Want to Learn More?

Make a live audience poll at Poll Everywhere

PollEverywhere demo realtime results

Create interactive meetings at Poll Everywhere

PollEverywhere demo Web clicking

Make a live audience poll at Poll Everywhere

Organizing Outlook Searches - Search Folders

Automatically locate emails sent and received from anyone! This tip is real easy and great for those Outlook junkies who have a hard time deleting emails.

Search Folders

1. Right-click the Search Folders folder at the bottom of your Outlook folder list and select New Search Folder

2. Select Mail from and to specific people (explore the numerous other alternatives) and click Choose button to locate a specific individual.

Now, see how all email sent to or from me to one recipient are conveniently grouped together:

New emails I send and receive from a specific person are dynamically loaded into this Search Folder. Note each line item indicates whether it is in the Sent or Inbox folders

The For Follow Up folder contains all emails tagged with active flags.

Note that Large Mail and Unread Mail are two other folders that are a standard part of Outlook's search folders. Click them once to activate them. Use Large Mail to quickly locate the ones to delete to keep your mailbox size in check.

Word Mail Merge Glitch onTablets

After successfully trying to create labels in Office 2007 and only generating the top row, I discoverd that there is a known bug in the Microsoft tablet operating system as described in article 898630.

Here's the workaround:

1.	When you are on step 4 of 6 in the Mail Merge wizard, tap the Tablet PC Input Panel icon on the Taskbar to open the Tablet PC Input Panel. Note If you are running Windows Vista on a Tablet PC, select the keyboard icon at the upper left of the Tablet PC Input Panel.
2.	Tap Func to display the function keys on the upper row of the keyboard.
3.	Tap inside the first label of the mail merge document.
4.	Tap F6. This sets the focus from the mail merge document to the Mail Merge task pane.
5.	Tap the arrow key until you select Update all labels.
6.	Tap the Spacebar to enable Update all labels.

All labels on the page are updated with both the Next Record field and the AddressBlock field.

Recent Technology Innovations

A lot of new directions on the home tech front worth a look-see.

The New York Times reports on a Polaroid type mini-printer that makes instant prints beamed from your Bluetooth-enabled cellphone or camera.
Link

Casio's newest camera, the Exilim EX-F1, offers hope of truly high speed photography for the masses. Still a little rouch around the edges, this is a camera to watch.
Link

The Flip, a mini-camcorder by Pure Digital, captures one hour of filming internally, runs on 2 AA batteries, and requires no cables. Simply plug its USB connection into your laptop and you are ready to download or view.
Link

Finally, the "green" media players reviewed by David Pogue are enticing in that they run powered by either solar or crank. Best of all, one comes with cables to power your cellphone or other power-needy tech toys.
Link

Improve Tablet Performance Overnight

Give your laptop a treat! Here’s how to clean and defrag it. You may wind up benefiting from a more responsive system.

Open My Computer and right-click on the C drive > Properties. If you have less than 10% free space, it’s time to remove some files before you run the system clean-up procedures. If you have a lot of music or video files, you should consider overloading them to an external drive. A portable hard drive of 100GB can comfortably back up your files or simply act as extra storage. Delete everything from the Recycle Bin.

Both of the following procedures need a substantial amount of time to run.

From the General Tab, select Disk Clean-up. Disk Clean-up will offer to get rid of your Office files. Do Not delete them.

Go to the Tools Tab to run Defrag (I leave this running over night).

During assembly I demonstrated JDReport, a free download, that helps me tell what it taking up all my space. You can download it from http://www.jgoodies.com/downloads/index.html

It’s really important that you not let your system run out of space. Free up at least 15% and you should see some dramatic improvement.

AutoSummarize lengthy articles with Word

AutoSummarize is a largely unknown, but amazingly helpful, tool in Word to highlight keypoints in long articles or reports. With it you have four choices:

• highlight key points in a document
• insert an executive summary abstract at the top of a document
• create a new document and put the summary there
• hide everything but the summary.

As you read, you can also change the level of detail at any time.

