The Office Girl

Have You Done Something Unique?

2010-03-08T14:50:00.000-08:00

Mark Hayward Question 2: Have you done something unique such as complete a marathon, serve in the Peace Corps, veteran, etc?

I was struggling to answer this one for a little while. In my life once I've accomplished something, I sometimes find it hard to look back and be proud of what I did. Even when logically, I know I did something special. For example, I'm very proud of going back to school and becoming a Microsoft Office Master Instructor. But it's hardly unique. Lots of people go back to school and learn different things, and it's difficult, often expensive and time-consuming. But enough people in my circle of friends and students (maybe my perspective is a little biased!) have shown enough strength and determination to go back to school themselves, and while I sincerely admire them all for that...it's not something unique that I did.

So after thinking for a while, I realised that the most unique thing I did in my life was that I emigrated from the UK to Canada! It's been almost 8 years now, and I still feel like a Canadian newbie sometimes! :) I wasn't even 20 when I left England. My parents and family were very upset. I was a little nervous and trying not to show it. We had a big party at my parent's house shortly before Rob and I left, and my dad gave me the best advice ever. He said that after about 6 months (or whenever), I would probably feel settled in. I would maybe have a job, or be in school, making friends and establishing my life. The first rush of excitement would wear off. He said that would be when the real homesickness would start. And the thing he advised me to do when this happened was to stick it out. Stick it out and things will be easier again in time. He was absolutely right.

We came over in September, and almost immediately we were thrown into preparations for my sister-in-laws wedding (very hectic!). After the wedding, there was Thanksgiving (in Canada it happens in October, not November, and in England we don`t celebrate Thanksgiving at all!), which required a turkey and preparations. November seemed a little more relaxed, but then there was Christmas. My first Christmas away from my parents and sister. It was daunting, but I got through it. And each month, everything seemed to get a little easier. I couldn`t work, so by January I was volunteering teaching computer classes with the Salvation Army. We kept extending my visitors pass, $75 every 6 months, and built up enough for me to apply for my citizenship.

I never stopped teaching the whole time I was applying for my citizenship. I made a lot of friends, and learned a lot of things about my new home. And I love it here. The weather is so extreme. The people are all so friendly. I`ve figured out what kind of work I enjoy doing (I never thought I`d work that out!). And even though sometimes I still miss my parents, I know they`re only a plane ride away if I need to go back.

Unique enough? :)

How to Generate PDFs from Office Files

2010-03-08T07:47:00.000-08:00

In Office 2007 (and the new, beautiful 2010!) creating PDF files is easy. The function is automatically built into the Office button in the top-left corner. But for those of you still using Office 2003 or older, there are plenty of times you'll want to convert a Word document or Excel spreadsheet into PDF format.

For example, a customer asked recently if we could email him some flyers we had made to show different computer prices. It's not a problem to send the files, but if I send him the original Word documents, what kind of message does that send to him? He may think I don't know or can't be bothered to send a PDF file. There's a remote possibility he may fraudulently edit the original file to get a better deal. By sending him a PDF, I've ruled out all of these options.

Another example is with our printing company. They want all files sent to them in PDF format, no exceptions. But on our Point of Sale computer, I only have Office 2003. So here's a free program to download which I've been using to generate my own PDF files from Office. Primo PDF works by acting as a printer on your computer. Tell Word to print your file through Primo PDF, and all the options to create the PDF you want appear automatically!

Unauthorized Absence!

2010-02-25T20:00:00.000-08:00

As you can see from my last post, I was going to answer questions that another blogger had suggested. My plan was to answer a different questions every few days or so, and then....

Eesh! Well, actually a lot of exciting things happened. One of which was that I was hired on a contract with Citizenship and Immigration Canada to do training in Office 2002, Office 2007 and Vista. It was pretty exciting and covered a lot of last Summer. It gave me a real opportunity to learn more about Vista and provide input on the new training program they were developing. I'm still working with them, as they continue their transition, and it's been a lot of fun to have the opportunity to see CIC from the other side. Everyone was wonderful, thoughtful and excited to learn, and I also found a new favourite sushi bar across from their building. Sushi in the summer sun in Toronto is delicious!

And of course there's the store. We've made a lot of progress, and the store is becoming more popular in Kitchener every week. For those of you dropping by, I co-own OnTech Computers with my husband Rob in downtown Kitchener. So it's been a very good excuse not to keep up with the blog, because we've been so busy.

Which has meant that my last article was an embarrassing amount of time ago, and I'd like to pretend that gap never happened. Except that if it hadn't happened, I wouldn't have learned so much about Windows 7 in the meantime, started learning Office 2010 (if you're following me on Facebook, you'll already know that I'm VERY excited about this!), and am continuing to learn more about computer hardware every day! So it's been very exciting, but then I looked at the blog today and found that almost 2000 people have visited me now (wow!), and not only that but some of you have even left comment. Some of you I know already (Kimmie, Charles), and some of you I'm meeting for the first time. I figured the least I could do was post something new and say "hi!". And of course promise more blog posts for the future! :)

I promise! :)

What are you passionate about?

2009-03-24T16:44:00.000-07:00

Mark Hayward Question 1: What are you passionate about?

Teaching computers is my biggest passion. I’m a certified Microsoft Office instructor, which usually means teaching in a classroom to students who either want to learn or have been told to take a course for their job. The former are the easiest students to teach. They’ve usually had a chance to use the program and have formed their own questions about it already. But the students who are most fun to teach are the ones who’ve been told they have to learn this stuff. The ones who are reluctant to even walk in the door. Those students are the ones I try and infect with my enthusiasm.

Teaching a good class takes a lot of energy. You explain the concept and show them how to do it. Then they do it themselves and ask you questions. As an instructor, you have to be mentally prepared to answer any and all questions. And I’d rather take the time to explain the concept properly than just skip past it so quickly the student doesn’t have a chance to take it in.

A different type of teaching is by example. I’m sure there are many Moms and Dads around who know this. But when you want something done correctly, then you have to be able to display and demonstrate that action correctly yourself. It’s a very tall order.

