Creative Connections Consultancy

IT KnowHow

If you have any questions that you would like to ask us, e-mail consult@creativeconnections.co.uk.

The Pain of Inertia!

After the initial cost of setting up a PC network, most businesses are hesitant about spending money on maintaining the system or developing user skills for the basic applications. They work on the premise, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

But in the IT world, can you really afford to hold on to this attitude?

Anti-virus software

Any PC accessing the Internet or connected to another device that is accessing the Internet is vulnerable to attack from viruses. These most commonly invade via e-mail, but can also come through files downloaded from the Internet or can be loaded on to the system from three and a half inch floppy disks or re-writable CD's.

Any company with more than one PC should have an anti-virus policy. The simplest solution for an individual is to buy antivirus software and load it on. The best know are Norton and McAfee. Both of these provide a means to upgrade regularly (and for free) from the Internet, by downloading the latest versions of viruses. It is essential to update at least once a week, because new viruses are appearing all the time.

You must set up the software so that it automatically checks your hard disk at frequent intervals.

Test your skills - MS Office

Backup

Plan
Nobody realises the importance of regular backup until they have a crash or theft of equipment and lose data! Think about it BEFORE this happens. Most companies have an overnight backup for data stored on the server, but make sure that you have provision for any data stored on the hard disks of PC's to be backed up as well.
Copy
In its simplest form, this could be just a question of copying important files on to a three and a half inch floppy disk, but in practical terms this is no longer very realistic, since a floppy disk does not take very much data. The cheapest solution for an individual PC user who wants to back up data files would be back up to re-writeable CD's. If your PC does not have a re-writeable CD drive, you can easily install one yourself if you have a spare slot for it. If not, you can get an external re-writeable CD drive, but they cost more.
Schedule
Once you have decided what you are going to backup and how, make sure that you set up a regular backup schedule. The frequency of backup will depend on how much work you do, and how important it is for you to keep it secure. If a daily backup is too much for you, consider backing up at least weekly.

PC housekeeping

Archive
It is a good idea to have a policy of archiving regularly any files that you no longer use but might need to keep for legal reasons etc. Simply copy them to floppy disk or re-writeable CD, and label them clearly.
Delete
Once you have archived files, you can safely delete them, and any other unwanted files. Do this often. Remember to empty the Recycle Bin after this to get rid of them completely.
Scan
This is a simple procedure that scours the hard disk and looks for corrupted and fragmented files and corrects them where possible. If you have Windows 95 onwards, click on the Start button and choose Programs, Accessories, System Tools, ScanDisk.
De-frag
This collects up all the fragmented files and puts them together, which greatly improves performance.If you have Windows 95 onwards, click on the Start button and choose Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Defragmenter.

Insert a tick box in Word

To insert a tick box in your Word document:

Display the Forms Toolbar (click on the View Menu, select Toolbars, Forms)
Click on the picture of the tick box
To activate it, you must protect your document for use as a form (click on the Tools Menu, select Protect Document...for Forms)

To tick the tick box, click in the box with the mouse or press the spacebar.
Note: Despite the picture, this action places a cross in the box, not a tick!

Get rid of unwanted bold on your automatic numbers

Have you ever had this situation:

1. This is your first item
2. This is your second item with the number annoyingly appearing in bold

This happens when the last word or character in the paragraph was previously bold. Word stores formatting information for each paragraph in the paragraph symbol at the end of each paragraph.

To cure this problem:

Reveal the paragraph symbol at the end of item 2. (click on the Show/Hide paragraph symbol button on the Standard toolbar)
Select the paragraph symbol and click on the Bold button to remove the bold

Magic!

Use Google to search the Web!

Google is the most popular search engine. Try it out here.

Using the Outlook Address Book in Word

If you have Microsoft Outlook you can use the Contacts address book to store names and addresses of clients and contacts and bring them into Word at the click of a button.
Note: this does not work in Outlook Express

In the Envelopes and Labels dialog box (from the Tools menu) click on this icon

If you wish to insert addresses in your letters (or any other document), you can add this icon to your Standard toolbar as follows:

Right click on your Standard toolbar
Click on Customise, then Commands
From the Categories on the left choose Insert
Scroll down the commands on the right and highlight Address Book
Drag it on to the Standard toolbar in a position that is convenient for you

You can now use it in any document to bring in addresses from Outlook.

Annoyingly, by default it omits the company field and includes the country. There is a clever little workaround this that specifies precisely the fields that you want to include. You need to create an AutoText entry called AddressLayout that consists of the following:

<PR_DISPLAY_NAME>
<PR_COMPANY_NAME>
<PR_POSTAL_ADDRESS>

To do this, follow these steps:

Type the above three lines exactly in a new blank Word document (you can copy and paste from this web page if you like)
Select (highlight) the lines, and from the Tools menu choose AutoCorrect, AutoText.
Type the entry AddressLayout (no spaces) in the box "Enter AutoText entries here"
Click on OK

Try it out!

Using Accents

You can insert foreign accents in your documents by clicking on the Insert menu and choosing Symbol.

Make sure that the Font box: shows normal text and then select on the appropriate symbol and click on Insert.

If you have to use accents frequently in your work, you can assign them to a Shortcut key or to AutoCorrect. You can do this while you are in the Symbol dialog box as above.

Turning off AutoComplete Tip (Word 97 onwards)

Does it annoy you when you type in a date without looking at the screen, and Word completes it for you in a way you didn't want? This comes from the AutoText feature. To turn off completion of tips:

From the Tools menu choose AutoCorrect,AutoText
Removed the tick from the box: Show AutoComplete Tip for AutoText and Dates

Space between items in AutoNumbering (Word)

How many times have you applied AutoNumbering or Bullets, typed in your first item, pressed Enter twice to create a line space between items, and found that the AutoNumbering has turned itself off?

The way around that is to:

From the Format menu choose Paragraph, Spacing, After (while you are still in the first item)
Select 6pt for half a line space, or 12pt for a full line space in between paragraphs