Quick Keyboard Shortcuts

I thought I would add a tip on doing some keyboard shortcuts, instead of having to use the mouse (or if your mouse stopped working).

CTRL = Control Key
ESC = Escape Key
TAB =  Tab Key
ALT = Alt Key

(CTRL+ESC) - This is a shortcut for the Start Menu or "the orb" on the bottom left of the screen
(Holding ALT while pressing TAB) - This scrolls through open programs on your computer
F5 - This refreshes web pages

That is all I have for now.

"I wish I knew how to..."

What kinds of things did you always want to do on the computer but you didn't know how to do it?  Do you have a problem with your computer or software and don't know how to fix it?  Or did you need help with something that you are trying to do, like with e-mail or excel?

I am writing this blog post to give you the chance to ask me for help on something or to give you a tip on something specific that you have a problem with.  Maybe your problem or tip will be shown on the next post.

If you wanted to share a computer tip of your own, that would be great too!  I love to learn new things and the computer world pretty much changes every single day.  

One tip before I leave this post: the HOME key on the keyboard will bring you to the beginning of a line when you are typing.  The END key on the keyboard will bring you to the very end of a line.  Have a wonderful day!

Change Date, Time, and Time Zone

Note: This tip is being done on Microsoft Windows 7.  Microsoft Windows Vista is very similar to this.

If somehow you are seeing the wrong date or time on your computer and cannot remember how to change the settings, here is how you do it.

Find the date and time on the bottom right of the screen and click on it.  You will see something like this:

Click on "Change date and time settings" to change either the date and time or the time zone.

Click on "Change date and time" to change either the date or the time or both.  You can click on "Change time zone" to change the time zone.

The screen above is where you can change the date and/or the time.  If you don't want to change it, click on the Cancel button.  Otherwise, clicking on the OK button will update the date and time to what you changed it to.

The screen shown above is where you can change the time zone.  I am in Minnesota, so I am in the Central time zone.  Sometimes you can have the wrong time just by not having the correct time zone.  The west coast is the Pacific time zone, then there is the Mountain Time Zone (Colorado is a state in this time zone).  After that, is the Central time zone, and then the Eastern time zone.  

Unable to open a Microsoft Office 2007 file

If you have ever come across an Excel file or a Word file from someone in an e-mail and you were unable to open it.  A good reason for this is that you do not have Microsoft Office 2007 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) installed on your system and you have an old version like Microsoft Office 2003 or earlier.

You can do 1 of 3 things to be able to open the file:
      1) Ask the sender of the e-mail to resend the file in an older format.  You can tell if a file is saved with the
          new format because an extra "x" will be attached at the end of the file.  (e.x. Excel2007.xlsx versus
          Excel2003.xls)
     2) Get a copy of Microsoft Office 2007 and install it
     3) Install the Microsoft Compatibility Pack from Microsoft

If you don't want to have someone reformat an Excel or Word file every time or you don't have the money to get a copy of Microsoft Office 2007, then the third option would be your best option.

The Microsoft Compatibility Pack can be downloaded here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&displaylang=en.  This gives you the ability to open Microsoft Office 2007 files while having an older version of Office, like Office XP or Office 2003.  Click on the Download button after clicking on the link at the installation will follow you through it.

Turning off the touchpad on a laptop computer

Some people like to use an external mouse on their laptop rather than having to deal with the touchpad or that little blue circle on the keyboard to move the cursor around the screen.  On a Dell laptop, you can hit the Function key and then F7 to stop the touchpad from working while you have an external mouse connected. 

You can get to your touchpad settings by going into your Control Panel and then go to Mouse.  It might also be on the bottom right of your screen on your taskbar.  After you click the Mouse option in the Control Panel, click on the touchpad picture to get to the options screen for the touchpad. 

