November 2003

Volume 21, Issue 11

Kokomo PC

Users Group

President’s Message

Well, by now I am sure we are all sick of Halloween candy and are looking forward to some hot turkey and stuffing. We are at the start of the prime PC computing season. It’s just about time to start dropping those hints to your spouse - more memory, digital camera and a DVD burner. Hope Santa has broadband - it may take a while to download my list - I've been a very good boy this year. Ho-ho-ho.

It looks like Microsoft has announced the pre-pre-beta of their new Operating System code named ‘Longhorn’. Surprise, surprise - it is totally different than the current one. In fact it is supposed to be as spectacular as the transition from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95. I hope we can survive it, or at least afford it.

We continue to offer warm hospitality and engaging meetings. Please take a moment to invite a friend (or enemy for that matter) to one of our regular meetings. We offer first class presentations, good fellowship and an informative question and answer period. If they join our group they will also receive our wonderful newsletter, mailed directly to their home or office. A good users Group is the most important accessory you can buy for your computer.

If you have any tips or tricks for improving our enjoyment of our PCs, please write them up in a short article for the newsletter. We would love to hear how clever you are and would like to learn your secrets. This is a great way to provide a service to the club. You can also earn User Bux for each full page of original text.

If you have a computer passion you would like to share with the Group, we would love to have you present it at one of our regular meetings. Some of our best presentations come from our own Group members talking about the programs and hardware they love. Just let one of the officers know that you would like to present and what topic you will be presenting. This is a great way to provide a service to the club. You can also earn User Bux for providing this service to the Group.

If you feel that you would like to become involved in the leadership of the group, please volunteer to be an officer. We are looking for warm bodies … I mean visionary leaders to participate in the leadership of the Group. Just contact one of the current officers and we will put you to work changing the destiny of the Group.

Mark Pendergast

Da Prez

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Mysterious windows features

One feature that drives me crazy sometimes is the over type mode in MS Word. I will be editing away, minding my own business, and all of a sudden I am trashing my document every time I make an edit. As I type to type in new text, my old text is disappearing. Yikes!

The key to this feature is to look at the status line at the bottom of the MS Word window. You will notice a small grayed out ‘OVR’ right next to the little book on the status line. When this indicator is a solid ‘OVR’ it means you re in overstrike mode.

Most of us ‘normal’ people edit in insert mode. When we type in new text the old text moves out of the way and the new text is ‘inserted’. When we accidentally get into over type mode the new text replaces the old text by writing over it. (Sometimes this is handy - like when you are editing fixed format columns of text, but normally it is just not what you want.)

So if this overtype stuff is so annoying why do we get into that mode anyway?

The way to get into and out of over type mode is to push the Insert key on the little keypad just above the arrow keys. This toggles the over type mode on and off - it also toggles the little ‘OVR’ indicator on the bottom of the screen.

So how do I get into this mode if I don’t really want to? Well, the answer is that if you ‘fat finger’ the Delete key, you may just turn on overstrike mode without realizing it. This is very similar to ‘fat fingering’ the Caps Lock key when you press the ‘Shift’ or ‘A’ keys. iT CAN BE VERY FRUSTRATING. Oops!

In fact, if you are adding text to the end of your document, both modes look identical. It is only when you go back up into the body of the document to fix something that you realize you are clobbering all your text.

Hope you like this tip. I know it sneaks up on me every now and again.

Mark Pendergast

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More Mysterious features

Many times in Windows I will be typing along and something I type will automagically turn into something else. Some times this is nice, but other times I really want what I typed and no matter how many times I type it, it just goes back the way it wants to be.

This feature is called auto correction. It is available under the Tools -> auto-correction menu.

It is amazing all the things that Windows will auto-correct for you. Even common typos like ‘ tyhe’ will be corrected as you type them. (In fact I had to work real hard to get this misspelled word to appear in this document because it wants to fix itself.

You can also add your own auto-correction combinations for words you normally have problems with.

There are also auto-formatting options that cause bulleted and numbered lists to magically appear when you start typing like that is what you would like. Just try starting a sentence with ‘1.’ and when you hit return at the end of the line Word will format the sentence as a numbered list and insert the ‘2.’ at the start of the next line and off you go.

I normally turn off the feature for automatic formatting of bulleted lists. I have too many times that I just want to do it myself like this:

- This is one point

- This is two points

- Etc…..

As you can see this is just text with dashes in front. If the feature was turned on, these would have been converted to bulleted lists automatically and I would have been working real hard to get them to quit.

It actually isn’t all that hard to get the features to undo themselves. Just press control-Z after the auto formatting takes place and it will usually undo itself. This is not bad for one instance, but can be really annoying if you have a long list of bullet points and each one must be undone.

Hope this gives you some idea of the power available from this feature. You should probably go and explore the rest of the menu some time.

Mark Pendergast

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