For example, at The Working Centre, we had placement students. I would have them type documents, and to save on time I would be incredibly specific about the formatting I wanted. Bold here, underline there. 3 points of space here, Calibri there. I would usually hand the placement student a sheet with hand-written notes all over detailing precisely how I wanted everything formatted. As their teacher, I’d tie in skills learned in class, such as format painter. It’s one of my favourites; one of the greatest commands in MS Word, it allows you to copy formatting and apply it from paragraph to paragraph, document to document. In fact I thought I’d ranted about it’s usefulness before on the blog. (I know I have in the real world!) It’s going on the list!

This kind of teaching has also served me well at the OnTech Computers store. The co-op students need to learn the correct way to do things as quickly as possible. And being 16/17 years old, they’re going to pick things up quickly, regardless. So it’s best to show it right the first time.

I have a lot of knowledge about MS Office, and I love sharing it with others. I’m very proud of my accomplishments in training.

Web View: Password Protection

2009-03-23T15:32:00.000-07:00

We’re constantly being told to make sure passwords are strong enough. But the word is out. We’re lazy. And being lazy, we choose the easiest way out of picking a different password for each site we sign up for. The most common passwords are variations of:

Your first name/spouses name/children/parents names

123456

QWERTY

ABC123

Movies/singers/TV shows

So listen up, people. It’s time to learn. To keep your personal information secure, change your methods. Instead of a password, use a pass-phrase. For example, pick your favourite movie. Let’s imagine it’s Ghostbusters. What’s the catchphrase? Who you gonna call? Et voila! A new passphrase. It’s longer than normal, automatically making it harder to guess. It’s not directly related to you (unless you quote that phrase all the time, in which case choose another phrase). Mix some numbers into it to make it harder to guess e.g. Wh0y0ug0nnacall?

Do NOT write it on your computer. Or near your computer. You must remember this in your head! It sounds silly, but we just had a customer hand in his laptop this week with the password written on the outside lid of his laptop, in permanent marker. Get in the habit of changing your password every few months. And consider why you implemented the password in the first place. So often, I hear parents talk of setting up a password to keep their kids off the computer, only to give the kids the password the next day.

Progress and news

2009-03-12T18:56:00.000-07:00

Well, I've got a lot to catch up on. Updates to post, questions to answer ... and blog mediums to consider.

It's about 9:30pm right now. I'm just having supper, having spent (another) long day at the store. I don't begrudge to time I spend there, but it leaves me with very little time to focus on the blog. Or at least in the format the blog currently exists in.

Everytime I want to make a post, I have to go to the www.blogspot.com webpage. Then I log in. Then I click New Post and start typing. Which is pretty frustrating when I have an idea for a post that I want to start now and save for later. It means saving a file, making sure I can take the file home, saving any files I want to attach like photos (which I prefer to link to directly) etc.

What I want to be able to do is to start a blog post at work, NOT post it immediately, and then continue it from another computer anywhere I like. It sounds pretty ambitious, but I think I've found a way to do it. John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing (someone I'd recommend to anyone starting their own business!) has been strongly recommending a program called Word Press for a while, and I'm going to give it a shot. The address will still be the same, and the text will all still be mine, but it is intended to be easier for me to post to, giving me more incentive to post more often.

Combine all this technolomogical stuff with the hour or so I want to spend writing each day (wish me luck!), and the added bonus of answering 31 blog post questions from Mark Hayward over the next month, and I think we're looking forward to a very busy time for the next little while.

My statcounter says that over 1000 people have viewed this blog so far. Thankl you all so much! I hope you've found the blog helpful. If any of you have any questions, please don't be shy. I will answer all questions that I can, and find answers to those I don't know, for you! My email is officegirlgreen@gmail.com, and you can ask anything you want! As much as I want the blog to stay focused on MS Office and basic computer tips, I also want it to be able to showcase our storea little, and to focus on interesting things I find online. To help with that, I will be inviting Rob (my husband and business partner) to post here sometimes too. There are several really useful applications he's found online recently that I thought he might like to share with you, so expect to see an additional writer here in the near future.

Take care,

Jess

Make a Referral - jump start the economy

2009-02-21T12:02:00.001-08:00

I'm pledging to make a referral to a business I want to help as part of a national campaign to make 1000 referrals March 9-13. What a great small business stimulus plan.

View >>

Tee hee, that doesn't sound too cheesy. It's an interesting idea though, that I'm experimenting with. The idea is that you refer people to other businesses online. There's a week dedicated to the promotion at the beginning of March, and it should be interesting at least. So for any of you reading who own a small business, please feel free to join in by clicking the link above. For everyone else, we'll be resuming normal service this week!

Busy busy busy!

2009-02-06T08:31:00.001-08:00

Well, we've been incredibly busy recently, so I'm sorry that I haven't posted in the last week or so. I'm still trying out blogging programs, but it looks as if I will need to upgrade my computer to XP to run some of the better programs.

I'd like to thank everyone who has emailed asking MS Office questions, and I'd also like to share some of the ways we've been promoting OnTech Computers recently.

We're in the process of renovating the main website, and hope to change the address to something more representative of the business soon.
Our Facebook page has been very popular, and we are posting photographs there, which were taken by one of my formar students. They look great, and show some of the interesting gadgets on display.
Since the store opened, we've been showing movies which are rented from Far Out Flicks, just up the street from our store, and this week we're watching Hero on the Custom Built Gaming PC, with a 22" Widescreen LCD monitor! It looks amazing, and we're very grateful to Far Out Flicks for the oppurtunity to show their movies in the store. Thanks, guys!

We're also promoting with Kava Bean Commons, by the Charles St bus terminal, so you will be able to grab a free coffee there with every purchase you make at OnTech Computers! Coupons are limited and restricted to a first-come, first-served basis. Enjoy!

2009-01-29T11:35:00.000-08:00

Testing Software for Blogging
Well after a couple of disastrous attempts last night, I think I may finally have found an application to write my blog from. This post will be a test, and hopefully this will lead to updating more often in future.

Well, it seems I can make a basic text post, but I'm having trouble adding labels, and customizing the title. Hmmm.

