Fifty-Plus News - Book Reviews

Computer Tips
with Barry Coaker

Outlook Express addresses

Do you have people in your Address Book that you don't know? If so, Outlook Express is probably set to add the addresses of all incoming e-mail to your Address Book. To put a stop to this annoyance, on the Toolbar choose Tools/Options.
When the Menu box opens, click the Send tab. Now, deselect the check box labeled ‘Automatically put people I reply to in My Address Book’ and click OK.
To clear out the existing useless names, click Addresses in the Outlook Express toolbar and then delete each of the unnecessary addresses. Choose File/Exit when you finish deleting names.

Setting your home page

Home page is a term that really has two meanings. Every website has a Home page — usually the first page you see when you go to that website.
But you have a Home page too. It’s the first page you see when you connect to the Internet. Usually your ISP or your computer sets this for you, but you are free to change it.
Setting Your Home Page: INTERNET EXPLORER
View the page you want as your home page. (Either type the address or, if it is in your Favourites, click on it to go to that page.)
Click the TOOLS menu and choose INTERNET OPTIONS.
On the GENERAL tab, click the USE CURRENT button.
The next time you start Internet Explorer, it will initially display this page.

How do I alphabetize my favorites in Internet Explorer?

This is one of the questions I am often asked: after a few months of saving Favorites to my browser they appear in no particular order, is there a way to sort them in alphabetical order so I can find them more easily?
Open Internet Explorer and click on FAVORITES so that the pull-down list extends, make sure you click the word Favorites on the top toolbar and NOT on the Favorites ICON. With your cursor anywhere on the list, right-click on any Web address and then left-click on ‘Sort by Name’. All your favourites, including those in folders, will be sorted alphabetically.

Disabling the Screen Saver

When you are running the Disk Defragmenter, Scan Disk, or even a virus scan process, the screen saver can suddenly appear and cause the process to start over from the beginning. To avoid this problem, simply start the process then press the ‘Ctrl+Esc’ keys to bring up the Start menu. Leaving the Start menu open during the process will keep the screen saver from running. The other alternative to stop the screensaver starting is to RIGHT click anywhere on the desktop then on the menu that appears choose Properties/ Screensaver Tab/ None.

Easier way to maximise

If you get tired of trying to click the tiny maximize/restore button in the top right corner of a window, there is an alternative. The title bar, which runs across the top of each window, acts as a toggle switch. Double-click it to maximize the window; double-click again to restore the window's original size.

Search and find.

After doing a Search, you finally reach the Web page you have been looking for, and find it has hundreds of words, the problem now is how to find the specific word with reference to your initial search and without spending time scrolling up and down?
On the toolbar go to Edit. There is an option: Find on this page. Type in the word you are looking for. It will stop on the word and highlight it. Click ‘Find next’ and it will keep searching the page for every mention of the Word or Name.
You can also hold down the Control key and press F to find a word on a page.

Saving old emails easily

Is there an easy way to save my old emails, as opposed to the time consuming method of opening each one and choosing ‘Save as’ and sending it to a folder? If you are using Outlook Express it’s as easy as dragging and dropping.
Here’s what you do:
1. Make your OE window size smaller by clicking the middle button in the upper right-hand corner. If this doesn’t make the window smaller, then click the triangle in the lower right hand corner and drag upward so you can see some desktop space
2. Create a folder on your desktop by right-clicking a blank area and selecting New/ Folder. Name it ‘Email’. You could also create several folders if you want to organize your emails. Put the folder where you can see it on the desktop.
3. Now it’s time to select the email you want saved. If you want all of them, then just use CTRL+ A. For selecting some email, hold down the ‘Alt’ key while clicking the ones you want.
4. After selecting, left-click a highlighted area and drag over to the Email folder. When you see the ‘+’ appear, release the mouse button. You have successfully copied those emails to the folder.
Now that your emails are transferred, you can delete them from OE if you want. You can save the folder to a disk from here.

Losing your dial up connection

Q
I lose my dial up connection each time I send an email using Outlook Express. How do I fix this please?
A
Outlook Express can be set to hang up after it sends or receives email. This is a great feature if you have limited monthly hours online, but can be really annoying if you decide to check your mail while you are surfing the web. Fortunately this feature can be turned on or off.
Go to Tools / Options, and then click the ‘Connections’ tab.
If you want Outlook Express to hang up after sending or checking mail, check the box. If you DON'T want it to hang up after, just uncheck the box.
NOTE: If you are someone who downloads their email then reads it offline (hang up after receiving), keep in mind that this can cause you to get a red X where a graphic should be. Since some pictures load from the server, you must be online when reading or printing to get the pictures. This is most evident when reading many newsletters.

Saving photos from an e-mail

If someone sends you an e-mail containing a load of images, how do you get them from the e-mail onto your hard disk?
Open the email.
Right click the Image or Attachment, then Left click ‘Save As’.
On the drop down list, choose a folder to save the images to: e.g. My Pictures/Holiday photos etc.
Change the file name to something meaningful e.g. Sydney06 Holiday Photos. Click Save.
Then go to the folder and open it, and all the photos from the e-mail will be there. You can now delete the e-mail if you wish.

Print screen tricks

What does the PrtSc button do on my keyboard? Does it do anything?
The real function of this key is to make a ‘snapshot’ of your screen. If you have some imaging software (or a good word processor), you can then paste it into there and crop, etc. Often I use this to add snappy screen shots to Web pages
Here's how:
To capture the whole screen, just hit the Print Screen (it might say Prt Sc) button on your keyboard.
Then, open your imaging software (and a blank page, if you need to – it will depend on your software) and select your ‘Paste’ command (usually Ctrl+V),
or alternatively Right click and choose paste.
This should paste an image of your computer screen into the document you're working on. You can also paste the image into a word processing program like MS Word if you don't have imaging software. (With Word 2000 and newer, you might need to have the program open before you hit Prt Sc for the screenshot to go to the clipboard.)
If you would like to capture only the current window, hold down the ALT button while you press the Print Screen button.

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