For a Dell touchpad,

You can enable or disable the pointing stick (the blue thing on the keyboard) or the buttons for it.  You can also enable or disable the touchpad and the buttons for it.  If you want the touchpad to not work at all while you have an external mouse attached, click on the option that says "Disable TouchPad / Pointing Stick when external USB mouse is present".

Your options may be different depending on what brand of laptop that you own.  You may not even have a pointing stick (the blue circle on the keyboard).  I hope that this tip is helpful and have fun!

Copying something on the computer screen (Screen Capture)

This tip can be accomplished in any version of Windows

If you want to copy something from the screen, there are 2 ways to do this.  This is also known as Screen Capture.  If you want to copy the whole screen and put it in a Microsoft Word document or create a picture (jpg) of it, hold in the Control Key and then press the Print Screen key. (CTRL + Prnt Scrn).  Open up Microsoft Word and then either right click and click on Paste or hold down the Control key and press the V key (CTRL + V).  You should be able to resize the picture after you paste it.

Another place to paste a picture would be in Microsoft Paint.  You should be able to get to it by going to Start --> Run.  In the Run command window, type in "mspaint" without the quotes and hit the Enter key.  Microsoft Paint will open up.  Paste the same way that you did in Microsoft Word.  In Microsoft Paint, you can edit the photo however you would like.  Save the picture as a jpg file or whatever picture format you would like.

If you don't want to copy the entire screen and only the window that you are currently in, like a Error Message window that pops up unexpectedly, you hold down the Alt key and then press the Print Screen key. (ALT + Prnt Scrn).  You would paste the copy that you made from the keyboard shortcut the same way you did for the whole screen.  That is CTRL + V if you can't remember or right click and click on Paste from Menu.

Have fun grabbing pictures from your computer screen and pasting them in Microsoft Paint or Microsoft Word (or wherever you feel it should go).

Filtering E-mails in Hotmail

Have you ever wondered how to have certain e-mails go to a specific folder when they come in instead of going to your Inbox?  If you go to Hotmail options and follow these instructions, it should be pretty easy to do so.  Suppose you have e-mails coming from someone special and you want those e-mails in a folder for easy access.

The first thing to do is log into Hotmail and go to your mailbox.  Click on Options on the top right of the screen and then click on More Options.

You will be directed to another screen within Hotmail.  Find "Customize your mail" and then click on "Automatically sort e-mail into folders" underneath it.

 When you see the screen below, click on New Filter.  Note: if you already have an e-mail filter, it will show here too.

First, you need to choose what part of the e-mail you would like to filter from.  You can choose from 4 options:
     1) From Address - This is the e-mail address of the sender
     2) From Name - This is the name of the sender
     3) Subject - This is the subject of the e-mail
     4) To or Cc lines - This would be the recipient of the e-mail or anyone that was copied (Cc)

Next you will choose how the filter will work for the text that you supply.  There are 6 options for this:
     1) contains - if the specified portion of the e-mail contains any of the text supplied
     2) ends with - if the specified portion of the e-mail ends with the text supplied
     3) equals - if the specified portion of the e-mail equals the text supplied
     4) doesn't contain - if the specified portion of the e-mail does not contain the text supplied
     5) starts with - if the specified portion of the e-mail starts with the text supplied
     6) contains word - if the specified portion of the e-mail contains the whole word of the text supplied

Next you would type in the text (if you haven't done so already).  For example, you could say "Filter e-mails where the From Name starts with Sam".  If an e-mail came in from Sam Here, then the e-mail will be filtered.  After doing that first step, it's on to the second step.

The second step is "Where do you want to put the filtered messages".  There is an option for the Inbox, but since they are originally going into the Inbox, then I don't see why you would need this option.  The other options are Junk, New Folder, and Delete.  The Junk option would move the filtered e-mails into the Junk folder.  For the New Folder option, you specify the folder where the e-mails would go.  The last option you can choose is Delete, which is good if you just want to delete the e-mails as they come in.

Click on the Save option on the bottom right and then you will have your new filter set up.  There is an option to edit or remove a filter if you need to.