Consider This: Preferred Browsing

2009-01-24T07:59:00.000-08:00

The program you use to browse the internet is known, funnily enough, as an internet browser. The most well known of these is Internet Explorer, because it comes free with Windows. You'll see the familiar blue E symbol on your desktop, double click and away you go! But just because it is included on your computer, this doesn't make it the only option available to you.Lots of companies have released their own browsers, such as Google's Chrome browser. One of the first companies to produce an Internet Explorer alternative was Mozilla. Their free browser, Firefox, was the first to introduce tabbed browsing, and after a little bit of practice, is a lot of fun to work with. Because Firefox is open source, any flaws and security holes in the program are easily fixed and updated quickly. And if you want new features to add to your browser, making your internet experience better for you, you can download add-ons. For example, if you are sick of flashing ads at the top of the pages you browse, you can download the Ad Blocker add-on, and stop those ads from ever showing up on your screen again. See what I mean? You have the ability to make browsing the experience you want it to be. You can add things you maybe hadn't even considered as convenient in a browser! Happy Browsing!

With thanks to techie4fun on the PC World Forums for telling me this week about Ad Blocker and Ad Blocker Plus Add-ons.

Web View: Online Shopping

2009-01-16T08:16:00.000-08:00

An interesting little article from Backbone Magazine shows that many more people would use online shopping if shipping charges were lower, and if shipping was faster!

I have no complaints with the speed of most of my online shopping/shipping, but lower shipping charges is something I can always get behind! Ordering some of the goods for our store means I deal with quite a few wholesalers, and most of them want to ship through UPS. Which is fine within Canada, but as soon as you start looking at $50 shipping for a small metal hinge to go into a laptop, weighing about 2lbs max, it can get a little frustrating. And I'm quite satisfied that if the product is packaged appropriately, that the US Postal Service can just about handle mailing me the part (saving us an avergae of $40 per order with one of the wholesalers). Just remember to ask about those alternative shipping options. No one will think you're being rude, and at a time when we're all trying to save money on needless expenses, it could in handy!

Web View: Avoiding Online Auction Scams

2009-01-10T07:14:00.000-08:00

Click the link in the title for a great article about avoiding scams through online auctions. Currently the most popular auction site is eBay (which I will certainly confess to having used occassionally!), and even though stolen items are made available, eBay takes lots of precautions to ensure that you stay safe during your transaction.

$Money$

The biggest worry about making any kind or purchase online is the risk of exposing your credit card details. eBay works with a company called PayPal to keep this information away from everyone you deal with online. Basically, when you sign up for an account with PayPal, you give them your bank details. They in turn send you two deposits into your account (both less than 20 cents), to confirm that you do indeed own that bank account. You then confirm back to PayPal the two amounts deposited, and voila! Your online paypal account is set up. If you choose to associate a credit card as well as your bank details, transactions will take place instantly. If you leave it at just bank details, all transactions will be processed as if they were cheques.

Armed with your PayPal details, you can now pay for any eBay auction without exposing personal information to sellers you've never met before.

Item Descriptions

It may sound like common sense, but read the item descriptions very carefully. A reasonable seller will:

a) Provide details about shipping to your country - how much it will cost and how they will ship. Hopefully they'll give you a few options to choose from such as UPS, FedEx and USPS.

b) Provide their return policy - many sellers now have online stores where they can showcase all the items they are selling on eBay, and if you are dealing with a store, they ought to have a refund policy. Some sellers won't refund shipping costs. Some sellers want you to mail the item back at your own cost to recieve a refund. It varies from seller to seller, and even now there are still sellers who do not provide return policies. In which case, hold back your excitement, and take the time to email the seller, asking about their return policy. Which leads me to ...

c) Communication - a good seller will respond to any question you may have within 24 hours of the message being sent. If you don't get a response before the sale is made, don't expect to hear back after the sale. Maybe there's a very good reason the item is priced so cheaply, and the seller doesn't want you to know about it.

Ultimately, you're going to have to choose carefully what purchases you make online, but as someone who uses eBay about 2-3 times monthly, I always follow these guidelines, and so far I've only been caught out a couple of times in the eight years I've used eBay.

Electronics

Just an extra note for those of you looking for cheap computer parts on eBay: Make sure it's tested! Any auction saying the item is "as is" most likely means the item is broken. Message the seller and verify before you buy.

Good buying!

Web View: On-line Security

2009-01-04T13:53:00.000-08:00

Applications will come and go, but the current top programs you should download for your safety and security are:

Anti-Virus: Avast or AVG
Anti-Spyware: Spyware Doctor
Anti-Malware: MalwareBytes v1.31 (Current as of Jan 4/2009)

These are the top programs we've been recommending at the store, and each line above links directly to where you can download each program for free. For Spyware Doctor, you will first need to download the Google Pack, but it will install immediately after that has been downloaded.

Good luck!

Web View: Wiki Congratulations!

2009-01-04T13:42:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Wikipedia, and everyone who donates to them! (Reported on Yahoo!)

Wikipedia.org is one of the most interesting web projects available online. In case you haven't used it before, its a user-centred encyclopedia. Are you an expert in a particular subject matter? Log on to Wikipedia, and enter your knowledge. The web page features an immense amount of knowledge, filtered and created by the users just like you and me. It's a fascinating website, and once you start browsing there, you can be lost in a jungle of information. Easy-to-use and easy to access, Wikipedia is an incredibly accessible way of answering all your questions.

It's also a non-profit organization, which relies on donations to continue running. And for 2008, Wiki set their donation goal to $6 million USD! They've really got some costs there! But through donations of people around the world, they've hit their goal. If you click on the title to this post, you'll see the Thank You message from one of the founders Jimmy Wales, and there are also links to show how Wiki spend this money.

If you haven't used Wiki before, allow me to encourage you to one of the best regulated, non-partisan websites out there. If you've used it before and haven't donated, well, now's your chance. You may also want to see this page about tax deductability! :)

Can YOU Spot Phishing?

2008-10-10T10:18:00.000-07:00

Years ago, shortly after I met my husband-to-be, we had an ~~arguament~~ carefully reasoned discussion because he thought I was making up words. He didn't think there was such a word a phat and bet me $20 he was right. As we move into the 21st century and beyond, language is still the ever-flowing ocean of surprises it has always been with kids challenging the way their parents think about words like sick and so on. One word which caught my attention today was phishing. The ph- beginning indicates it's nothing to do with large waders and a net, although there are similarities with fishing.

