PC Hints and Dodges 1 – Word
I have been using MS Word for over 10 years and have found a number of features and short-cuts including the following, which I hope you will also find to be useful:-
Accents
Accented characters may be formed by using the codes shown in the table – press the ALT key down whilst inputting the code from the number keypad as follows:
accented character / description / Alt key + codeà / a grave / 0224
á / a acute / 0225
â / a circumflex / 0226
ç / c cedilla / 0231
è / e grave / 0232
é / e acute / 0233
ê / e circumflex / 0234
ë / e diaeresis / 0235
Note: This only works from the number keypad and not from the number keys above the QWERTY line.
These are the main French ones. Others, plus Greek letters, € (Euro), diphthongs, © (copyright) and fractions (¼, ½)can be found for the font in use from the Character Map application under Windows Accessories – see below.
Useful symbols, shapes and characters
Apart from the accented and other characters discussed above, there is a useful collection of scaleable symbols that can be inserted in the text including ticks, envelopes, scissors, boxes, zodiac signs, moon phases, arrows and lots of others. To see the full collection go to Start – All Programmes – Accessories – System Tools and click on Character Map. Select the Wingdings fonts to see the full set of characters. These may be inserted in the text by select, copy and paste and scaled by highlighting and changing the point size.
UPPER CASE characters
Characters (including accented ones), words or complete sentences may be changed from lower case to upper case or vice-versa by highlighting the characters and pressing shift + F3. To highlight, place the cursor at the start of the word or sentence, press the left mouse key and move the mouse to the right and down – the required characters will be highlighted. Press shift + F3 once to change the first character of all words in the sentence to a capital and twice to change all the characters to capitals.
Highlighting text
Other methods of highlighting text:
Move the cursor to the left of the text until it changes to an arrow. Press the left mouse button and move the mouse down to highlight as much text as required.
To highlight all text – press ctrl + home then press ctrl + shift + end
The highlighted text can then be copied and pasted to another place, into another open Word document or into another open application such as Email.
Copy & paste text
A quick way of copying and pasting text is to highlight the text to be copied as described above and hit Ctrl + C This copies the text to your clipboard. The saved text can then be pasted by placing the cursor in the desired location and pressing Ctrl + V
Show formatting marks
Editing may be easier if some or all of the formatting marks such as tab marks, paragraph marks and spaces are shown - as follows:
In the Tools menu – select Options, go to the View tab and put a tick against the mark you wish to display or tick “All”. These marks will be shown on screen but will not be printed.
Backup
To avoid losing all your work due to a power cut or other accident, select the backup options as follows:
In the Tools Menu – select Options, go to the Save tab and tick the following boxes:
- Always create backup copy
- Allow background saves
- Save autorecover every (say) 5 Minutes
Subscripts and superscripts
E.g. CO2, 20OC, in2, ft3, 3rd
Highlightthe character(s) to be subscripted or superscripted, go to Format menu, select Font, tick the subscript or superscript box and hit Return.
PC Hints and Dodges 2 – Files
A few notes about backup and management of PC data files.
Backup
It never ceases to amaze me how many people don’t make backup copies of their working data files. It is almost inevitable that one day something will happen to cause your files to be lost due to various causes including a hard disc crash, accidental erasure, theft or just sheer bad luck. To avoid that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach ….. BACK UP YOUR WORKING FILES.
The Windows Operating System and other software can be re-installed using the CDs provided by the PC supplier or from the Software Master Discs but the working files may be lost or corrupted during the re-installation process- So ….. BACK UP YOUR WORKING FILES.
There are several ways to do this depending on the size of your files. These can grow quite large if you have lots of digital photographs, music collections, financial data, email archives etc. so high capacity storage methods will be required.
Some PCs have a CD burner with associated software such as Nero or Roxio so take time to read the instructions and make CD copies of the files which will accommodate about 600MB.
A better method is to buy an external hard drive made by Western Digital, Iomega, Sony and others at about £80.00 for a 250GB drive. They come complete with installation software and a lead to plug into one of the USB sockets. The new drive is identified by a letter following the C drive (D, E etc.) and it is a simple matter to copy the working files over either by “drag and drop” as described in a previous article or by the software provided.
Another simple way of transferring files is to use a Flash Key or Flash Drive from PC stores, M & S etc. at about £8.00 for 128MB of memory. These devices are about the size of a cigarette lighter and plug into a USB socket in a similar way to the external hard drive. They are not suitable for long-term storage and the files should be transferred to a hard drive, a laptop or a friend or relation’s PC at the earliest opportunity.
For small files such as word documents, spreadsheets etc. you may get away with using a number of floppy discs – a bit tedious and time consuming as they only hold about 1½ MB of data– but something is better than nothing.
File Managers
Files are normally accessed from the “My Computer” screen.
More information about your files can be obtained by changing the view of this screen as follows:
In the View menu select “Details” – this will show the Name, Type, Size and Date of the files.
In the View menu select “View” then “Explorer Bar” then select “Folders” – this will show the file structure of all the active drives including any new ones installed as discussed above.
Files can be sorted by name, size, type and date by clicking on the relevant heading.
Some prefer to use Windows Explorer for file management which shows a few more details about the files and always defaults to the last “View” setting.