AutoSummarize determines key points by analyzing the document and assigning a score to each sentence. Sentences that contain words used frequently in the document are given a higher score. You then choose a percentage of the highest-scoring sentences to display in the summary.

With so much of the news online, this provides a more efficient way "read through" lengthy articles. In researching, this assures that you are finding the author's key points. You might try it on a report you have written to see whether your key points show up.

How to use it:

Since the AutoSummarize icon is not by default on any banner in the new Office 2007, you must add it to the Quick Access toolbar and then it will remain there whenever you open Word.

1. Click the large Office button > Word Options > Customize
2. Click the dropdown menu next to Popular Commands and choose All Commands > AutoSummarize
3. Paste a lengthy document into Word and click the new AutoSummarize icon
4. Choose one of the four options which are buttons and begin with the 25% default
5. If, for example, you choose to create an Executive Summary at the beginning of the report, you may instantly change it to the Highlight keypoints option by simply rerunning Autosummarize.

Here’s a Jing Screencast to view if you want to "see it done."

http://screencast.com/t/Xm1Scdna

If you are running an earlier version of Office, AutoSummarize is available on the Tools menu. Lucky you!

Backing up to a CD on Toshiba Tecra's

Watch a short clip on how to back up files or folders to a CD on the school's Toshiba tablets:

http://www.screencast.com/users/Dr.Karolyne.Lucero/folders/Jing/media/96aa6488-299a-42b2-9fc2-117e58a1a927

How to for folks who prefer reading:

1. Insert a CD (it holds 700MB) which is a lot of data files.( If you have a lot of videos, music or pictures, you will need to burn a DVD you must use special software, a topic for another lesson.)

2. Verify that the CD is enabled to record CDs rather than DVDs. Open My Computer. Right-click on the DVD/CD drive > Properties > select the Recording tab and check mark Enable CD recording. Say Yes on the next screen.

3. Open My Documents/My Work and select the file or folders you want to backup. Press and hold the CTRL key to select multiple ones.

4. In order to see the drives in the left pane, you may need to press the Folders button on the toolbar. Drag the selected folders over to the CD drive. They will copy.

5. Go to the CD drive and File > Write the selected files.

6. When the CD is written, the CD tray will open. Press it back in and test that the CD was
successfully written.

Word: Shrink to Fit

When your document goes over to another page by just a bit, you can save a tree and shrink it to fit.

In Office 2007, press the Office button then Print > Print Preview and choose Shrink to Fit. In Office 2003, it's File > Print Preview.

Here’s how visually: http://screencast.com/t/VUJy15XH

Google Search Sidebar / Firefox folders

Google's Search Sidebar is incredibly convenient. Download it here. Use the Plus sign to add gadgets much as in igoogle except that they and the search window are always at your fingertips. I have a long and short term todo list and The Google Tip of the Day. When space is an issue, minimize the bar by clicking the Minus sign at the top and you can have a floating deskbar.

Personally I prefer the Firefox browser to Internet Explorer. One feature I love is that folders on the Bookmarks toolbar can be opened simultaneously. Make sure the Bookmarks Toolbar is visible (View > Toolbars > should have at least Navigation and Bookmarks toolbars checked). Here's two I have set up. One folder called Mail includes all my email accounts and two sites I want to check every morning). To get the sites in the folder, visit a site (for example, Woot and GiveAwayoftheDay); drag the icon in front of their address on top of the folder. Clicking on the folder displays the option "Open All in Tabs." I also have one called Search which includes a number of search engines.

Updating Standalone Flash9 Reader

The problem: .swf stored locally or on a network drive fail to play and request that Adobe Flash Player9 be installed

The Solution:

1. Google “Flash9 Player download” and install. The browsers will need to be closed and reopened after installation. All Flash movies (.swf files) will play in Internet Explorer or Firefox.

2. However, to resolve the issue of opening local and network files, open My Documents and click on Tools > Folder Options > File Types.

3. Type “s” and scroll down to .swf (Shockwave Flash Object)

4. If it is not associated with Adobe Flash Player 9.0 r11, then click the Change button and navigate to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Flash CS2\Players\FlashPlayer.exe