Some Computer Tips and Tricks

[WindowsExplorer]Configuring Windows Explorer on MS-Windows XP (as far back as Windows 2000 or even Windows 98)
(Mar 26, 27, 2006)
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To watch the files that you have on your Windows PC (Windows 95 or later, especially the latest, Windows XP), open "Windows Explorer" (Right-click on the Windows Start button and select "Explore") and size it to take up most of the right half of your computer screen. In it, click on the "View" menu and select "Details" to see file names, sizes, types, and dates modified. To see more information about files, click on the "Tools" menu and select "Folder Options". Click the "View" tab and select "Show hidden files and folders". De-select "Hide extensions for known file types" -- doing that latter can make things a lot less confusing. Finally, click "Apply to All Folders".

Also, setting "Folders" for the left pane helps you see your computer's directory structure. Click the "Folders" button in the "Standard Buttons" toolbar. To get that toolbar, access the "View" menu at the top, select "Toolbars" and make sure "Standard Buttons" is checked. A couple of other good bars to turn on are "View" - Status Bar, which gives information about the files being viewed and selected, and "View" - Toolbars - Address Bar which shows the current directory selected (watch that when you turn it on because you may have to drag it over from the right to see it -- this can get very confusing if misconfigured).
I open many files by dragging and dropping them from Explorer into whatever program I want to use, and I use "Alt-tab" a lot to move between windows instead of using the "desktop". I create folders on my desktop to contain and sort my program icons, and switch between them using "Alt-tab" or the task bar. In addition, the desktop is available as the topmost "directory" in Explorer, and you can scroll up to that if you have "Folders" selected.

When viewing HTML files in Netscape ver 7.2, you can click File (menu) - Edit Page, and see all the "Anchors" (litttle yellow squares containing pictures of anchors). These are used by appending the "#" sign to the end of the URL and adding the anchor name. Of course there's not much point in saving the page because you won't change it on the web; you might only want to save the page for yourself (might make a cleaner save, of just that page, as opposed to "File - Save As", which saves images linked-to, as well). Close the page when desired or keep it open for reference.

Printing Powerpoint slides or viewgraphs
Using the printer properties seems to produce larger slides on the page when printing multiple slides per page than does the program's "number of slides per page" selection. However, you are typically then charged for the number of pages you send to the printer, even if it puts them all on one sheet of paper.
To work around this, if you have Adobe Acrobat PDF Creator, which the computers in Engineering have, you can even print PDF files to PDF Creator and select the number of pages per sheet to print in "printer properties". This is useful when Powerpoint slides have already been "printed" to PDF files at the rate of one slide per page.
Next, double-sided printing can save you a lot of space in your binder. You can take your new PDF file of multiple pages per sheet and print the odd pages and the even pages separately. Before printing the even pages, put the odd pages that were printed back in the printer. The Lexmark printer in Engineering prints on the bottom sides of the pages with the tops of the print image printed towards the user as the user installs the paper in the tray (you can deduce this by making a mark on a corner of the top blank page in the tray before printing). Thus you can just drop the printed stack back in the tray (tops of pages toward you) without having to reshuffle any pages. The even pages will print pg 2 on the back of pg 1, pg 4 on the back of pg 3, etc.
This can save you a lot of money and a lot of space in your binder. The only difficulty is that sometimes you get paper jams because the paper is curled. Straighten it out a bit before putting it back in. If you get a jam, you can usually pull the paper out gently without tearing it, straighten it out (pull it across the edge of a desk) and put it back in the tray (press the green "Go" button) and it usually prints successfully.
Another thing is that sometimes the file save dialog takes a long time to appear after you have done print to "PDF Create". Sometimes if you make a temp file using Notepad and print that to "PDF Create", it encourages the first file save dialog to appear. If you have to create a PDF file out of a temp file, you can just delete the latter.

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Updated Apr 9, 2006
Posted Thurs June 2, 2005