Quick Tips

Some Windows 7 Quick-tips for you
Windows 7

Many of you are now using Windows 7. Some of the more affluent among you received a new Windows 7 computer for Christmas. Quick-tips are tips you can learn and use quickly. See? Quick-tips? Got it?

Here are a few Quick-tips for those of you who are now using Windows 7:

Windows 7 Quickie - You can minimize all open windows except for the one you have on top, by clicking Windows Key + Home Key. Click again to re-open all those windows.

IE 8 Address Bar Surprise in Windows 7 - One of my favorite features in Windows 7! Just drag the address bar downwards using your left mouse key, and the address bar will slowly expand to show you your History, Favorites and Typed URLs.

Rearranging Icons in your Taskbar or System Tray -You can quickly and easily rearrange the items/icons in your taskbar by simply holding your left mouse key down and dragging them from one spot to another. You can reorder both pinned shortcuts or running applications to suit your needs.

Did you know you can also change the order of the icons in your system tray? You can even drag them into and out of view. I keep programs I open often, in view close to my system clock.

Four Quick Tips for Outlook Express and Windows Mail
Windows XP and Windows Vista (Outlook Express or Windows Mail)

Tip #1
Take a look at your Outlook Express/Windows Mail message folders. When you delete a message or move it to another folder, Outlook Express/Windows Mail marks the original message as deleted and does not really remove it. Right Click on the Deleted Items folder and empty it. Now, with the "Deleted Items Folder" still highlighted, from the top toolbar choose File / Folder / Compact All Folders to free up all the space occupied by those deleted messages. If you've never done this before, emptying the folders can take quite a while. After following this tip, you may find that Outlook Express/Windows Mail loads faster for you.

Tip #2
Want a quick way to view a received email's message headers (this is the detailed information that you need when tracking down where spam really originated from). Open the email message and hit the Ctrl key and the F3 key. The message headers will pop right up.

Tip #3
Want to know how to delete a message without it going into the deleted items folder? Highlight the offending message press the delete key while holding down the shift key. Be careful, once you do this, the message is gone. To delete a more than one message without sending them to the "Deleted Items" folder? Select the messages by clicking each one while holding down the "ctrl" key.

Tip #4
We all know that attachments borne by email messages can often be harmful and we should never open any attachment unless we're absolutely sure of who it is from and we were expecting it. Here's a handy tip to make those messages with attachments stand out by highlighting them with color:

* Select Tools / Message Rules / Mail... from the toolbar in the main (not compose) Outlook Express window.
* Make the rule's condition, "Where the message has an attachment"
* Set the action to: Highlight it with color.
* Select the color by clicking on color in the Rule Description.
* Give your rule a name like "Attachment Warning"
* Click OK.

Five of the best online storage sites
Windows all versions

We always stress backing up your computer. Saving those important files. Saving those software registration keys. Saving those precious photos. Flash drives are great for storing documents, photos, email messages. So are external hard drives. Adding an extra internal hard drive is great too. But do you know how many people write us and say "I had everything backed up but I had something go wrong and had to reinstall Windows and I lost everything"? A lot. People don't understand that saving backups to the same drive that Windows is installed on is useless; it's a futile waste of time. If you need to format the Windows drive and reinstall Windows, what else do you think is going to be missing? Your backups. So don't ever backup to the same drive that Windows is installed on; if you do you might as well not back up at all.

Now that we've convinced you again of the importance of backing up, how about backing up the backups? If you have really important data or photos or software programs that cannot be replaced, consider backing up the backups. That way you have two options to retrieve that important data that cannot be replaced. A good way to ensure that you'll never lose those precious photos, documents, email messages, spreadsheets, photos, etc., is to save them on a flash drive, external hard drive, DVD, CD-ROM or internal hard drive (other than the one with Windows) and to store them on one of the many online storage sites which offer free accounts and 2GB or more of free space.

Here are our top five, online storage sites, in no particular order:

iDrive
iDrive offers 2GB of free storage space. But if you refer your friends, you can earn up to another 10GB of free space, bringing the total to 12GB. This is not an invitation to spam someone, but if you have friends who might be interested in protecting their precious files, they just might appreciate you telling them about iDrive - and you get the extra space for doing them a favor. iDrive also uses a desktop client to help you upload and download files from your account. Get more information and/or sign up for a free 2GB storage space from iDrive here.

ADrive
ADrive offers you the most online storage space - 50GB. Yes, you read that right - 50GB free. If you plan on uploading 50GB of stuff you better have a good, high-speed, Internet connection. ADrive's one drawback -it doesn't offer a desktop client which makes it easier to upload and download files. With the free account you do your uploading and downloading with your browser. Not as easy as a desktop client but certainly for the whopping 50GB of free space, you can deal with it, right? Learn more about ADrive here.