Phishing usually takes place in the form of an email, sent directly to you, and designed to appeal to your better nature. For example, you may be asked to fund people in South Africa as they try to get money which is, apparently, rightfully theirs. I've recieved a phishing email two days in a row now, and I'm glad I was able to spot it each time.

The phishing emails I recieved pretended to be from PayPal. So the first thing that caught my attention was the fact that "PayPal" was sending me an email to an email address I hadn't registered with them. Then I pointed with my mouse at the links in the email. This allows me to see the address of the link in the bottom left-hand corner of my screen. I would expect any link to PayPal to read www.paypal.com. Instead I saw a few other words before the address continued with paypal.com. I didn't trust it at all, and when I went to the PayPal website to see what they recommended, I was delighted to discover that all I had to do was forward it to their spoof@paypal.com email address. And I will keep doing so for as long as this email comes in. Each time, I've recieved an email back from the real PayPal explaining what they do to fight these phishing scams that show up in their name.

Don't be taken in by phishing scams: take the PayPal phishing challenge (even if you don't have a PayPal account!) and see how well you'd be able to defend yourself!

Blocking Emails Based on Content

2008-09-16T08:01:00.000-07:00

The command to use is called a filter or a rule. Once programmed into Outlook, the filter/rule will control your email much more effectively. Due to the language used in rules, you can also set up rules to work with certain safe emails as well. For example, if you made a folder called Computers, you could set up a rule to put all emails from any address ending in @ontariotech.ca into that folder.

1. To access rules, go to Tools/Rules and Alerts.
2. As you can see, I have a rule applied to move any emails from the Kijiji website to a folder I made called Kijiji.

3. To create your own new rule, click on the New Rule button in the top left-hand corner. This brings up a wizard with two options: to create a new rule based on a template (of popular rules), or to create a new rule from scratch.
4. The second rule listed Move messages with specific words in the subject to a folder controls junk emails best. Click Next.
5. The next step needs you to define which words you do not want to receive, and where you want those emails to go.

6. In the area at the bottom of the dialog box, click the blue, underlined link reading specific words. Type in the words you want to identify as spam/junk words, and click the Add button after each one. When you are finished, click OK. Remember, you can always come back and add more words later by editing this rule.

7. Now choose where you want these emails to go. Click the blue, underlined link reading specified, and choose a folder from the list. Most likely you will want these emails to be moved to the junk email folder. This way, if an email containing a word you have entered turns out to be safe, you can retrieve it from the Junk email folder. If you are confidant about never wanting to see emails containing the words you enter here, you can choose the Delete Items folder. Click Next to move on.

8. You will be asked if there are any exceptions to the rule. If there are, you can enter them here. If not, click Next again.

9. Name the rule, so that you can easily identify it in future, and click Finish.

Blocking Junk Email Based On Content: A Note

2008-09-16T08:00:00.000-07:00

Before you start blocking emails based on the words that are used in the offending emails, bear this in mind:

The biggest disadvantage to blocking emails based on content is that words are not always spelt the way you expect in spam/junk emails. For example, a popular spam email will try and sell you Viagra. The computer will not see the difference between the following spellings, however:
Viagra V1agra vigara v1agr4 vi4gra and so on …
(The computer sees no difference between upper- and lower-case text in this instance).
The reason words are increasingly spelt in this obscure manner is to get around the email blocks I am about to describe. Blocking emails based on the content of the email is not always the exact science we would like it to be. However, it is certainly another layer of protection you can add to MS Outlook.

How To: Finding Junk Emails

2008-09-04T07:56:00.001-07:00

The third in a series demonstrating effective control of Spam in MS Outlook.

Finding Junk Emails

Once you have activated the Junk E-mail Filter, all emails identified as spam/junk will be delivered to your Junk folder. Below is a picture of my Outlook folders – yours may look different.

I have a LOT of personal email folders in my inbox! Notice that the Junk folder is not part of the Inbox. It is located at the very bottom of my personal folders, fifth position from the bottom of the entire list. All email identified as spam/junk will be placed in there, and a number in square parenthesis e.g. [2] will show in green after the words Junk E-mail when unread emails are in that folder.

It is important to check the Junk folder occasionally, as sometimes genuine emails are delivered there by mistake. This can happen if senders email multiple people at the same time. At first, you may need to give the computer some assistance in identifying every junk/spam email. With the spam filter turned onto High, it is most likely it will identify safe emails as spam occasionally. If this happens, go into the Junk folder and right-click on the email, and choose whether to say the sender, or their domain is safe.

How To: Identify Users as Safe or Blocked

2008-09-04T07:52:00.000-07:00

Continuing a series of posts demonstrating how to control spam effectively in MS Outlook, we will now look at identifying senders as Safe or Blocked.

Identifying Users as ‘Safe’ or ‘Blocked’

When reading an email, you have the option to identify the sender as a Safe Sender or Blocked Sender. The easiest way to do this is to right-click once on the email and move to the Junk E-mail option in the pop-up menu.

As you can see in the picture above, it is very easy to choose which of these two options you want. It is also possible to add a user’s entire domain to the Safe Sender’s list from here. The domain is the part of the email address which follows the @ symbol. For example, if you wanted all users whose email address ends in @ontariotech.ca to be marked as safe senders.
You can also identify unusual domains which spam is being sent from, by opening the Junk E-mail Options dialog box (notice it is also accessible from this pop-up menu, as well as the Actions menu).

N.B. Do not add domains such as Yahoo.com or Hotmail.com to either the Safe Senders list, OR the Blocked Senders list, as these are freely available domains that anyone can access.

How To: Controlling Junk Email In Outlook

2008-09-04T07:41:00.000-07:00

Here are some notes I created for a customer recently about controlling Junk Email/Spam in MS Outlook. These instructions can also be used for Outlook Express, but the wording of some commands may be slightly different. Since the notes I created were three pages long, I've broken them up into separated posts to keep it as easy to read for people as possible. Click the Outlook label at the bottom of this post to see other posts associated with MS Outlook.

To Control Junk E-Mail in Microsoft Outlook

Go to Actions/Junk E-mail to see the list of options available to you when viewing individual emails.

Choose Junk E-mail Options to access a dialog box which allows you to control spam as it arrives.

