Announcements

Hello & Welcome Back!

Hope everyone enjoyed the weekend. I know I did!

We started school last week and I love this long weekend. After all the extra paperwork and start up stuff, it's like one last breath of summer before we really get to business in the classroom.

What is it now, about 176 days left in the school year (give or take)? Maybe I should aim at a smaller goal, like Thanksgiving…

Have a great day,
April

Virus Season

OK, we're starting to get into the last part of the year and it seems like this is when we start seeing a surge of new of viruses spring up. At least that appears to be the case when I look back on all of our past virus alerts. More people at home using their computers I guess :-).

So be extra careful with your e-mail attachments and be sure to check out our virus guide at:

http://www.worldstart.com/guides/virus1.htm

In light of this fact, we've struck a special deal with our suppliers for you.

I'm happy to report that we have Norton Anti-Virus 2002 on sale for only $14.97 (FREE US Shipping, of course)! It normally retails for $49.95, so it's a heck of a deal.

Let me tell ya, I get a dozen e-mails a day from people who have been hit by viruses. In many cases, they lose all their data, get personal info stolen, have to re-install windows, or deal with any number of other problems.

So, I always recommend running anti-virus software.

As many of you already know, I think Norton AV 2002 is the one of the best anti-virus programs available. It can scan e-mail, downloads, protect against malicious java scripts, and just about everything else. It's really easy to use and seems to be at the top spot in every comparison of AV software I've seen.

The feature I like the best about this software is the way it automatically updates itself. It automatically checks for - and downloads - virus updates while you're online. No messing around with manual updates or forgetting to get the current virus definitions. Great huh?

Isn't keeping your computer virus free worth $14.97? If you've ever been infected with a virus, I know you're shouting "YES!" Don't be like the guy who didn't buy AV software until after his computer was infected and information lost (believe me, he'll tell ya $14.97 is a deal!)

Here's the link:

http://www.worldstart.com/store/nortonav2002-RCS.htm

Please, if you don't have good, up to date, anti-virus software, grab this deal. Your computer will thank you for it :-)

MS Office 101

Another Text Formatting Trick

In response to the August 6th and 13th issues of MS Office Tips, a reader by the name of Arthur made this Change Case suggestion that I would like to share with you.

From the Change Case options, you can make text all lower case, all upper case, sentence case, toggle case or title case. Arthur's tip allows you to get all small caps. (Meaning capitals only as large as small case letters.)

"See the" was done in regular caps, whereas "difference" was done with small caps.

Next question: How do we get the small caps?

Good question and fortunately easy to answer.

When you've got something that needs to be emphasized, but not screamed at the reader, then you've got something that's a good candidate for the small caps format.

To change text to small caps simply highlight the text to be changed and then press Shift+Control+K on your keyboard. This will take your lower case typing and turn it into small caps. And if you hit the key combination again it will return your text to lower case characters.

You can also combine this with the Shift + F3 options where the small caps replace lower case in the rotation of formats.

That's it! Just another way to get your point across without over emphasizing.

P. S. Thanks Arthur! Also, you can view the previous Change Case tricks at our archives... http://www.worldstart.com/archives/index.htm.

Office Tip of the Day

Changing Directions

Have you ever wished that you could change the direction of text? I mean literally have it read in another direction. Maybe you want to change the look of the documents or maybe you need to maximize the space you have to work with in the horizontal direction. (Change direction, get more space... If only that would work in my livingroom. Change the direction of the couch to create more space...)

Anyway, you could be working in MS Excel on a table of data that will be printed and you need to rotate some text so it will go up the side of the page. Or possibly you're working in MS Word and you've just inserted an AutoShape, with text, and now you need to rotate the text to fit the shape properly.

Whatever the case, it sure would be nice to know how to change text direction. You just never know when a trick like that will come in handy.

Today let's begin with text rotation in MS Word.

Changing direction of text is only available for text in callouts, text boxes, AutoShapes or cells in a table. So the first step is to create one of these items (the first three are items from the drawing tools) and get the text into it.

For example, here's a table in MS Word where all the text is horizontal.

To have the row titles to read vertically, simply click the cell, AutoShape, callout or text box to be changed. (If you need to change multiple cells then highlight all cells to be changed.) Go to the Format menu, Text Direction choice.

A text direction window will open allowing you to pick from 3 choices.

You can choose to leave the text horizontal, change it to read from top to bottom or change it to read from bottom to top. Once you make your choice, click OK. The window will close and you should now see your text running in the direction of your choosing.

See the difference?

I tend to use this frequently when I need every little bit of space available between the left and right margins. It can also be helpful in making the drawing objects more powerful. For example, have you ever tried to make a flier with the little fringe at the bottom where people can pull off a phone number? (I know there are some programs that have templates set up for this exact thing, but what if you only have Word and that's what you need? What then?)

Well, this trick can do that for you.

Simply create a small text box. Type in the information for the tear-off tabs. Change the direction of the text to your choice. (You may want to change the outline of the text box to be clear so that you don't have all the little boxes around the information - use the line menu while the original text box is selected, choosing No Line from the palette.)

Now, while the text box is still selected, use Ctrl + D to duplicate the text box. You can continue to do this and create many duplicate text boxes quickly. Once you have the text boxes, simply line them up across the bottom of the page.

And there you have it - just finish the top of the flyer and you're on your way.

Next Tuesday we'll cover the changing of text direction in MS Excel which will be fun since there are a lot more options.

Ugh, I hate cliff-hangers...