What You Need to Know about All Things PC
Volume 1 Number 12Click here to return to the back issues page.Click here to return to the main newsletter page.
The Naked PC - http://www.TheNakedPC.com What You Need to Know about All Things PC Publisher: Lee Hudspeth and T.J. Lee Editor: Dan Butler Contributing Editor: Al Gordon This issue is for Thursday, November 19, 1998 - Vol. 1 No. 12 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Table of Contents ** 01. Letter from the Publisher ** 02. Son of Address Book Bug (by Al Gordon) ** 03. Fave/Off - Our Favorite Microsoft Office Features (by Lee Hudspeth and T.J. Lee) ** 04. Low Tech Solutions for High Tech Problems (by T.J. Lee) ** 05. Annoyances Alley - Query Wizards and Hyperlinks in Access ** 06. New Releases - PRIME 97 for Excel and PRIME 97 for Word ** 07. Featured Windows 98 Tip - Minimizing Applications ** 08. Featured Web Page - Boogie Jack's Graphics Plus ** 09. Featured Product Recommendation - VNC by Virtual Network Computing ** 10. Featured Book Recommendation - "Mother of All Windows 98 Books" by Woody Leonhard and Barry Simon (Addison-Wesley) ** 11. Newsworthy - a potpourri of current events and interesting stuff ** 12. We Get Mail - Comments and Tips from TNPC Readers ** 01. Letter from the Publisher Welcome back to Contributing Editor Al Gordon, fresh, bright- eyed, and raring to go. He rails hard -- and rightfully so -- against yet another Outlook bug of the Address Book variety. Since Lee and T.J. are inundated in their consulting practice with requests like "gimme the must-have Office feature list, and keep it short and sweet, boys," they're launching a new TNPC column in this issue. Entitled Fave/Off, they'll be taking you on regular journeys into the heart of the Office jungle, turning over the rocks and amazing you with what you'll find there, good and bad. We get a lot of comments from TNPCers like this from Dave C.: "Congratulations on one of the best newsletters that I have ever seen." Thanks, Dave. We started TNPC to better stay in touch with our readers and clients and we'll keep breaking new ground in our never-ending search for ways to improve your PC productivity. And thanks to all of you who voted for TNPC at eZines where TNPC is listed as one of the Top 5 Computer Publications. Thanks again, and enjoy this issue. ** 02. Son of Address Book Bug (by Al Gordon) "Outlook Annoyances" describes a problem with email being sent incorrectly due to confusion between the address you put into the "To" field (primarily on replies) and information in the Personal Address Book (PAB). TNPC reader William Zachmann recently complained about similar issues with Outlook 98's Internet Only version ("Outlook Internet"). He is up against Son of Address Book bug. I have bumped into them from time to time, and finally checked it out when one member of the TNPC team changed his ISP and I kept getting email to him spit back to me as undeliverable. The story is that if you are replying to someone who is in your Outlook/Outlook Express WINDOWS ADDRESS BOOK (WAB, which can include entries in addition to Outlook contacts)... Outlook Internet, bless its heart, transforms the reply address to the address book DEFAULT address for the person. Is this fun or what? Fixes are: 1. In the message, double-click on the address showing in the "To" field, when the Address Book record opens up, double-click on the email address you want to use, thus making it the new default. 2. Abandon the message; open the Address Book (Ctrl+Shift+A), and change the default that way. I haven't seen this problem if the email return address is not in your address book somewhere, but who knows. Outlook is full of surprises. And, yes, there's still more. Outlook can fight you over which of your email "accounts" it uses to send your outgoing email. What happens is that Outlook, when you do a reply, sometimes takes it upon itself to make the first listed email service (in the Tools / Accounts / Mail tab) the reply service. NOT the default email service or, more logically, the service to which the email had been sent. Of course, sometimes it DOES choose the service to which the email was sent, but I am unable to determine any pattern to it. My workaround is to take my default service and rename it with a numeral 1 prefix ("1.ISP name"). That puts it at the top of the accounts list, and so when the stupid Outlook Internet trick takes place, at least it will default to my default service. And then, bugs aside, there is the ever-popular problem of what to do if you have an account from which you can receive but (typically, because of security or anti-spamming policies) cannot send outgoing email through it. Ordinarily you simply wouldn't send a message with that account. But sometimes it may be your preferred email address (for example, it's your office email address but you are sending from your home). The workaround for that: 1. Create a new account in Outlook that is a duplicate of an ISP account that does work for outgoing email. 