Getting  Along With Your Computer Column Archive

Here's How

By Cate Eales
Appeared October 4, 2007 on castanet.net

I have some quick tips for you this week. Enjoy!


Print part of a message or web page
Have you ever wanted to print just part of an email message? Maybe you need just an address or directions to your friend's new house, but you don't need all the dancing smileys and chit chat that surrounds the important bit. What about grabbing just what you need from a web page instead of everything on it?

Something that will work with most printers (but not all printers) and most software (but not all of it) is printing only the area you select. Here's how:

This works fine on my printer for Firefox, Internet Explorer 7 and Outlook Express. I could not get it to work with Thunderbird, because the Selection choice is grayed out.

You can always copy and paste whatever you need into Notepad or Word and print from there, but it's an extra couple of clicks that way.



Find out what program a file belongs to
Sometimes I receive files that Windows doesn't know how to open, and neither do I. Windows is good about telling us we don't have the right program installed, but it's not so good at telling us what program we need! You can find that out. Here's how:

Browse to the Almost Every File Format In The World website, here, and look up the extension. If you don't find it there, or even if you do but you want to know more, browse on over to the FILExt site, here. Both are great resources.

Please, please, please practise safe computing and don't open any file you're not expecting even if it appears to be from a trusted source, without first scanning it for viruses. Most anti-virus programs will let you do this quickly and easily. If the file is an email attachment, save the file somewhere you can find it. I recommend saving it to a folder called Downloads or to the Desktop. Once you've saved it, right-click on it. One of the choices on the context menu should be "Scan with..." and the name of your anti-virus program. Select that and wait a moment for the scan results before you try to open the file.


Sort "All Programs" alphabetically
When you install a program, Windows XP adds it to the end of the "All Programs" list in the Start Menu, bless it's heart. But if you have a lot of programs, you can search a long time before you finally zero in on the program you want.

An easier way to find programs is to have them in alphabetical order, and that's very easy to do. Here's how:

Don't you feel more organized now?

Thank you to everyone who emailed their comments and suggestions. Please keep them coming! You can contact me at cate@rlis.com.  If you'd like to look at past columns, browse over to the column archives, here. If you'd like to subscribe to this column by email, please visit this link.  It's easy, and free. If you'd prefer the RSS Feed, click here.

I hope you have a happy and safe Thanksgiving with friends and family! See you next week with the scoop on web-based office programs.


Links
Almost Every File Format In The World http://www.ace.net.nz/tech/TechFileFormat.html
FILExt http://filext.com/
Getting Along With Your Computer Column Archives http://rlis.com/column.htm
Get Cate's column by email http://www.feedblitz.com/f/f.fbz?Sub=20618
RSS Feed http://rlis.com/rlis.xml

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Cate Eales has been helping people make online computing safe, accessible and fun for over 20 years. She lives in Kelowna with her husband, Eric, and her dog, Sandy. Cate is a partner in Real Life Internet Solutions, helping individuals and small businesses with virus, spyware and malware eradication; personal computer training and management; digital image management; music transfer; and website design, hosting and management. Email Cate at cate@rlis.com with your comments, suggestions, or questions. To browse the column archives, visit the Real Life Internet Solutions website at www.rlis.com.