Microsoft Office

Received these 25 tweaks in my inbox a few weeks ago. I haven’t done all of them and I cannot vouch for their safety. Just a little disclaimer, fyi. If you know of more tweaks, feel free to let us know.

1. Remove Unused Programs. Start/ Control Panel/ Add Remove Programs/ Remove/ Yes. If you are not using a program then get rid of it. If you don’t know what it is, enter it in Google and find out.

2. Clean your Desktop. After removing programs you no longer use, get rid of trash files, folders, and lost icons on your desktop. Put them where they belong. I bet many can go in the trash. Some might be left over from programs you just removed. If that is the case, just right click/Delete

3. Clear Browser Cookies And Files. Internet Explorer, Open Internet Explorer/ Tools/ Options/ General/ Delete Cookies, files, Clear History. Firefox, Open Firefox/ Tools/ Privacy/ Check, Accept cookies/ Keep Until I close Foxfire/ Check, Always clear my private data when I close Firefox.

To make short work of all cookies, browsing history, and downloads, use a program like “Erase” to assure there will be no traceable information left behind.

4. Remove Temporary Files. Start/ All Programs/ Accessories/ System Tools/ Disk Cleanup/Check all items/ OK/ Yes. If you have more than one drive connected, be sure to run the Disk Cleanup for it also.

5. Use a registry cleaner. Although the PC Pitstop Optimize program will clean some files from your registry it is also a strong Optimization program and not strictly a registry cleaner. Right now what’s needed is a thorough cleaning. There are many registry cleaners and none of them get all of the broken registry files. That can be a good thing because if you use a program that removes needed files you will be in trouble. One program that I’ve used for a long time with no problems is RegScrubXP. Another good thing about this program is that it’s free. Give it a whirl.

6. Remove Unused Windows Components. Start/ Control Panel/ Add Remove Programs/ Add Remove Windows Components/ uncheck the box of what you want removed/Next/ OK. Just like old programs, there are XP components that most people never use. For me I never use Indexing or MSN Explorer.

7. Defrag your hard drives. Even if all you use is the default Windows defrag program, defrag your hard drive. Start/ All Programs/ Accessories/ System Tools/ Disk Defragmenter/ Defrag/ OK. Whether Windows thinks you need to defrag has nothing to do with it. It’s always a good idea to defrag after installing and uninstalling programs, applications, and games. If you want to not only defrag your drives but set them to operate at maximum efficiency, then use the Disk MD program. Disk MD will defrag your hard drives and configure the files for easy access.

8. Update all your drivers from the manufacturers site. Sometimes this can be an easy task, but mostly it requires some searching to find the correct driver. Because all hardware is different, I can’t direct you from here. What I can do is direct you to Driver Alert. Download the free scan to see a list of drivers that need updating. If you decide to buy the program it will direct you to the correct download location.

9. Clean out your Start-up programs using msconfig..Start/run/type “msconfig” without the quotes/startup/uncheck any program that does not need to start with Windows/Apply/OK/Reboot. This will remove the resource wasters that open each time you boot Windows. Do not use msconfig to turn off system processes and services.

10. Modify System Restore. Start/Help and Support/Undo Changes/System Restore Settings/Turn off System Restore/OK. If you are going for the fastest system you can achieve, just turn System Restore off. I do. If you are wanting to keep it as a backup safety feature then at least reduce the amount of space that is being set aside for this feature. PC Pitstop has suggested reducing this waste of expensive hard drive space for some time now. I suggest something in the 1300MB to 1500MB range. The % this represents will vary with the size of your hard drive. Start/Help and Support/Undo Changes/System Restore Settings/Disk Space Usage/Move the slider to correct position/OK. Keep in mind that while I don’t use System Restore, I do use Acronis True Image Home for creating backups. It’s as easy as clicking “Clone”. I create new clones at least every week.

11. Delete your old Emails. Start/Outlook Express (or email client)/Inbox/Inbox/Delete all unwanted emails/Deleted items/Right click each deleted item/Delete them permanently. Emails can waste space at an alarming rate. If you don’t need them, get rid of them.

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Some people need to work on Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, or PowerPoint files from home and do not own their own copies of Microsoft Office. Well, thank goodness that OpenOffice is saving the day! OpenOffice is a free, alternative office suite that mimics each of the great Microsoft Office applications.