The Options tab allows you to set the level of filtering you want. It ranges from not applying a filter, to only allowing people you have previously identified as safe to send you emails. Most users will find that a Low filter is best applicable, however from the amount of spam you mentioned, I would recommend High to start with. Beyond that, you may need to help the computer learn which emails are or are not spam by identifying safe senders, or choosing certain words you don’t want to see.
The Safe Senders tab allows you to identify particular users who send you email as ‘safe’. This means that email sent from that address will always be considered safe and never be considered spam/junk.
The Safe Recipients tab allows your emails to be identified by the user you are sending email to as ‘safe’. This will usually only work if they are also using MS Outlook.
The Blocked Senders tab allows you to identify users as repeated senders of spam/junk. Some email programs limit how many addresses you can store there, but if you are using office 2003 or 2007, I do not believe there is a limit.

Web View: Haven't We All Felt Like This At Sometime?

2008-09-04T07:37:00.000-07:00

Oddly enough, this fun story wasn't shown on Yahoo Canada or US. I found it on Yahoo UK, and I think it really demonstrates how not to deal with annoying tech support.

"I was polite the first 20 times I talked to them. But each one gave me the same routine: 'Is the modem connected? Are the lights blipping?'," she told The Globe and Mail.
"And then each one would say: 'It should be working. The problem must be with your computer.' I was a little stressed.
Finally Sinclair said she resorted to impersonating a man's voice and got a repairman sent out the next day, a "huge, strapping young man", 21 year-old David Scott.
Sinclair said that when he couldn't fix the problem she asked him to stay until a second technician was sent.
However, local police disagree with the woman's version of the events.
"She told the technician, in a tirade, that he was not leaving until her internet was working and she told him she was keeping him hostage," said Constable Jeff Carr. "She implied that she had a gun, although he didn't see one."
Sinclair has been charged and banned from speaking to Aliant or any of its employees.

Web View: Haiku Error Messages

2008-08-27T14:08:00.000-07:00

Whilst looking for pictures online of people frustrated with their computers, I found an interesting website which had collected together a series of error messages in haiku. Oddly enough, this was something I had briefly considered doing myself, but since someone has already put a lot of work into these, I figured the least I could do was share them with you. As Windows XP error messages! Click here to generate your own error messages! Click the title link to see the original website I found the haiku poems on.

No Vista For You!

2008-08-22T10:47:00.000-07:00

OK, so the Associated Press reports that Jerry Seinfeld will soon be paid $10 MILLION (!) to help promote Microsoft in ads featuring Bill Gates. From the article:

It's Microsoft's latest move to try to capture some of the cool quotient that rival Apple has appeared to win so effortlessly.
Vista, Microsoft's latest operating system that launched with the slogan "The Wow starts now," has received mostly negative publicity since its release last year. But sales have been strong, since more than 90 per cent of PCs sold worldwide run Windows.

Well, of course. If you refuse to let big sellers purchase computers with Windows XP, naturally they are going to sell computers with Windows Vista. It will be very interesting to see how this turns out. Of course, they could be trying to show that Mac users are just like Seinfeld ...

It's also possible Seinfeld seems more like a Mac guy, [...] after all, it's a Macintosh that's seen in the background of his apartment on "Seinfeld."

Store Tales

2008-08-22T10:02:00.000-07:00

We've had a couple of computers in recently which have shown unusual traits. The photo for this one was great! Customer Paul G had an external hard drive he was plugging into his computer. Every time it was plugged in, the computer failed. When we plugged the hard drive in at the store, look what came up!

Analysis: Broken!

Web View: Free Audio Books Available Through Library

2008-08-08T16:50:00.000-07:00

Browsing Yahoo! News, I found an article which reminded me of the exciting oppurtunities available at the two local libraries here. Kitchener Public Library and Waterloo Public Library both offer an online service to download audio books. And unlike some online stores which offer this kind of service, it's free if you're a member of the library. If you haven't set up your library account to use the online collection, I believe it's as simple as asking a librarian next time you're there. After that, you can login in from home, ignore all your late fees, and start downloading a wide range of audio books. The more the service is used, the more the libraries will be able to put into purchasing more audio books. What is more, if Yahoo! News is reporting that this feature is available, then it must *surely* be available outside of Kitchener-Waterloo. If you haven't tried downloading books from your library, give it a try and let me know how it works out!

Web View: Yahoo to Decrease Relevancy of Ads

2008-08-08T16:48:00.000-07:00

Great news! Yahoo has announced they will stop targeting ads at their web visitors. The ads will still be there, they just won't be as specific to your (assumed) needs as they have been in the past. Sounds like an interesting experiment. According to Yahoo this will start as early as the end of August.

Click the link in the title to read the rest of the article.

Consider This: Serif vs. Sans Serif Fonts

2008-08-07T17:33:00.000-07:00

Whenever I see my reflection, I always check to see how I look. Is my hair tidy? Do I look OK? Did I remember my pants this morning? Since I'm working on the shop floor all day, I want to make sure I'm representing the store well.

The same thing applies when I can't be there in person. Such as in an email, a resume, or even right now! When writing online, it takes a little extra time to ensure that the presentation (the first thing to catch the eye of the recipient) reflects us well. This is known as formatting.

Since there are plenty of formatting styles to apply, it can be overwhelming at times to know what to choose. How big should the text be? Where do I use bold, italic and underline? What font should I use? The easiest of these to control is the font.

The font decides the "handwriting" style of the text. Many fonts come with Windows or Word, and there are plenty of new ones to download for free. Some fonts you may already be aware of are Times New Roman and Arial.

There are two main ways of describing the way fonts are displayed. They are referred to as serif or sans serif fonts (sans serif meaning literally "without serif"). And what exactly is a serif?

Times New Roman

Look at the words above. They were written in a serif font. If you look closely at the letters, you'll see small lines coming off each letter. Before computers(!) the serifs would be applied at the end of each pen stroke. For example, on the T, there is a small vertical line hangingfrom the end of the top of the letter. There is also a small bar running across the bottom of the letter.

Arial

Sans serif fonts have no serifs (I'm sure you'd guessed that by now!). Notice in the text above that it looks much rounder, and because of the clarity it provides, sans serif fonts are very popular online. Online text displays at a much smaller proportion than we're used to, so the letters need to be as clear as possible.

