Nephronline - Supplement and Diary - internet tips, tricks & shortcuts 11

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Play it again (click to go back)

If you enjoy playing with the style, size, and colour of the text in your Word documents, here’s a quick way to repeat what you decided to do with one area of text with a new area of text.

		Once you have decided you like the look of what you have done to the first area of text, highlight it by drawing the cursor over it with the left mouse button held down.
		Go down your document and, in the same way as you highlighted the first area of text, highlight the second area of text.
		Press Ctrl and Y together and the second area will change to look like the first.

Modern macro (click to go back)

In the good/bad-old days of MS-DOS, we used to create shortcuts by assigning a combination of keys to a little program which performed an often used function. You can now do this much more easily for to launch programs which have a desktop icon.

		Rest the cursor arrow on the desktop icon for which you wish to create a shortcut.
		Right click the mouse and you will see a drop-down Menu appear.
		Scroll down until Properties, at the foot of the Menu, is highlighted.
		Left click to launch a dialog box.
		Left click the Shortcut tab at the top of the box.
		In the field called “Shortcut key” enter the personal key you want to use to launch the program.
		You’ll see the command Ctrl + Alt + the key you entered come up.
		Left click Apply at the bottom of the box.
		Your shortcut is now active.
		When you want to use it just hold down the Ctrl and Alt keys together and Press you personal key.

Setting up a signature(click to go back)

Most people sign an email with the same form of words and name every time. You can set up Outlook Express to enter these details for you, automatically.

		Open Outlook Express and go to the Tools option at the top of the screen.
		Left click on it and a drop-down Menu appears.
		Scroll down to highlight Options at the foot of the Menu and left click it.
		This launches a dialog box with a number of tabs at the top.
		Left click the tab called Signatures.
		Left click New, the previously greyed-out text box towards the foot of the dialog box will become white and the cursor will begin flashing in there.
		Type in your signature details.
		Left click the white box marked “Add signatures to all outgoing messages”.
		Left click Apply.
		Come out of the dialog box by left clicking Okay or the X-of-death in the top right-hand corner.
		When you next launch the Outlook Express interface for a New Message, you will find your signature already in place.

Search tip (click to go back)

If your search string doesn’t throw up a list of immediately relevant Websites, try retyping the string with the words in a different order. Theoretically, this shouldn’t work, but sometimes it does. Who said computing was entirely logical!

Quick-key tip (click to go back)

To launch the Start Menu at any time either:

		Press the CTRL and ESC keys together; or
		Press the Windows key.

Emoticon of the Month (click to go back)

I came across this the other day, and it tickled my fancy.
(:-D means Has a Big Mouth.

You can also use it on some mobile phones in text messages. On a Nokia, for example, in its Write Message option:

		Press the *+ key.
		Scroll to the ( with the down arrow on the scroll button.
		Press Use
		Repeat the steps selecting the appropriate symbol each time.
		Finish with a upper case D.