Creating a shortcut on your desktop

As easy as it may be for some people, creating a shortcut is pretty cumbersome to do for other people.  Microsoft Windows XP and above have made it really simple to create a shortcut onto your desktop.  Having to Right Click and then click on Create Shortcut to then have to copy it again and paste it to your desktop seems like a lot of extra unnecessary steps.

All you have to do is Right click on the file and then choose Send to -->  Desktop (create shortcut).  It actually creates the shortcut and puts it onto your desktop at the same time.  The Create Shortcut could be used if you wanted a shortcut not on your desktop, but I think that is where the majority of shortcuts end up going.

This was a quick tip and if you knew it already, that is great too!

Using Notepad to create an Excel spreadsheet

This tip is created with Microsoft Windows 7 and Microsoft Excel 2007

If you ever wanted to create an Excel spreadsheet without having to deal with the complexity of Microsoft Excel, you can use Notepad (which is normally installed on all Microsoft computers).  The easy way to get to Notepad is to go to Start --> Run.  In the run command box, type notepad and then hit Enter key.

 

I created 4 rows in the Notepad.  Everything is also separated by commas.  The first line creates three columns named "Date", "Number", and "Name".  The 3 lines below is the data for the columns.  The commas represent the lines between each column if you were to see them in Microsoft Excel.  Go ahead and click File and then Save As.

 

 I saved the notepad as "New Notepad.csv".  The CSV extension means Comma Separated Value.  Since everything is separated by commas, this extension makes sense to use.  If you used TXT which means text file, Microsoft Excel would not recognize it (unless you imported it into Excel, but that is a different topic).  When there is a CSV at the end of the filename, Microsoft Excel is able to see that it uses commas to separate the values.  Let's open it up in Excel and see what happens.

As you can see, Microsoft Excel recognized the file and created a spreadsheet from the file.  From here, you can save the spreadsheet with an Excel extension.  This is a great way to create something quickly without having to tab over between the columns.

Notepad is also a great tool to just jot notes down without having to open up Microsoft Word.  There are always new and exciting ways to do things. 

Adding numbers in Microsoft Excel with a formula

Microsoft Windows 7 and Microsoft Excel 2007 are being used in this tip

I don't know how many times I thought, "I wish I could add up numbers on a spreadsheet without having to manually add the numbers with a calculator".  Well, here is a way to do that with a formula in Microsoft Excel.  First you need to start a new Excel spreadsheet by opening up the program.  I started with this:

I started with a column named Numbers and put down some numbers below it.  In order to use a formula in Excel, you need to put the equals (=) sign before the formula.  This formula is: =SUM(A2:A8).  SUM tells Excel to add up the numbers.  A2:A8 is referring to a range of cells in the spreadsheet.  It is going to look at A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, A7, and A8 (or A2 through A8).  It would look like this:

As you can see, the formula added up the numbers without having to use a calculator.  If you changed any of the numbers above the total, then the total would change automatically.  For example, if you changed A2 to 7, then the total would be 235. 

Another formula that can be used is the SUMIF formula.  This will add the numbers based on certain criteria.  Here is an example:

The formula ends up being =SUMIF(B2:B8,"Odd",A2:A8).  B2:B8 means to look at cells B2 through B8.  "Odd" is what I am looking for in the range specified.  A2:A8 is the range of the cells that will be added together. I have put Even and Odd in the second column.  This formula will add all of the numbers for cells A2 through A8 that have the word "Odd" in column B.  The Even total would look similar except you would change the word "Odd" in the formula to the word "Even".  The SUMIF formula is a good formula to use if you want to know the sum of numbers for a certain criteria.

I hope you have fun with this tip and I will write another great tip tomorrow!

Use a different font type for pictures

If you use Microsoft Word and you want to type pictures, all you have to do is change the font type.  The normal font type that is used is Arial or Calibri. If you do not have Microsoft Word, then there are other programs that can be used to type in different font types.  Here are the different font types that have pictures when you type a letter.  These would be great for icons also!

 Here is an example of the different fonts that are pictures.  These font types are Wingdings, Wingdings2, and Wingdings3.

The lowercase letters will give you different pictures than the uppercase letters.  Even apostrophes and commas turn into pictures!  I hope you like this tip and have fun!

