWS

Click on and drag the bottom border of any row to resize it. There are no shortcuts for resizing rows above or below the current row, as there are for resizing columns.

*Excel does provide a command to automatically resize all row heights to the same size: select at least one cell in each of the rows you want to change, then use the Table/AutoFit command from the main menu, then Distribute Rows Evenly. The total height of all selected rows will be divided evenly among the selected rows.

SELECTING CELLS

Select a cell: Move to the cell (or click on it), then Ctrl + Left click on it, or double-click on it. Note: if the cell is not the contents; for instance, the cell contains left-aligned text "abc", you must click anywhere on those letters within the cell. Clicking to the right of the text (the blank area of the cell) selects nothing.

Select a column: Alt + click any cell in the desired column. If you drag the mouse to the left or right, you'll select multiple contiguous columns. (You don't have to hold down the Alt key as you drag the mouse.)

Select a table: Select any cell. Excel displays a box icon in the upper-left corner of the table with a four-headed arrow inside. Click once on this box icon to select the entire table. Click the four-headed box icon again and Word opens the Table Properties dialog box. *Note: You can also hold down Alt and double-click any cell in the table. However, I've always had mixed results with this shortcut.

UNDOCUMENTED CELL FORMATTING SHORTCUT

Double-click in the center of an empty cell to change the alignment to Center (from Left).

ADDING AUTOMATIC ROW NUMBERS

To add automatically updated row numbers to a table, select the cells where you want the numbers (that's usually the leftmost column. You can select the entire column or just the cells where you want the numbering. Click the Numbering button (the one with

1 --
2 --
3 --
on it) on the Formatting toolbar. If you move the row, or insert or delete a row within this row range, the row number is updated automatically.

1. If your menus only show the most recently used commands, display all commands by selecting Tools/Customize, choosing the Options tab, and checking the ""Always show full menus"" option.
2. If you like abbreviated menus, show the full menu by leaving the drop-down menus displayed for at least 6 seconds. Turn on this feature by selecting Tools/Customize, choosing the Options tab, and un-checking the ""Always show full menus"" option checking the "Show full menus after a short delay" option.
3. You can also display the full menus by clicking the down-pointing double arrows at the end of the menu list or by double-clicking the main menu options (for example, double-clicking the File, Edit, View, Insert, etc., menu options in Word).
4. In Word and Excel, you can close all open documents at once. Hold down the Shift key as you click on the File command. The Close command changes to Close All. (Note: you'll have to use your mouse to select the File command; pressing Alt-F doesn't work.)

Print on a different paper size
You can use Page Setup to change the paper size for an existing document, but Word doesn't automatically fit each page to the new size. You may need to fit the pages manually by adjusting the document's page breaks and layout. With Word's Zoom feature, you can print a document on a different paper size without making permanent adjustments to the layout.

Zoom automatically scales each page of the document to fit the new paper size. For example, to print an 8 1/2 by 11 inch letter-sized document on A5 (148 x 210 mm) paper, follow these steps:
1. Go to File | Print.
2. Click the Scale To Paper Size drop-down list under Zoom, and select A5.
3. Make any other print selections, and click OK.
Zoom automatically scales the document's fonts, graphics, and margins to print on the smaller A5 paper, while retaining all of the original document's page layout and page break settings.

The problem: After WP10 is initially installed, the user tries to print to the manual feed tray by selecting print, and then modifying the printer properties to print to the manual feed tray. However, the page prints from the default tray.

The solution: WordPerfect 10 handles tray assignment to the printer differently than did WordPerfect 8. In order to print to the manual feed tray, the setting needs to be adjusted in the page setup options. Here are the step-by-step directions to configure a page definiton to use the manual feed tray:

1. From the menu, choose File > Page Setup.

2. Make sure the drop-down box says "Printer page types." Select "Letter" in the box listing page types and click Add. (You can do this for other page types also.)

3. A new window will open. Enter a name for the page setup (like, "Letter - Manual") and select Manual Feed Tray from the source drop-down box.

4. Click OK.

5. Now, when you want to print to manual feed, apply the page setup you just created to the appropriate page(s) by going to File > Page Setup and selecting the type you want. For example, you could apply the page setup to the first page of a document and leave the rest as automatic feed (this allows you to print the first page on letterhead, and the rest to plain paper.)

(For more tips, visit the Tips section of the ITDE website.

