If there are any topics you would like to see discussed in the future or if you have any comments, please contact me at JoeT@HighCaliber.com
Bullet Points
Windows 98 Support Ending
It looks like the end of Windows 98 is at hand. Microsoft states
"After January 16, 2004, [Windows 98] will be obsolete..."
If you are still running Windows 98, you might want to download and store
copies of all Windows 98 Updates so you'll have them when Win98 support ends.
Upgrading to Windows XP or Windows 2000 would probably be a good idea.
We have been recommending this for some time now when hardware can support
these operating systems (bare minimum requirements in our opinion are
300 Mhz CPU, 128 MB RAM, 20 GB hard drive with at least 8 GB free). XP and
2000 are excellent products and will save you money in the long run. They
are also more secure, especially if you have a Windows 2000 server. Let us
know if we can help with the migration.
Spell Checking Web Input Forms
I rarely recommend shareware, plug-ins or other non-essential software, but
I am going to have to break with tradition. According to their web site:
"ieSpell is a free Internet Explorer browser extension that spell checks
text input boxes on a web page. It should come in particularly handy for users
who do a lot of web-based text entry (e.g. web mails, forums, blogs, diaries). "
I have installed this successfully under Windows XP and it works great.
Just right click while on an input form item and select Check spelling from
the menu. Simple, useful, and unobtrusive (e.g. it didn't screw up my PC!) Highly
recommended.
Highlighting an Entire Sentence in MS Word
A quick way to select (highlight) one sentence in Microsoft Word is to:
Position the cursor in the left margin next to that sentence
Hold down the Ctrl key and simultaneously click the left mouse button
Inserting Dates in MS Word
Pressing Shift + Alt + D while editing a Word document inserts the current
date at the cursor position. To change the date's format:
Select Insert from the menu bar at the top
Select Date and Time from the pull down menu
Select the desired format
To make this the default, click the Default button
Click Ok
Removing Hidden Personal Data in Word and Excel Documents
Whenever you create, open, or save a document in Microsoft Word and Excel,
the document may contain information that you may not want to share with
others if you distribute the document electronically. This information is
known as "metadata".
The following are some examples of metadata that may be stored in your documents:
Your name and Initials
Your company name
The name of your computer
The name of the network server or hard disk where you saved the document
Other file properties and summary information
The names of previous document authors
Document versions and revisions
Template information
Hidden text or cells
Comments
For more information on meta data and how to remove it:
FireWire is Apple's trademark name for a high-speed (400 Mbps) method
of connecting external devices to a computer. Other companies have trade
names such as iLink and Lynx for the same technology.
Devices that benefit from this high-speed data rate include MP3 players,
digital video cameras, external DVD burners, and external hard drives. If
you have an external music device, such as Apple's iPod MP3 player, the
amount of time that it takes to load songs onto it is dramatically reduced
because of Firewire.
Windows-based systems use a similar technology called USB 2.0 (Universal
Serial Bus) which also has a high data transfer rate (480Mbps). You can
also use Firewire on a Windows XP machine however you will probably have
to purchase a special card to get a Firewire port.
The device that you want to connect to your computer will generally
determine which interface you should use. Very few peripherals come
with both connectors.
If you have an older PC that only has USB 1.1, the transfer rate is
only 12 Mbps, which is fine for keyboards, mice and speakers, but is
too slow for video or audio transfer. You can purchase USB 2.0 upgrade
cards.
Maximizing an Internet Explorer Window
To fully expand your screen in MS Internet Explorer (known as kiosk mode) tap on the F11 key.
A second tap will restore the window to its previous size.
What To Do If You Get a Virus
Don't panic!
Remove the virus using your anti-virus software. (Obvious, right?)
Double check that the virus is gone with a separate antivirus program such as:
I have been noticing more and more that people are now using email as
a way to store, file, collaborate on, and otherwise manage documents.
Email allows documents to be easily distributed as attachments and
filed with date/time stamps. But email is really not the most
efficient way to do this.
For example, imagine how much disk space is wasted when documents
of any size are emailed to a distribution list. It winds up in
your Sent folder, all recipients' Inbox, and probably on everybody's
C: drive or private folder on a server when the attachments are
detached. (Unless of course you are using Microsoft Exchange, in
which case your data store grows, and grows, and grows...) And then
there is the problem of collecting/consolidating all of the changes
and annotations people make to the documents. As you have probably
already realized, things can get unwieldy pretty quickly.