Calculator on Windows 7

I just got Windows 7 installed onto my computer and I am loving it!  I am now seeing what is new that wasn't in Vista.  The calculator was in Vista and other operating systems.  You can get there the same way too.  To get to the calculator, you don't have to go to the program files --> accessories and blah blah blah.  That is a long and tedious way.  All you have to do is click on the Start Menu and then go to run.  Once in the run command, type in calc and then hit the Enter key.  Voila!  The calculator shows right up!  In Windows 7, you get a standard, scientific, programmer, and statistics calculators.  No need to go and find one, it is right here at your fingertips.

This was a quick tip brought to you by me, Keith!  Please let me know if you would like to see any special tip or even troubleshooting tips for a problem that you may have right now.

Clearing Internet Cookies to speed up the computer

This is all done on the Windows Vista operating system.

Are you thinking, what's an Internet cookie?  Well, an internet cookie is something that gets stored on the hard drive that is used by the Internet Browser.  The browser sees the cookie and is able to load that website information quicker.  That sounds like a good thing, but in reality a lot of cookies slow down the computer.  It's almost like if you ate too many cookies, you would slow down too.

In order to clear them out and help improve the performance of your computer, you will need to go to the Internet Options for whichever browser you are using.  I will show how to do this with Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, the two browsers that I use regularly.  The reason I use two is because some things only work in Mozilla Firefox and some other things only work in Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer  (I am using version 8, but any version should work for this)

There are 2 ways to get to the Internet options for Internet Explorer.  
     1)  When you have Internet Explorer open, click on Tools and then Internet Options.
     2)  Click on Start --> Control Panel.  Double click Internet Options in the Control Panel. 
           Note: If you are using Windows Vista, then make sure you are on Classic View.
 Internet Options screen should look like this:

Click on the Delete button under Browsing History.  If you click on the option to delete browsing history on exit, then every time you exit out of Internet Explorer, all of your browser history will be erased.

This is where you can choose which things you would like to remove from your hard drive.  Temporary Internet Files, Cookies, and Browsing History have already been checked for you.  I recommend those options also.  You don't want to remove Form Data or Passwords unless you want to re-enter those things on specific websites.  Once you have chosen your options, click Delete.

Mozilla Firefox (I am using version 3.6, but any version should work for this)
There is only one way to remove the cookies from Mozilla Firefox.  While in Firefox, click on Tools, and then Clear Recent History (Ctrl+Shift+Del also works).  This will open up another window.

Last Hour is already selected for you.  You can choose between Last Hour, Last Two Hours, Last Four Hours, Today, or Everything.  Only choose Everything if you want to get rid of all Browsing History from Mozilla Firefox.  I would recommend choosing Browsing & Download History, Cookies, and Cache.  Click on Clear Now and everything that you have selected will be removed for Firefox.

Another tip done and I hope this has helped you understand cookies more.  Talking about cookies has made me hungry, so I am going to have some dinner.

Finding your IP address

This is all done with the operating system, Windows Vista

Sometimes you may want to know what your IP (Internet Protocol) address is.  This is the address that you connect to instead of the actual name (i.e. 127.0.0.1 is the same thing as LocalHost). First, go to your command prompt.  You can get there by clicking on the Start Menu, then run.  On the run prompt, type in cmd and hit the Enter key.  Or you can go this route:  Start --> All Programs --> Accessories --> Command Prompt.

When you get to the Command Prompt, type in "ipconfig/all" without the quotes.   Take a note of your host name and I can tell you about ping later in this post.  If you are using connecting through a wireless network, your IP address is under Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Network Connection.  It is the IPv4 Address.  If you are connecting through an Ethernet cable, then your IP address is under Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection.  It should be the same as the wireless, the IPv4 Address.

Now go back to the host name that you wrote down.  If you type in "ping [host name]" without the quotes (your host name goes in the brackets, but don't type the brackets), you will notice that the IP address that you found above shows up within the "Reply from..." text.  When you ping something, you are testing to see if you can connect to something.

If you type exit and then hit the Enter key, then the command prompt window will go away.  I find that the IP address is a good way to enter things in case the "name" doesn't work.  As a matter of fact, http://www.google.com is the same as 209.85.225.104 if you ping it.  Type in http://209.85.225.104 as a web address and it will bring you to the Google site.

I had fun with this tip and I will be back with more exciting tips for the computer!