Creating a filter in Eudora
There are a couple of different ways to create a message filter in Eudora. These instructions refer to the manual method as that is the most straightforward. Making filters automatically can easily result in your filtering unintended messages. For the example we will create a filter that will send messages to a junk mailbox if they contain the words turkey or stuffing in any of the message headers.

1. In Eudora go to the Tools menu and down to Filters. In the dialog box, click on the New button in the lower left-hand pane.

2. In the Match section (upper right-hand pane) click on Incoming. Then, using the pull-down menu make a selection in the Header box. Using will catch all headers, even those that are hidden.

3. The next selection box defaults to contains. This is the most common kind of filter, but there are other selections there that you can use to customize your filter.

4. In the field to the right of contains, enter the word to filter - turkey for our example.

5. If the word turkey were our only filter criteria, we would leave the next field set to ignore. Since we also want to catch the word stuffing, we would change this field to say or. Then, select in the next box and enter stuffing in the box to the right of contains.

6. In the Action box (lower right-hand pane) set the Action to Transfer to - A button will appear to the right that defaults to the In mailbox - Click right on the In button and go to New in the menu. The New Mailbox window will appear. Type in Junk for the name of the mailbox and click OK. Do not put a check in the box for "Make it a Folder".

7. Go to the File menu and click Save.

You have just created a filter that will automatically send any email with turkey or stuffing in any of its headers straight to your Junk mailbox. It is safer to direct your filtered mail to a mailbox other than Trash so that you do not automatically delete all the messages in there. This affords you the opportunity to review the mail that has been trapped by the filter before you dump it, just in case you've caught something that was legitimate.

One final caution - do not attempt to setup a filter for the phrase xxx using the option . Often xxx is used internally in headers as a result of timing errors, routing options, etc. If you would like to filter out this phrase, please limit it to the Subject header.

Top of page

If you routinely adjust column widths to fit table contents, you can save time by using Word's AutoFit feature to adjust them automatically. To activate the AutoFit feature, click inside the table, and go to Table | AutoFit | AutoFit To Contents.

Once you've activated AutoFit, all column widths will adjust to fit the contents of the cells. Word automatically adjusts all columns in the table as you type within the cells.

To adjust the width of a single column to fit its contents without activating the AutoFit feature, move your pointer along the column's right boundary until it becomes a double-arrow, and then double-click.

To cycle through three alternative text cases, select the text you want to change, then press Shift + F3. Word cycles through three text cases: all upper case, all lower case, and sentence case (the first letter of the selected text is capitalized).

If you highlight the text and then use the menu command Format > Change Case, there are two more options, toggle case and title case (the first letter of every word in your selection is capitalized).

Suppressing addresses when sending multi-recipient emails:

Many people become annoyed when they receive an email that lists the addresses of multiple recipients, including their own. One way that senders sometimes try to suppress these addresses is to list the majority of the recipients in the BCC: field (blind carbon copy). This will take care of the problem, but there is an easier way.

First, you need to create a list of intended recipients in your address book. Simply create a new Nickname in your address book by selecting "New" at the bottom of the screen. (do NOT add it to the Staff Listing or Distribution Lists address books as these files are overwritten each time you update your address book). For the sake of this example, we will call the Nickname My Friends. Enter all recipient addresses on the Address tab, one per line.

Once you have entered all of the recipient addresses, click on the Info tab for the Nickname. Enter a name for the list in the Name field. You can use the same name that you used for the Nickname or enter something different. The name that you enter on the Info tab is the one that the recipients are going to see.
For this example, we will enter the name Buds.

Now, when you send a message to My Friends the only thing that the recipients will see in the To: field is Buds:; If the name that you entered on the Info tab contains a space, such as My Buds, then the name will be quoted in the To: field. ("My Buds";:) When you are composing the message you may see all of the addresses in the To: field but your recipients will not. If you have the "Automatically expand nicknames" box checked in your Miscellaneous Options, you will see all the addresses.