Personally, I prefer sans serif fonts almost all the time. My favourite is Calibri, which is available with Office 2007 or the Office 2007 Compatibility Pack.

There are also other font types (or faces as they are known) as this Wikipedia link explains.

Serif and sans serif fonts both have their advantages and disadvantages, so if you're having trouble deciding, think about where your work will be published. On paper, serif fonts can lend a touch of class. Online, sans serif fonts won't clutter your page.

And of course, when in doubt, use Calibri!

Web View: Office 2007 Comatibility

2008-08-06T17:57:00.000-07:00

Have you been sent un-viewable Word documents lately? It's all the rage now. Since Jan 2007 when Office 2007 was released, all Word documents have been saved as .docx instead of .doc. All those extra security features must be great for those who have, but not all of us are on the bandwagon yet. So until we do, Microsoft need to ensure that we can look at their work, even if we can't create it!

Click the link in the title to download the compatibility pack for Office 2000/Office XP/Office 2003, so you too can read those pesky new files!

PC Magazine Puts AntiVirus Programs Through Their Paces

2008-08-05T08:03:00.000-07:00

Neil Rubenking from PC Magazine will be performing a series of tests, designed to see which AntiVirus programs are giving you the best deal. Since security levels and prices are stable between all the AV programs currently available, he's looking for something that makes a very noticeable difference to you. Neil will be looking at how much the programs will affect running the computer. And I can't wait to see his results.

Click the title to see the full article.

Add/Remove Programs

2008-07-29T08:48:00.000-07:00

When you want to remove a program from your computer, it's called uninstalling. Your computer keeps a list of every program which has been installed in the Control Panel. Depending on how your computer is set up, you can bring up this list by choosing:

Start/Settings/Control Panel/Add or Remove Programs (Windows 2000/XP)
Start/Control Panel/Add or Remove Programs (Windows XP)

The list displays, assigning a line or two for each program. It shows an icon, the name of the program and an Uninstall or Remove button.

Recently I saw something brand new in this list. A program had been installed, which took up an enormous amount of white space. In fact, it took me some time to scroll to the bottom of the list!

What was the cause of this? I had to do some research, but I found this site which explains it all. Basically, every program has an icon associated with it. You can see it in your Start menu, or in the top left-hand corner of you title bar when the program is open. The icon should also show up in Add/Remove Programs list. When the icon isn't named or located correctly (i.e. according to the Windows standards!) by the program manufacturer, the immense blank space shows instead.
The link above mentions how to correct this (though it's a new skill to me!), and it doesn't take too long. And when your Add/Remove Programs list looks "normal" again, you can comfortably return to deleting programs from your computer. What a relief!

The Problem With ISPs

2008-07-26T07:27:00.000-07:00

Computer running slower after you sign up with a new internet provider? Read on to find out why.

The ISP (Internet Service Provider) you choose is very important. There are many different types of internet connection to choose from, and people are usually looking for the fastest connection at the best price. Here in the Kitchener-Waterloo area, that usually means Rogers.

Rogers like to present themselves as the only solution for your technological needs i.e. cable tv, cell phone, high-speed and wireless internet, and video rentals. Not eveyone is a fan of the media conglomerate Rogers has aimed for.

When it comes to their status as an ISP however, Rogers seem to have overreached their abilities. Their partnership with Yahoo! started in the summer of 2004, and since then Rogers Yahoo! has been "offering" Yahoo! Premium Features to Rogers broadband internet customers.

The Yahoo! features are offered unevenly at best. For example, all Rogers broadband internet customers are eligible for a free Flickr Pro account, which is a Premiun Yahoo! Service. This offer is either advertised infrequently or mis-named. "Yahoo! Photos" sounds a lot different to "Free Flickr Pro Account".

Since the partnership, there have also been significant changes in internet speeds and bandwidth limits, but the most tangible change has been the free software provided to all customers at their initial connection to the service.

The software collection includes:

Rogers Self Healing System (SHS)
Yahoo! Messenger
Yahoo! Music Engine
Ybrowser
Yahoo! Online Protection (YOP)
Ypager (an offshoot of Yahoo! Messenger)
A modified version of Norton Internet Security

Now I'm not one to criticise indiscriminately, but I have some questions. Based on my own personal experience, I've also found some answers.

Why do I need to install these programs?

You don't. The literature given to Rogers customers certainly implies that you should install it all, but the language they use mostly plays on our fear that in order to keep our family safe from the not-so-hidden dangers lurking on the internet, you will accept and install anything offered to you on the installation CD.

Can't I install some of the programs and leave the rest?

Of course! But I recommend researching the alternatives. There are other applications available (mostly free) which will do the same or more than the Rogers Yahoo! applications.

But whats the problem with installing these programs in the first place?

I've had the opportunity to look at several computers of Rogers customers. Every owner complained about how much slower their computer was. And as soon as the Rogers Yahoo! programs were removed, the computer's performance increased significantly. In my opinion, there is no reason to install a program which will use up your resources so much that the slowdown is visibly noticeable.

Well maybe the computers you saw were really old.

Actually, some of the computers were relatively new. They were also all capable of running Windows XP (the slowest I saw was 512MB RAM and 1GHz processor for those of you tracking the specs!). The Rogers Yahoo! programs steal all the memory and processing speed away from other programs, and force your computer to way much harder than normal.

Well. Fine. But whats kinds of alternatives are there? I pretty new to computers and not sure where find safe places to look.

I'm glad you asked! I've actually posted before about downloading applications, so I'm going to refer you to that other post. In it, you'll see that the main site I recommend if you're new to the internet and safe, secure downloads is Downloads.com.

Store Update

2008-07-24T08:04:00.000-07:00

Well some of you have been in and some of you can't, because you're in other provinces or countries. So I thought I'd share some photos of the store. I'm SO sorry for the awful quality. Our digital camera has gone AWOL, so we've been using Rob's cell phone to take these. They're a little fuzzy, but you certainly get the idea of what we've been doing.