2. After you create it, select the account in the Tools / Accounts / Mail list, then click Properties. In the General tab, put your preferred email address in the "Reply address" field. (Leave the outgoing account email address in the "E-mail address" field, otherwise your ISP will reject your messages.) (Al Gordon is a Boston-area journalist who writes on technology issues. A TNPC contributing editor, he was Technical Editor for "Outlook Annoyances." You can reach him at mailto:algordon@thenakedpc.com ) ** 03. Fave/Off - Our Favorite Microsoft Office Features (by Lee Hudspeth and T.J. Lee) With apologies to John Woo, we're launching a new semi-regular column called Fave/Off, short for Favorite Office Features, Gaffes, and Stuff. (Hmmm, FOFGAS? Nah.) This column focuses on our favorite Microsoft Office features and nasties. We'll run the gamut from "Office's Five Best Features" (today's assignment) to "Access' Five Most Egregious Bugs" to "PowerPoint's Most Obscure Features" to "Excel's Classiest Keyboard Shortcuts" and beyond, replacing the application of choice from one column to the next. So let's get started cherry-picking Office's five top-notch, can't-live-without-em features. 1. Use the new Office Assistant to learn more. Don't nuke Mr. Clippit! Office Assistant is a smart "agent" that floats on your screen and digests natural, even complex, English questions like "what's new in Outlook?" to provide help on a topic, or at the very least a list of (hopefully) related topics you can explore. Additionally, when the Assistant pops up a bright yellow light bulb, new -- and experienced -- users alike can click on the bulb to read the Assistant's suggestion for a more efficient way of doing what you just did. Agreed that the cuteness factor makes you want to reach for a hammer but the Assistant is just a tool and you can make good use of it. The nice thing about the Office Assistant is, you can turn it on and off with a single click. Click. 2. Customize your user preferences. Everyone should take some time to carefully review and tweak the settings that control what Office knows about you and your work preferences. These are the "Tools Options" settings, accessed by selecting Tools / Options in any Office application. There's more to these than can be explained in one or even several sentences, and the various Office Annoyances series books explain them all in great detail, but working one's way through these settings and tweaking them to suit the way you work will pay off in untold saved time over the course of a year. Do this for each one of your Office applications, by the way. 3. Do the Office Shortcut Bar one better with Desktop Toolbars. The Office Shortcut Bar (OSB), formerly MOM (Microsoft Office Manager, yes, it's true!) had its place before Active Desktop. But if you're running Win95 with Active Desktop (via IE 4.x) or Win98, you can dispense with this application altogether and replace it with the operating system's built-in Desktop Toolbars feature. Right-click on any of your Taskbar's open space and choose Toolbars. We find the built-in Desktop toolbar works just fine, but you're free to create one or more of your own desktop toolbars to house individual Office files, non-Office files, non- Office applications, you name it. Go crazy! 4. Customize your individual Office application toolbars. Now we're talking strictly about toolbars that exist only within the confines of the host application. You'll usually want to completely rebuild your Standard and Formatting toolbars. These come from the factory in a goofy "demoware" mode (a term we coined in the Annoyances series) that goes over well when Microsoft's marketing minions are pounding the floors at Comdex, but have absolutely no benefit to the average user out in the trenches. And it's easy to do it so you can reset to the default settings without losing your own customizations. 