If advertisements are opening on your computer in a window titled Messenger Service, it may indicate that your system is not secure. You should enable the Internet Connection Firewall and disable the Messenger Service in Windows XP to help protect your computer from unwanted spam and other potential threats.
The Messenger Service was originally designed for use by system administrators to notify Windows users about their networks. However, some advertisers have started using this service to send information via the Internet, and these messages could be used maliciously to distribute a
First, make sure that your system is protected by an Internet firewall and that you've followed the steps to Protect Your PC. Disabling the Messenger Service without using a firewall will prevent the unwanted spam, but will not protect your computer from intruders.
To disable the Messenger Service in Windows XP (Caution: If your computer is part of a corporate network, talk to your system administrator before taking this action.)
1. Click Start and then click Control Panel.
2. Click Performance and Maintenance. (If you do not see the Performance and Maintenance icon, you may be using Classic View. You can skip to step 3 below, but you must double-click Administrative Tools.)
3. Click Administrative Tools.
4. Double-click Services as shown in Figure 1 above..
5. Double-click Messenger.
6. In the Startup type list, choose Disabled as shown in Figure 2 below.
7. Click Stop, and then click OK.

One of the nicest features of Office XP is the ability to copy multiple clips to the clipboard without erasing the previous one. You can use this functionality outside of Office too:

USE THE OFFICE CLIPBOARD WITH OTHER APPLICATIONS
Office XP lets you dock the Office Clipboard in the Windows taskbar so that you can use it with any application. As long as the Office Clipboard remains open in the taskbar, users can cut or copy multiple items from any file and paste one--or all of them at once--into any Office application.

For example, suppose you found three items on the Web that you want to save to a Word document. Using the system Clipboard you would need to copy and paste each item individually, but that's unnecessary when you use the Office Clipboard.

Follow these steps to cut and paste between applications:
1. In Word XP, press [Ctrl]C twice to dock the Office Clipboard icon in the status section of the Windows taskbar.
2. Minimize Word on the desktop.
3. Open Internet Explorer and copy the first item. The following message is displayed next to the Clipboard icon: "1 of 24 - Clipboard item collected."
4. Continue copying items. As each item is copied, Office displays a message indicating the number of the item on the clipboard.
5. Open the Word document into which you want to paste the items and, in the taskbar, double-click the Clipboard icon to display the task pane containing the items copied to the Clipboard.
6. In the Word document, position the cursor where you want the copied items to appear. 7. Click Paste All to paste all items at once. To paste one item at a time, position the cursor where you want the item to appear in the document, and double-click the desired item in the task pane.

Netscape 7.1
Open the Netscape browser.
Go to Edit. Choose Preferences.
Double click on Advanced (listed on the left hand side of the Preferences box under Categories) to produce a dropdown menu.

Click on Cache to open the cache options menu (on the right side of the Preferences box). Double click on Clear Cache.

Hit Ok.
Restart Netscape to cache clear.

Netscape 7.0
Open the Netscape browser.
Go to Edit. Choose Preferences.
Double click on Advanced (listed on the left hand side of the Preferences box under Categories) to produce a dropdown menu.

Click on Cache to open the cache options menu (on the right side of the Preferences box).

*Note: there are two areas to clear in Netscape 7.0.

As you have probably all noticed, our offices have recently been inundated by a number of email viruses. For this reason, it is extremely important that you keep your virus definitions current, to help catch the new variants of these viruses.

However, just having anti-virus software and keeping it up to date is not sufficient to prevent infection. You, the user, have a positive responsibility to not open any suspicious attachments, even if they are not detected as a virus or come from a familiar source. Most of the current viruses use the address book from the infected computer for both the To: and From: addresses in the email. That means that the email will appear to be coming from someone you know, and also that you may receive bounced messages, saying that you sent out a virus.

What should you do? Read the message. Does it sound like a message that the "sender" would compose? Does the file name look strange? Are you expecting a file from that particular sender?

Most of the automated virus messages are general in nature and often contain misspellings and poor grammar. If there is any doubt, call the sender and ask if they send you the attachment. Err on the side of caution, as once you're infected, your computer starts sending out email to try to dupe other people in your address book.

Have you ever wanted to develop a document or template around a design you've seen, but you weren't quite sure how to replicate the formatting? You can obtain formatting information by pressing [Shift][F1].

This combination attaches a question mark to your mouse pointer. When you click a section of text, Word 2000 opens a bubble that displays both the paragraph and font formatting applied to the text. To turn off this feature, press [Esc]. (In Word XP, this combination opens the Reveal Formatting task pane.)

In addition to the applied font and paragraph formatting, there may still be some hidden characters that affect the look of a document. To display hidden characters such as extra line spaces, click the Show/Hide button on the Standard Toolbar.