When we signed the lease back in December, we were really excited about the potential for this location. We're in the heart of Downtown Kitchener, and there have been a lot of exciting upgrades to the way that downtown is presenting itself. One thing was missing though, which was a computer store. There's one other computer store in the downtown, which also sells shoes and displays the shoes on top of the row of monitors in their front window. Let me assure you, this is NOT the look we're going for. We want to be modern. We want to be well presented. We want to be the professionals that people turn to. And we want to be friendly, accessible and approachable to anyone who comes to us.
So when we signed the lease, the first thing we wanted to do was change the colour scheme. After all, the store used to look like the photo to the left.

Notice the dark red walls, offset with a hint of black. Bleurgh. So we planned. We demolished. We reconstructed. A LOT of time and hard work later, and we had a store we were proud of. We're still developing the look, and we're constantly thinking of ways we can change things, but for right now, I can really say how proud I am of everything we've put into OnTech so far. The inside of the store looks great!

We've changed the paint and added shelves. In both of these photos you're looking at the same side of the store, and you can really see the difference. That display is where we keep everything Notebook related. If we find accessories for notebooks - that's where they'll be.

The speakers you see hanging there are something we just received this week. They're very cute, and come in a wide variety of colours. Mostly we seem to have pink, but there are also some orange, blue and purple ones too!

On the other side of the store, we have our front desk, and also our desktop PC display.

As you can see, we've got a lot of computers in the store, and we're always on the lookout for more ways to show people how cool computers can be!

The front of the store is where we keep our greatest computer, designed and built by ourselves (mostly Rob!). If you haven't been to the store to see this, you should definitely come on down soon. We present the Aqua PC!The Aqua PC is a fully functional computer contained inside a perfectly normal fishtank. Oh, and we spiced it up a little by adding some LEDs, a bubbler, and a thermometer and the computer runs flawlessly. The fishtank is filled with what looks like water but I'll let you in on a little secret - it isn't water. If you want to find out what it is, you'll have to come in and see it for yourself! ;)

Oh, and just to showcase the Aqua PC even more, we made sure that the computer was set up and ready to use by anyone who wants to test it in-store. We also added a slideshow of fish and underwater creatures which runs all day and night! And let me tell you, the Aqua PC looks amazing at night with the slideshow, and the LEDs running.

Word Definitions

2008-07-23T12:16:00.000-07:00

When using Microsoft Word, there are several terms that you need to be aware of. This will help you communicate with the program more effectively, to get the results you're looking for. For example, Word's definition of a paragraph is a little different to ours.

Here are some of the words you'll need to know about:

Character
Every time you press a key on your keyboard, you're entering a character into Word. Letters, numbers, punctuation, special characters, the space bar, Enter - everything!

Paragraph
Every time you press Enter, you create a new paragraph. So if you write several lines of text, press Enter twice and type several more lines of text, you have created three paragraphs. Every time you use Enter to create spaces between text, you're creating what Word considers to be extra paragraphs.

Formatting
OK, so characters and paragraphs don't seem too difficult, but where they really differ is when you're applying formatting. Word basically applies it's formatting two different ways. Formatting is where you change how the text looks. Character formatting only applies to individual characters, and paragraph formatting only applies to individual paragraphs.

You've probably noticed this already, in fact. Here are some really common example of character formatting: bold, italic and underline. The way many people use these formats is: they turn the format on, type their text, and turn it off again when they're done using it. Or you type your text and go back to apply formats later. You select the text you want to apply the formats to, and then start applying them.

If you're using the second method, a quick hint for paragraph formatting is to click in the paragraph instead of selecting the whole thing. Then press your formatting button. Examples of paragraph formatting include all the types of alignment. The formatting will apply to the whole paragraph automatically.

One quick way to identify all the different types of character and paragraph formatting is to look in the Format menu. The Font dialog box contains ALL the character formatting, the Paragraph contains most of the Paragraph formatting. The rest of the Paragraph formatting can be found throughout the rest of the Format menu. For example, Borders and Shading and Bullets and Numbering.

Margins
Margins are the blank area around the edge of the page. So when you print a document, the size of the margin helps determine how close to the edge of the page the text is. Margins CANNOT contain text or graphics. They are always blank.

Header & Footer
The Header and Footer areas are NOT part of the margins. They are separate areas which you can type into. Whatever you type into one header will be repeated on every header throughout your document. The same goes for footers. There is a way you can set up the first page to be treated as unique. For example, you may want to put a cover page into your document and have no header showing there. One of the great things about Word 2007 is that if you double-click at the top of bottom of a document, the header or footer area will show up automatically, with the insertion point ready for you to type.

LCD All the Way!

2008-07-12T07:02:00.000-07:00

Some gorgeous new monitors were delivered earlier this week, and Rob and I are loving it! And speakers, mice, webcams, and the gorgeous Asus Eee. The Asus Eee is the smallest laptop I've ever seen, and they come in a range of sizes and colours. We have the Pink 2G on display right now, so if you want to see a laptop with a 7" screen, you know where to find us!

The Aqua PC is up and running too, so we put the 20" LCD monitor next to it. Now you can see the fish screensavers at night if you happen to pass the store then. Also, we have several LEDs in the fishtank itself, so you can also see part of the Aqua PC itself.

The 22" LCD monitor is next to our fancy moneual cases. They're sleek, with blue LED power buttons, and three different colours (solid white, metallic pink, and ... black so black it defies description!). They're all desktop PCs, and have some really nifty features, such as a port on top for speakers, USB drives and so on, and a vertically loading CD or DVD drive. Very fancy!

Other exciting news is that we're teaming up with Far Out Flicks to show movies on these gorgeous LCD monitors. We've currently borrowed a Pixar Shorts DVD, but we want to know what movies YOU'D like to see on our monitors. Email me at officegirlgreen (at) gmail (dot) com, or jessg (at) ontariotech (dot) ca.

Windows Starter Kit

2008-07-05T13:20:00.000-07:00

So whilst looking for a stand alone slideshow program for the Aqua PC, I came across this article on Downloads.com.

Downloads.com is a great website containing all sorts of trial, freeware and shareware programs to download LEGALLY! ;) They also contain reviews from the CNET editor (CNET owns Downloads.com), and user reviews on many of the downloads.