That's where SharePoint comes in. Windows SharePoint Services take
file storage to a new level, making it easy for users to work together
on documents, tasks, contacts, events, and other information.
Windows SharePoint Services allows teams to create Web sites for information
sharing and document collaboration. This helps increase individual
and team productivity. Windows SharePoint Services is a component of
Windows Server 2003 and provides team services and sites to Microsoft
Office System and other desktop programs.
SharePoint sites provide places to capture and share ideas, information,
communication, and documents. The sites facilitate team participation in
discussions, shared document collaboration, and surveys. Site content is
accessible from both a Web browser and through clients that support Web
Services. The document collaboration features allow for easy check in,
check out, and document version control.
According to Microsoft, here are the top 10 reasons to use SharePoint:
Windows SharePoint Services takes file sharing to a new level
Instead of just dumping files into directories, Windows SharePoint
Services supplies Web sites with document storage and retrieval
with check-in and check-out functionality, version history, custom
metadata, and flexible, customizable views. Users can find and share
data, with the added assurance that data will not be lost.
You can share many kinds of information
SharePoint sites store event calendars, contacts, Web links, discussions,
issues lists, announcements, and much more. By using Windows SharePoint
Services, you can create smart places that help your users share
information and get work done, not just a place to save files.
Users get the authority, flexibility, and customization they need.
You can grant users the ability to create sites, allow them to control site
membership, monitor site usage directly, and moderate content submissions.
Users can even create site templates and share them with one another, reusing
customized, proven site solutions.
IT gets the management tools it needs.
Despite the authority delegated to users, Windows SharePoint Services also
enables you to track which sites are created, who owns them, how long a site
has gone unused, and so on. You can enforce quotas for sites, users, and
storage; block users from adding specific file types to sites; and automatically
delete sites that are unused for long periods of time.
Windows SharePoint Services scales to enterprise deployments.
You can deploy Windows SharePoint Services in server farms that support tens
of thousands of sites and can handle the typical load of hundreds of thousands
of users. Windows SharePoint Services supports load balancing for Web servers
and server clustering technology for all data—including configuration, documents,
and list data.
If you want to start small, Windows SharePoint Services runs on a single computer.
Despite the fact that it was engineered to scale to large enterprise deployments,
Windows SharePoint Services runs well on deployments for small business, departmental,
or pilot environments.
You can enhance your SharePoint sites using Web Parts.
Site owners and users can add the Web Parts you provide to their site pages, adding
new features to the sites they already use. ASP.NET developers can write Web Parts to
provide data access, Web services, and many other applications and content to SharePoint sites.
You can manage Windows SharePoint Services the way you want.
You can manage and configure Windows SharePoint Services right out of the box by using
a Web browser or command-line utilities. You can also manage server farms, servers, and
sites by using the Microsoft .NET Framework–based object model and Web services, making
possible a great many custom and third-party administration solution offerings.
You can use Microsoft Office System 2003 as a powerful set of collaboration tools.
Thanks to the Web services provided by Windows SharePoint Services, programs in the
Microsoft Office System—including Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel,
Microsoft Office PowerPoint, Microsoft Office InfoPath, and Microsoft Office OneNote—
can use information in SharePoint sites natively. Programs in the Microsoft Office
System allow users to add members to sites, assign tasks, and communicate with
members both by e-mail or in real time by using online presence, all while working
on documents stored in SharePoint sites. With Microsoft Office Outlook, users can
view calendars and contact lists stored on SharePoint sites and can create and manage
sites devoted to editing documents and organizing meetings.
You can organize sites and site content by using Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003.
Windows SharePoint Services provides large numbers of individually productive places.
SharePoint Portal Server connects these places to people, teams, knowledge, and
applications to create smart organizations. It adds site organization and navigation,
content topics, targeted news, personalized sites, content search, organization-wide
alerts, enterprise application integration, and more to a Windows SharePoint Services
deployment.
Give us a call if you would like to learn more about how SharePoint
can help you better manage important documents.