Skydrive
Microsoft's trying desperately to be cool. If you trust Microsoft with your files you'll like Microsoft's "Live" Skydrive. You get 25GB of space with the free account. You can learn more about Skydrive at http://skydrive.live.com/

Mozy
Mozy has lots of money - they spend lots of money on advertising. They give you 2GB of free space - and a half a gigabyte of space for each person you refer until you reach 5GB. So you can theoretically get 5G free by referring six friends to Mozy. Mozy is easy to use - they provide a desktop client for uploading and downloading files. Want to know more about Mozy? http://mozy.com/

Humyo
What a strange name, eh? Wonder where they dug that name up? EB? Anyway Humyo offers 10GB of space. You can store 5GB of media files (videos, music, pictures) and 5GB of non-media files (documents, software, etc.). Odd way of doing things. What is the difference anyway? A gigabyte is a gigabyte is a gigabyte. Apparently the people who created Humyo are strange - or maybe it's just us? We're strange, right? If you want to find out more about Humyo and get 10GB of storage space free, visit this page.

All of the sites above require only your name and email address to register for the free accounts. You don't need to provide a credit card. All of the above have "premium" features and unlimited storage space for a price. You don't have to buy anything to use the free accounts.

The Key To The Windows Key
Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7

The Windows key by itself will open your Start Menu. The Windows key in combination with other keys can be a time saver. Here are some Windows key shortcuts that you'll find useful and will save you time.

WINKEY + B

Set focus to first tray icon

WINKEY + D

Show Desktop

WINKEY + E

Windows Explorer

WINKEY + F

Find Files or Folders (aka Search)

WINKEY + M

Minimize All windows

WINKEY + Shift + M

Undo minimize all windows

WINKEY + R

Run... (opens the "Run" dialog - the same as clicking "Start" then "Run")

WINKEY + Tab

Select Task

WINKEY + Pause/Break

System Properties

WINKEY + F1

Windows Help

WINKEY + L

Lock workstation

WINKEY + U

Opens "Ease of Access" Center

Windows 7 Taskbar Hotkeys

I love hotkeys! In fact, I'm pretty sure that If I could assign one for every Windows 7 action, I definitely would! With that said, here are some quick hotkey combinations I stumbled across for the Windows 7 Taskbar.

Ctrl + Click on a grouped taskbar item
Cycles through the various windows of the group.

Ctrl + Shift Click on a taskbar item
Opens program as an Administrator.

Shift + Click on a taskbar item
Opens another instance of a program. (May not work with everything)

Shift + Right-click on a taskbar item
Show the window menu for the program.

I don't know about you, but that last hotkey combo is like gold to me!

A Little-to-No Highlighting to Make Formatting Changes?

Did you know that when working in MS Word, there is no need to highlight an entire paragraph to make changes to paragraph traits (such as tabs, justification, line spacing and indents?)

All you have to do is click anywhere inside the paragraph and the changes will automatically apply to the entire paragraph.

Have more than one paragraph to work with?

No problem!

While this one will require some highlighting, you still don't have to highlight entire paragraphs. As long as your highlight section is at least partially in a paragraph, the changes will take effect for the whole paragraph.

Little-to-no highlighting is always an improvement, don't you think?!

Printing a List of Your Custom Key Shortcuts

Have you invested quite a bit of time creating custom key combinations for various tasks in Word 2007?

If you're anything like me then the number of key combinations can be many and I will go through phases where the newest ones are needed daily so the older ones are sometimes forgotten.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a printout of all those key combinations?

I mean they were useful enough to create so why not keep a "cheat sheet" at your computer so you can put them to work no matter how long it's been since you lasted used one of them?

If that's something you're interested in then I've got just the thing you need.

Next time you're in Word 2007 take an extra moment to go to the Print dialog box. (Office Button, Print or Ctrl + P)

In the bottom left corner you'll see a field labeled as "Print what" with a drop-down list of choices.
Choose Key assignments from the list then click OK.
The next thing you know your personalized shortcuts are on the printer waiting to make your day go a little smoother.

Say you're browsing around in Mozilla Firefox and you come across a page that's so awesome you want to set it as your home page.
Here's the quickest way:
Just highlight the address up in your address bar and drag it over to the “Home” icon in your toolbar
Now click OK when the dialog box pops up and you've got a new home!

Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows Help

We all know that accessing the Windows Help viewer is as easy as clicking on a blank area of the desktop and hitting F1, right? Well, if you didn't, then now you do! Here are some helpful keyboard shortcuts to make you help experience a lot smoother! Give 'em a try!

F10 - Shows the Options menu

F3 - Snap to the Search box

ALT+C - Shows the Table of Contents

ALT+N - Shows the Connection Settings menu

ALT+LEFT ARROW - View previously viewed topic

ALT+RIGHT ARROW - Move forward to the next topic

ALT+A - Show the customer support page

ALT+HOME - Show the Help and Support home page

CTRL+F - Search the current topic

CTRL+P - Print a topic

HOME - Go to the beginning of a topic

END - Go to the end of a topic