Windows Explorer can be found as follows:
Start – All Programs - Accessories then click on the Windows Explorer icon and select the views as shown above. The icon can be copied to the desktop by dragging and dropping. (hold down Ctrl and left mouse button and move the icon to the desktop)
File extensions e.g. doc, jpg, pdf, mp3 etc. can be included in the filename as follows:
In Control Panel, double click on “Folder Options”, click the “View” tab and make sure the box - “Hide extensions for known file types” is unticked
File Associations
In the File Management screens described above, double clicking on any file will open the file in the “default” programme.
The default programme can be changed as follows:
In “Control Panel”, double click on “Folder Options”, click the “File Types” tab, wait for it to search and it will display a table headed “Registered File Types” showing the extension and file type. Clicking on the file extension line will show the programme in which the file will normally open. This can be changed by clicking the “Change” button which will open up a list of files enabling the default programme to be changed.
And Finally …..
BACK UP YOUR WORKING FILES
Use your PC to find Freebies and Cheapies
There are plenty of opportunities on the Internet for free and cheap stuff if you use it to your advantage. I have listed a few of these that I have found useful.
Freecycle
A non-profit movement for people to get rid of items surplus to their requirements and/or to acquire surplus stuff from others. One man’s junk is another man’s sought-after goodies. The usual rule is Buyer Collects and no money changes hands. Membership is free. See - for information on a group near you and details of how to join.
eBay
The World’s biggest auction site where you can buy and sell literally anything. See for lots of information and help.
I have never had a problem with any of the sellers I have dealt with – the few rogues soon get found out by the negative “feedback”. All the articles that I sold went for way above what I thought they would fetch so the best thing I can recommend is to give it a go.
Skype
If you have friends and relations living abroad and they have a PC, you can make free phone calls by subscribing to Skype – see for details.
You will both need to downloads and install the free software from the Skype website and have a microphone and speakers connected to your PC. You can also make cheap calls to fixed and mobile phones.
0870 and 0845 phones
Avoid paying for expensive calls to these phones particularly if like me, you have a phone package with inclusive or low-rate calls.
“Say NO to 0870” – see for details and to find the “geographical” equivalent numbers.
Free Maps
No need to get lost if you don’t gave a GPS or a current A to Z. Find a detailed map of anywhere in the UK if you know their address or Post Code from:
Similarly for anywhere in France from or worldwide from - you can even zoom-in to see what is in their back garden from here by satellite!
Free Software
I mentioned the excellent free “Open Office” suite in a previous article – see which includes a word processor, spreadsheet, database and “powerpoint” presentation.
There is lots of free software available as “standalone” or lightweight versions of commercial software. The best site for this is
Free Education
Learn a foreign language, line dancing, painting, genealogy, computing and a whole load of other interesting subjects by joining the University of the Third Age (U3A).
See for information on their aims and objectives and how to join a group near you.
Save Money
Martin Lewis, Radio 2’s money saving “Guru” has a website at with a host of information on how to save money, best-buy savings and banking, cheapest gas & leccy providers, best phone deals etc. etc.
Search the Web
All the information under the sun is available out there – all you have to do is find it, so remember – Google Is Your Friend –
PDF File Format
Our esteemed Editor has asked me to writer a short tutorial following his latest attempt to save on our postage costs not to mention saving the planet by putting the Newsletter on-line as is the Water Rat which Nigel Duffin has been sending out in this form for some time.
The Newsletter is sent to those of you on our email list as a PDF file – so a few words about this:
PDF means “Portable Document Format” and was originally developed by Adobe Systems in 1993 but they have released it as an “Open System Format” and royalty-free for public use.
PDF has many advantages but principally:-
- improved accessibility – usable on all PC operating systems
- efficient use of file size and computer memory without loss of original document quality
- allows effective searches of your computer archives by Google Desktop or similar search engines
- smaller file size for sending attachments by email
To open PDF files, you will need a “Reader” which is a piece of software to read and convert the file to a form that can be displayed on your monitor or sent to your printer.
This may have been originally installed on your computer, but if not, readers can be downloaded free-of-charge from several sources including Adobe Systems: - click on the “Get Adobe Reader” button.
Warning – this is a very big file at nearly 30 megabytes which takes ages to download (unless you have broadband) and occupies nearly 100 megabytes of memory when installed on your computer. It has all sorts of bells and whistles which the normal user will not require so ….
A lightweight and adequate alternative is Foxit Reader from Foxit Software: - click on the “Get Foxit Reader” button. The file size is just under 2 megabytes and thus practical if you are on a dial-up service and occupies just under 4 megabytes of memory when installed.
When the PDF Reader is installed – simply double-click on the PDF file name either direct in your Email client (Outlook Express, Outlook or whatever) or in the folder in which you have saved it and it should open-up. Alternatively – run the PDF Reader, select the “File” menu and open the file from the folder in which it was saved.
Note: the PDF Reader is just that and will not allow you to convert files to pdf. For this you will need a PDF Writer – the “Standard” (as used by our Editor) is Adobe Acrobat which is quite expensive at around £260 or rather less from EBay.
However – there are a number of Free PDF Writers with more limited facilities and 2007 editions of Microsoft Office will have this feature - it is not included on earlier versions.
Open Office (by Sun Microsystems) does include a PDF Writer. This is an integrated suite of software applications very similar to and compatible with Microsoft Office and includes a word processor, spreadsheet, database, PowerPoint-like presentation and a neat drawing creator.
The suite can be downloaded free from: - click on the Get Open Office button. It is only practicable to download with broadband as it is 100 megabytes but it has many advantages over Microsoft Office:
1 – it is Free
2 – it is not Microsoft
3 – errr… - that’s it!
Email me at: if you are still having problems in opening the PDF file and I will try to help.