5. Turn off the quirky Find Fast. This is an anti-feature, but it belongs in any short list of "must have/must do" Office stuff because you'll really benefit by turning it off. Office by default installs and activates an application called Find Fast, an attempt at helping you by indexing your Office documents whenever your PC isn't busy. But in practice it's crash-prone, can intermittently and unpredictably slow your Office applications to a crawl, and takes up far more disk space than its feature set is worth. So we advise everyone to nuke this application from the StartUp folder and delete all its indexes, leaving it in a permanent deep sleep where it can do your system no harm. Send us your favorite Microsoft Office kudos and gaffes: mailto:faveoff@TheNakedPC.com ** 04. Low Tech Solutions for High Tech Problems (by T.J. Lee) The response to last issue's Low Tech column has been phenomenal. Seems like productivity enhancements that don't require you buying a new $2,000+ computer are in big demand. We got a number of requests about where to find typing tutors on the Web. You'll find a bunch at: http://vornet.softseek.com/Education_and_Science/Typing_Tutors/ Several TNPC readers could not say enough good things about using the mouse with your left hand (even if you're right-handed). Having gone that route myself I'll go out on a limb and say that it's not too hard for righties to teach their left hand to mouse. This lets you man the keyboard (which is basically a right-handed instrument) with your right hand. Many applications let you use the "old" Cut (Shift+Delete), Copy (Ctrl+Insert), and Paste (Shift+Insert) commands, this way you select with the mouse in your left hand and issue commands with your right. This brings up the topic of hot keys as a major productivity booster. One TNPCer wanted to know the shortcut for displaying pop-up menus in Microsoft Word. This is a great shortcut for dealing with spelling or thesaurus issues while typing. Type a word and if you get the red squiggly line indicating the word is not in the dictionary move the insertion point to the beginning, end, or interior of the word, hit Shift+F10 and up pops the shortcut spelling menu. Use the arrow keys and select the correct spelling or the command you want. On a Windows keyboard hit the little menu key on the right-hand side of your keyboard to get the same menu. Hit Shift+F7 to fire off the Thesaurus. Great time savers in Word and you get to keep both hands on the keyboard. Pay attention to the types of things you do often that have you reaching for the mouse and check the Help file to see if there's a handy keyboard shortcut that does the same thing. Ctrl+Z for undo is one of TNPCer Phil S.'s favorites. Phil points out you can use this command to selectively bypass things like AutoCorrect. If AutoCorrect changes something just Ctrl+Z and AutoCorrect is defeated. We'll talk about more low-tech solutions in future issues. Send your favorite "low tech solutions to high tech problems" to: mailto:low-tech@TheNakedPC.com ** 05. Annoyances Alley - Query Wizards and Hyperlinks in Access Annoyances Alley is a tiny glimpse into the Annoyances series of Office 97 related books from Woody Leonhard, Lee Hudspeth, and T.J. Lee. This is just one of the detailed tips related to optimization and customization that appears in "Office 97 Annoyances" published by O'Reilly & Associates (ISBN 1-56592-310-3) and reprinted here with permission. +++------------------- REVIEWER'S CORNER --------------------+++ "The Annoyances books are dense, only a bit over 300 pages each but packed with an enormous amount of useable information to help you get Microsoft Office do what you want it to do." -- Bill Blinn, Technology Editor, Newsradio 610 WTVN, reviewing the entire Office Annoyances book series +++------------------- REVIEWER'S CORNER --------------------+++ "Query Wizards Access has always had an easy-to-use query interface, letting users make joins by dragging a field from one table to another, and creating SQL statements in the graphical query grid. (A "join" is where you associate a field in one table with a field of the same (or compatible) data type in another table. This determines how your data is related. A record with CustomerID 996 could be related to all purchase order records where the CustomerID is 996.) And this method is still the most flexible and the fastest once you're familiar with how queries work. (For more on queries and those that are not supported by Access' drag- and-drop query interface see "Access Database Design & Programming" by Steven Roman, O'Reilly, ISBN 1-56592-297-2.) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565922972/tnpcnewsletter/ But those of us who don't think of SQL as their first language can use any of several Query Wizards which make it a snap to find things like unmatched or duplicate records in a table. There's a Wizard that will walk you through cross-tabulations and one that will help you create simple queries to extract subsets of data from tables. Click the Query tab and click on New. The New Query dialog box appears, and you select the Wizard you want. See Figure 5-9. From there you just make selections, and the query is created for you. In Figure 5-10, you see the Simple Query Wizard that allows you to select the table to query and the fields you want to use. The Wizards in Access are very well-bred and polished. For the experienced database user, the process of working through the screens in a Wizard can take longer than doing things manually. But that is one of the most outstanding aspects of Access: there is plenty of power available to the database guru, and this power is carefully made accessible to the casual user. Hyperlinks in Access Since we're talking about Office 97, you know it's only a matter of time before you run into the wowie-pow-zowie Internet connectivity features again. All the Office applications sport new Internet features. Some of them are actually useful, some are just annoying. Hyperlinks are a great example of both. Hyperlinks in Access 97 manifest themselves as a new data type called, simply enough, Hyperlink. You can store URLs, UNC paths, or paths to local files, as shown in Table 5-2. Valid Hyperlinks Example ---------------- ------- URL (Universal Resource Locator) .................. http://www.primeconsulting.com UNC (Universal Naming Convention) path .......... \\ripley\ripley_c_drive Local path .................. c:\data\books\oa\oa4\chapter4.doc Table 5-2: A hyperlink by any other name Click on a hyperlink and wonderful things can happen. If you click on a URL, your favorite browser is triggered and off Web surfing you go. Click a path to a local document and that document is fired up. Great. The problem (and you knew one was coming, didn't you?) is this: Access is effectively brain-dead about what makes a good link. Okay, Excel is nearly as bad, but in Excel you pretty much have to enter a hyperlink using the Insert Hyperlink dialog box, which gives you a fair chance of browsing for the link or at least being awake enough to type carefully (see Figure 5-11). In Access, though, even before you can use the Insert Hyperlink command, you have to set the field type to Hyperlink (see Figure 5-12). Once you do that, any text entered into that field (or text that is already there) is considered a valid link. URL, path, or street address -- it makes no difference. Click on that field and Access tries to initiate a link. Needless to say, without a valid link your computer will waste cycles as it fires up your browser and tries to connect to a bogus reference. Be sure to enter the right information when you set up a Hyperlink field in Access. Another major annoyance is that with Hyperlink fields containing URLs, Access opens a new instance of your browser every time you click a link. You can quickly wind up with multiple instances of Internet Explorer or Netscape running, which takes a toll on system resources. Developers find the Hyperlink Column option on the Insert menu to be annoying (along with the Insert Column command to a somewhat lesser extent). You'd think that modifications to the structure of a database would not be allowed in anything other than Design View, but you can insert a Hyperlink Column into a table in Datasheet View. What's more, if you are in Design View and you add a column (field), your changes are automatically saved to the database. But make an addition to the field structure in Design View and then try to switch to Datasheet View and you are told you must first save the table (see Figure 5-13). Inconsistent, peculiar, and very annoying." Send comments about the Annoyances Alley or any of the books in this series to: mailto:update@PRIMEConsulting.com Find more information at: http://www.PRIMEConsulting.com/annoyances/index.html?i12 ** 06. New Releases - PRIME 97 for Excel and PRIME 97 for Word Thanks to all of you who applied to participate in the PRIME 97 for Office beta. The first 100 slots for our beta family maxed out very quickly, and we've sent email directly to everyone who applied describing our waiting list policy. It's possible that folks on the waiting list (first come, first served) will still have an opportunity to participate, so we'll keep you posted. Beta testing is in full swing, and we'll let you know when the retail versions are released. We've got even more surprises coming for our beta testers, and interested existing and future customers, so hang on to your socks! We're going to ROCK the Office add-ins market. And stay tuned for news on the PRIME for Excel 2000 and PRIME for Word 2000 beta programs. ** 07. Featured Windows 98 Tip - Minimizing Applications Everyone knows that you click on a Taskbar button to switch to that application. But did you know that if you click on it again that window is minimized? This is handy when you want to quickly minimize the current