Newsletter Archives

June, 2007

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PC Tips & Tricks
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Starting over in Word

If you’ve ever gotten to a point in Word where the formatting is a mess and you wish you could just clean it up and start over, what you may have done was to highlight everything (CTRL + A) and then Undo (CTRL + Z) everything you can. That will often get the job done but there is a better way.

In the newer versions of Word, open the Styles & Formatting task pane (Format > Styles and Formatting…). Then select the entire document (CTRL + A) and then with the document’s text selected, select Clear Formatting in the Styles and Formatting Task Pane.

That’s it! All formatting is removed so you can start formatting anew.

Checking your Disk Space
When most users want to know how much free space they have in total on their computer, they probably click on a drive in Windows File Explorer (Start > All Programs > Accessories > Windows Explorer) and then click Properties to see how much disk space remains and then do this for each drive.

There’s a quicker way, of course. You could select My Computer in the left hand pane of Windows Explorer and then in the right hand pane, select each of the drives on your computer. (i.e. Click C: and then hold the CTRL key while selecting other drives.) Then, like before right click and select Properties. You’ll see the usual drive Properties window with tabs at the top for all of the drives you selected.

There is another way one other way to see your remaining and total drive space. Select one of the drives in Windows Explorer and select Properties like before. Go to Tools and then Defragment Now… This will display all of your drives, their capacity and free disk space. It doesn’t have a pretty pie chart, though. You can also get to the defragment program by clicking on Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter.

Open Sesame!
Usually when you double click a file, it automatically opens in the program you want it to. However, with so many programs available that have similar functionality (like watching videos or editing photos), it’s quite possible that you may want it to open in one program to do something to the file and then open it in another program to do something else.

Of course, you could just open each program and then open the file from within the program.

Or (for Windows 98 users), you could select the file and then hold the Shift key while right-clicking on the file. You’ll see an “Open With…” option in the menu. (In Windows XP, you can just right click on most files to see an “Open With” option.) Select it and you’ll be able to choose from a list of programs or browse the find a program’s executable to open it with.

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