With a free download and install of the product (which works on all operating systems), you can not only open MS Office files, but you can save them as MS Office files,too! You can even save Word documents as Adobe Acrobat Reader (.pdf) portable document files.

I have used OpenOffice and I can tell you that it runs as great in Microsoft Windows as it does on Ubuntu Linux. I have used Linux at my jobs and no one can tell that my documents were created and distributed from a Linux operating system. Talk about freedom! Freedom to work on any operating system you wish - while being able to use Microsoft Office style applications is NICE! Download OpenOffice and give it a try today. Cheers!

Ever have your Office settings tweaked perfectly, and then your machine crashed, you caught a virus, or had to reinstall Office for any reason? Well, the HowTo Geeks have a quick and easy way for you to backup and restore your settings.

outlook preferences backup, settings, office settings, export, restore

Here’s a tip from Digital Inspiration on how to comress your PowerPoint presentations.

• Click the Compress Picture button (available in Picture Tools Format ribbon of PowerPoint 2007) and select “Options”. Now choose Email (96 ppi) as the target output and click OK. This should change all the pictures used in your Presentation to an optimal size.
• Incase you are using any BMP wallpapers or scanned TIFF images in the PowerPoint presentation, convert them to JPG and reinsert.

Ever notice how some applications let you use your mouse wheel, while others dont? Wouldn’t it be nice if that was a global setting? Well now it is!

Introducing KatMouse.

Here’s what you do:

• Install it
• Use your mouse wheel in an area on your application
• Enjoy

Now, why hasn’t Microsoft made this a feature? Any Vista users know if it’s there?

wheel mouse, wheel, use mouse wheel in apps, mouse hacks

Are you a single desktop user, with all of your apps locked down in the taskbar, or do you use manage all of your tasks by desktop. One for office work, one for personal, etc etc.

So, what makes you more productive?

If you’re like me, you usually download the latest and greatest versions of software, and wait until you’re all comfortable with our new setup when a thought hits you.

What about people who dont have this?

Well, if you’re using Office 2007, that shouldnt be a problem anymore. Docx Converter.com lets you upload your Office 2007 files, and it will convert them to html. It will still keep most of your formatting, and then you can just cut and paste the page into your earlier version of Office, and save it out in a more supported version.

Give it a shot, let me know your thoughts, and if you wind up using it a lot, they have a free desktop widget you can use.

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Here’s a tip from Microsoft Talk that I think needs to go here too. Its about a little tool to remove duplicate emails from Microsoft Outlook 2003.

It’s called the Outlook Duplicate Items Remover. Download it, run and enjoy your duplicate-free Outlook.

*Note: This also works on removing duplicate calendar appointments, notes, and tasks.

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Have you ever needed to make some directories with subdirectories in a hurry? You might not want to have to open the folder, right click, choose ‘New Folder’, highlight it, rename it, and repeat. Well here’s a quick tip that you can use from the command line, and will also check to see if the directories exist!

Here’s how to do it:

• Go to the command prompt (click start->run->type “cmd.exe”)
• Type (without quotes) mkdir -p a\b\c\d

What this will do is make a directory called “a”, and inside that directory it will create “b”, and so on and so on. If the directory already exists, it will give you an error message, but still make the ones that aren’t there.

Don’t forget, if you’re going to have spaces in a name, enclose it with quotation marks.

Stay tuned for more.

multiple directories, sub directories, mkdir, tips, new folders, quick, quick directories

If you’ve paid any attention to my blog, you’ll notice that I’m a big fan of automation. Whether it’s making backups, syncing files, or having my daily news and comics loaded in Firefox while I’m brewing my morning coffee. I’m lazy when it comes to remedial tasks. And now you can be too.

Today I’ll be posting about a nifty program called Texter. What Texter does is let you define hotkeys to replace text.

Say you’re a big time Ebay seller, and you’re constantly entering in your shipping address. Instead of typing it out everytime, you can use Texter to have a hotkey combo, say “addr”, to automatically insert your address. So how do that?

• First, install and run Texter.
• On the left, under “hotstring”, click the ‘+’ and type in your shortcut. I’ll use “addr” here for my address.
• On the right, type in what you want to be actually used.
• Finally, give it a trigger. The trigger is what will be pressed to search for the hotstring. I’m going to use “Tab”.

That’s all there is to it. Enjoy your new-found productivity shortcut.

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