application and your hand is on the mouse. The Taskbar button is usually a larger and easier target to hit than the Minimize button waaaaaay up on the application's title bar. (The keyboard shortcut to minimize the current application is Alt+Space+N.) ** 08. Featured Web Page - Boogie Jack's Graphics Plus Backgrounds, textures, left border backgrounds, wallpaper, buttons, bars, banners, and more are all here for free. It's graphics heaven! If you have a Web page or need some nifty graphics for your next report, or a killer background for your HTML emails, this is the place to find it. Jack's got a newsletter for the budding graphics artist in you as well. Good stuff. http://www.boogiejack.com ** 09. Featured Product Recommendation - VNC by Virtual Network Computing Remote control software lets you control one computer from another but usually requires dialing direct from one PC to another. VNC is not only a full featured remote control product, it's free AND lets you remotely operate a computer over the Internet. What's more, this utility is cross-platform, control a Mac from a PC, control Windows from Unix... it's really amazing! Run programs, view settings, edit files, troubleshoot problems (man, I've got to install this on my Dad's PC) from any computer connected to the Internet. The 1 Mbyte download comes with a server and viewer component and installation is a snap. http://www.orl.co.uk/vnc ** 10. Featured Book Recommendation - "Mother of All Windows 98 Books" by Woody Leonhard and Barry Simon (Addison-Wesley) At over 900 pages, here's the highly anticipated successor to the best-selling "Mother of All Windows 95 Books." Completely revamped for Windows 98 (using the released version, not betas), this up-to-date classic features invaluable tips, shortcuts, and clear explanations of Windows 98's ins and outs enabling readers to get a handle on the operating system, fine-tune it, and reap its maximum benefit. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201433125/tnpcnewsletter/ ** 11. Newsworthy - a potpourri of current events and interesting stuff *-* PRIME Consulting Group, Inc. has announced a dealer program for their popular PRIME 97 for Word 97 utilities. Dealers advertise the PRIME 97 utilities on their site and receive up to $5.00 per transaction on sales that originate on their site. For details see: http://www.PRIMEConsulting.com/software/dealer.html?i12 *-* The November issue of PC/Computing magazine is on the newsstands as well as the PC/C Web site. Lee Hudspeth and T.J. Lee helped author the cover story on "Undocumented Internet Secrets." We did sections on "How to Get Ahead," "Find Anything Fast," "Work the Web," and "Secret Steals and Deals." You'll find links to all of these articles at: http://www.PRIMEConsulting.com/articles/pccmagazine.html?i12 *-* eBay and other popular on-line auction sites are having problems with fraud. Seems that both buyers and sellers are learning how to manipulate the bidding process and it's causing quite a stir. You can read about this on C|Net at: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,28301,00.html *-* Ingram Book Group, a major book wholesaler, is being acquired by Barnes & Noble. This could be a major problem for everyone's favorite online book reseller, Amazon, since Ingram is one of Amazon's major suppliers. B&N is taking an "Oh really? We had no idea that Ingram supplied Amazon" attitude but you can bet your Nancy Drew first edition that this is a calculated challenge to Amazon's position. *-* Microsoft is "selling" Office 2000 betas for $19.95 that include Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, and Microsoft Access plus PhotoDraw 2000 and FrontPage 2000. A controversial feature in the beta (and presumably in the final release) is if you fail to register the product with Microsoft after 50 uses it stops working. And if you try to register the same copy of Office more than once MS will know it. If you're a beta pioneer kind of person (you don't mind the odd arrow sticking out of your back) and don't mind registering when told to, you can buy your beta at: http://www.microsoft.com/office/2000/office/CPP/default.htm *-* Speaking of challenges, Compaq is reacting to the threat of the Dell juggernaut by setting up a direct sales apparatus that will sell direct to consumers by phone and over the Internet. Check out the details in this C|Net article: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,28620,00.html *-* More and more we're hearing about Jaz drive users beset with the dreaded Click of Death failure. The COD is the first symptom of a serious data-threatening mechanical problem with the drive. We had a discussion on the Annoyance Board about the COD