Follow-up to Last Week's Tips

10/6/03 Make Text Readable: Many of you found that when you clicked Ctrl+A it did not select all the text to make it easier to read. One reader finally realized that he did not click inside the message window before doing the Ctrl+A. Problem solved.

10/8/03 Find Hibernate in XP: Some of our XP users out there mentioned that when they pushed the Shift key the "Standby" button did not change to "Hibernate". In order for this feature to be available, it must be enabled. Click Start / Control Panel then "Performance and Maintenance" and "Power Options" (in Category View) or just "Power Options" (in Classic View). Click the Hibernate tab, then check the box marked "Enable hibernation" and OK.

Now the trick should work. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Hibernate helps conserve laptop batteries.

10/10/03 All Caps Fix: We didn't mean to offend the ALL CAPS-ERS out there. Some of you may live in countries where the government can come into your home and rip out your Caps Lock key, but most of you breathe the fresh air of freedom when you log on. You have every right to type however you want, just QUIT YELLING AT ME!

Several of you wrote to quietly remind me that in MS Word you can hit Shift +F3 to change highlighted text to ALL CAPS, all lower case, or Sentence Case. So if you prefer your email in ALL CAPS, you can follow the same tip to make it THE WAY YOU LIKE IT.

Computers 101

Q:
I have old disks laying around with important stuff on them but the files used programs that aren't available anymore. Is there a way to open them?

A:
In many cases, the info on the disk(s) seems like it's inaccessible with newer machines. Maybe the software that created it is no longer in existence, or it's just an odd ball format.

So, is there any way to transfer your files from old floppies to your new machine?

Well, maybe.

The first thing I try with an old, unknown file format is to open it with Notepad (assuming it's a document and not a picture or something). You'd be surprised how often that little trick works.

If that doesn't work, sometimes MS Word or Corel WordPerfect may have the ability to open the file.

Note that with both of the above document opening tricks, you'll need to select "All files" from the File of type drop box on the Open screen. If you don't, you probably won't be able to access the file you're trying to open at all.

If the file is a database, this can be harder. Your best bet, believe it or not, may be a spreadsheet program like Excel (or some similar program).

You see, most older (and many newer) databases are in a basic text separated format (the values between fields are separated by commas, spaces or tabs with one record per line). Excel and most other spreadsheet programs can handle these types of files with ease. Again, you'll need to select "All files" from the Open screen's Files of type drop box in order to try this.

Of course, if you have a good database program, it may be able to open the file for you. MS Access can open just about any database file, if you're lucky enough to have access to Access.

Note that if you are successful in getting your file to open, you will probably have to "clean" it up a bit before it's useful again (sometimes the formatting is not quite what it should be). Once it's set though, be sure to re-save it in a current format :-)

Finally, if all else fails, you may need to figure out exactly what type of program you'll need to find in order to open the file. Check out this site for a little help in that dept: http://filext.com/

~ Steve

Have a question for the newsletter? Submit it at the link below:
http://www.worldstart.com/submitquestion.htm

Tip of the Day

Have you ever copied a hunk of text that was overly-formatted? You know, italic, underlined, and written in some really strange looking font that's next to impossible to read.

Like this:

When you paste it into your word processor, chances are that it retains all those properties. Now, you could go and try to re-format the text back into something normal, but that can sometimes prove problematic.

A better way is to copy the text into Notepad and let it remove the formatting automatically. After you paste the text in, all you're left with is plain text than can be pasted into any word processing application.

Here is that text pasted into Windows Notepad:

Cool huh?

~ Steve

Have an original tip for the newsletter? Submit it below:
http://www.worldstart.com/writers-guidelines/index.htm

Amanda's Cool Site of the Day

American Museum of Photography

Today we are viewing the American Museum of Photography. You can learn how to create clones with a camera, Learn about "Spirit Photography", Daguerreotypes, and much more.

"Spirit Photography" is a section on finding ghosts and such with cameras and is interesting in a "believe it or not" kind of way.

Daguerreotypes are made on polished metal plates without a negative; each image must be exposed individually in a camera. The finished pictures are brilliant, mirror-like, and finely-detailed. I found this section extremely interesting and well written.

That's just a sampling of what this site has to offer.

Click on over!

http://www.photographymuseum.com/

Do you have a cool, non-commercial site that you want to share?
Send it to Amanda at amanda@worldstart.com