on Zip drives back in August. There's an excellent discussion of the problem along with a utility you can download to test your Jaz drives and cartridges by Gibson Research at: http://www.spinrite.com/codfaq1.htm Read the Annoyance Board Archives at: http://www.thenakedpc.com/annoyances/archive1/ *-* Speaking of drives, IBM has announced a 25 Gbyte hard disk. Look for the standard size of hard drives to take another leap. How do you back up these monster drives? With drive prices so low we recommend backing up to... another hard drive! RAID goes grassroots. *-* Thinking about turning that old 486 into a screaming Linux box? Here's a tutorial on doing just that: http://www.forbes.com/tool/html/98/nov/1109/feat.htm ** 12. We Get Mail - Comments and Tips from TNPC Readers *-* Olivier D. checks in on the =Rand() feature in Word with this, "In my French version of Word 97 this returns 6 lines of 'Donnez a ce monsieur une biere et des kiwis' which roughly translates to 'Give this man a beer and some kiwi fruits.' Wow! Frank R. and Andrew M. among others point out that the syntax is actually =Rand(x,y) where x is the number of paragraphs to generate and y is the number of sentences to include in each paragraph. *-* TNPCer Eddie S. came up with the Easter Egg for those of you that downloaded The Virtual Fly! from Amalgamated Binaries: http://www.ambin.com When the fly alights on the screen press Pause to, well, pause the fly. Hold down the Ctrl key and double left-click on the fly. Type in the password "help me!" without the quotes. If you don't get the gag you'll have to go out and rent the movie "The Fly" (the 1958 version directed by Kurt Neumann and starring Vincent Price and David Hedison). If you're not a horror fan just fast forward to the end. "Hellllpppp meeeeee!" *-* Mark W. takes TNPC to task for not pointing out in the last issue where we touted Chris Pirillo and Lockergnome's Cool Stuff page, that the mouse utility mentioned only works with a PS/2 mouse. Sorry for any confusion this caused. +++----------------------- classifieds -----------------------+++ Learn All The Secrets! How to Start and Promote an Internet Business. Insider Tips and Secrets for Marketing Your Business on the Internet. http://www.marketingtips.com/t.cgi/5790/ +++-----------------------------------------------------------+++ *** ARE YOU MAKING MONEY ON THE INTERNET? *** We are! Learn all the secrets to starting your own small or home based business. Thousands of businesses are already profiting. It's time you did too! http://profit.org/products/2580/index.htm +++-----------------------------------------------------------+++ Do You Deliver Information over the Internet? New autoresponder automatically sends 7 follow-up emails. (Each message can be different.) CLICK HERE! http://www.aweber.com/?3198 +++-----------------------------------------------------------+++ WANT TO GET YOUR WORD OUT? Classified ads in The Naked PC can be yours for the ridiculously low price of $15 per issue. Get your message out to over 14,000 TNPC subscribers. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/tnpcadvertising.html +++-----------------------------------------------------------+++ DISCLAIMER Personal computers are individual machines with performance that can vary with components, software, and operator ability. The Naked PC is not responsible for the manner in which the information presented is used or interpreted. 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Also, if you wish to post this newsletter to a newsgroup or electronic discussion group, you may do so if you preserve the copyright and subscription information. Thanks. SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES To subscribe or unsubscribe, surf on over to: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/subscribe.html To make comments or suggestions, surf on over to: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/tnpfeedback.html or send email directly to: mailto:tnpc@TheNakedPC.com WEB BULLETIN BOARD Check out our 24x7 Web bulletin board. If you've got a technical question about PC issues, or suggestions of your own, this is the place to hang out: http://www.PRIMEConsulting.com/cgi-local/annoy.pl ADVERTISING To advertise in TNPC go to: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/tnpcadvertising.html Mail services provided by Blue Horizon Enterprises, one of the very few "Mom and Pop" operations left on the Web: http://www.bhorizon.com Copyright (c) 1998, PRIME Consulting Group, Inc. and Dan Butler. All Rights Reserved. The Naked PC is a trademark of PRIME Consulting Group, Inc. ISSN: 1522-4422 RMH: 667 TNPC Hot Tips:
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