The article is a rundown of many useful and exciting programs that are available online, without you having to pay. Firefox is the first one mentioned - a free to use web browser, and I've been using it myself for about 18 months now (thanks, Bill R!). Firefox is amazing - very user friendly and it has so many add ons, I don't know where to start. For example there's an add on which allows you to search through a toolbar in your browser through all the torrent search engines. Very handy when you're looking for a new download.

Firefox was also the first web browser to support tabs (instead of opening 20 Internet Explorer windows), and I find the tabs feature allows me to keep multiple web pages open, without totally slowing my computer down.

In looking through the article, and find you don't recognise the names then don't worry. By clicking the blue link, it will take you to the review page for each individual program, and you can see what other users think of that program. My top three from those mentioned are:
1) Firefox
2) WinAmp
3) FoxIt Reader

What are your top three? Have you tried a program from the list and had it work better than you thought possible? Has one of the listed programs failed you so completely, it made you angry?

Lots of Updates!

2008-07-05T13:17:00.000-07:00

Hi guys!

Well, I'm REALLY sorry for the long break, but I've had a LOT going on. as many of you will know already, I have left The Working Centre, and am currently focusing on the store Rob and I are running called Ontario Technology Services (OnTech for short!). We are located at 84 Queen St South, Kitchener, and if anyone wants to drop by and say hi, please feel free - you are all MORE than welcome.

I will be posting more often now, and when we get our front page up and running, our website will link to this blog and vice versa. In the meantime, keep writing if you have any office/computer questions.

Jess

Word 2007

2008-04-24T13:03:00.000-07:00

For those of you who are asking about the differences between older versions of Word such as XP or 2003, and 2007, I found a great link here, which gets into very detailed descriptions about why certain commands can't be found, or how to fix 2007 to the way YOU want it to run.

Testing Preparation

2008-03-19T06:36:00.000-07:00

With so many students going on to the Microsoft Office Specialist certifications, I see a *lot* of people work themselves up into a frenzy over exam prep. But it's not just students working towards certifications; some students just want to know their current typing speed, or where their skills are at with Word. And because they're nervous, they'll usually all come in behaving pretty much the same way! So here are some tips about preparing to demonstrate your computer skills for any reason.

1) Stay Calm
It always sounds so easy for someone else to say this, but you have to find a way to work with your nerves. You can be nervous, without having a complete mental block about everything you've ever done. Something I've found that works for me is to think "well, all I can do is my best, and if they're not satisfied with that, tough!".

Everyone is going to have something different that works for them, and sometimes it can be helpful to write out what happens to you when you get nervous, talk it over with a friend, read a book, watch a movie, have a bath, meditate, practice your skills, review study notes etc. Whatever it is that works for you, keep practicing until you get there. When you find what works for you, keep working at it until you have refined it down to an art!

2) Study!
If you know you have a typing test coming up, make sure you're comfortable typing. If you're demonstrating your Word knowledge, practice typical skills which might come up. It should go without saying, but sometimes a mental block might come along that says "well there's nothing else I can do now, so I won't bother practicing". If you have low self-esteem, this is very likely the kind of thing you might be saying to yourself, especially if you're not confident in your computer skills. But, really, lets be honest. How do you expect to improve your skills without practicing? There are lots of affordable ways you can prepare for a test; you just have to know where to look.

Typing
To prepare for a typing test, you can do it two ways. The first way is to buy yourself a cheap typing program. Now when you're buying typing programs, there's cheap and then there's cheap. Find a well recommended program, such as Mavis Beacon, and see if you can find it on sale at Wal-Mart or Future Shop. You don't always need the most up-to-date version (which I believe retails at about $40CAD), and I know plenty of people who have found an older $10 version sitting in the discount bins.

The second way to prepare is to grab a book/magazine/newspaper, open it at random, and start typing. Tedious? Yes. Effective? Yes. If you don't have time, or can't afford a typing program, then this is a great way to at least improve your familiarity of where the keys are.

Remember these are not tips for long-term studying, but more about last-minute preparation.

Microsoft Office
You've been asked to demonstrate a skill to your co-workers. Or you need to complete one of those awful skill-tests provided by temp agencies. Time to start calling some people. A good place to start is with any local community colleges or training centres. Ask if they have any pre-testing for Word that you could use. If they offer certification testing, chances are that they will, and will be able to offer you a reasonable price to write them.

You can also check at the Certiport website, to find local testing providers. Just search for a testing centre (the link on the right-hand side), call, and ask. The worst they can say is no, so keep calling until you find somewhere that can help you. Even try asking if they can recommend someone locally who can help you out. After all, who's going to have the best idea of local training resources than someone who actually offers that training?

If you don't find any luck calling people, start looking in your local book stores. You will NOT be looking for any books with the words "dummies" or "idiots" in the title. For starters, you are neither of those things, and to follow that I have never found those books to be at all helpful in learning the skills typically required in employment. The best books to find are the ones with the following logo stamped on the front cover:

These books will have been specifically developed for the Microsoft Office Specialist certifications, and will have specific exercises and questions focusing on the skills you want to work on. These books might cost up to $20 second hand. Also ask at local training colleges, and try checking out Kijiji or eBay for more options.

3) Show up and knock their socks off!!
If you're (relatively) calm and well-prepared, you should be feeling much more confident as you walk in to the testing room. Try your best, and be aware of what you're doing at the time. If you make a mistake it's not the end of the world, and be ready to think about what you might have done differently afterwards. If you are given the opportunity to explain your performance afterwards, remain calm and explain yourself as clearly as possible.

Good luck to anyone who is preparing for certifications! If you want any extra advice, feel free to email me!

The Joys of the Internet

2008-03-12T09:43:00.000-07:00

For those of you who are still very new to the internet, I have some great ways you can start exploring the depths of what is available. The following list is made up of some of my favourite websites, but if you want me to add more, please send me an email!

Wikipedia.org - an online encyclopedia maintained by people all around the world, this VERY in depth site will offer you oodles of information on things you never thought you wanted to know about! For example, I have just recently learned a lot more about Edgar Allen Poe!

Snopes.com - this site researches urban legends, and recently has been focused on spam emails too. More time-wasting, but they've done a lot of research into the various tales being told, and there are several interesting subsections.

Imdb.com - I frequently annoy my husband by asking about actors in movies "oh ... that's him .... you know, whatshisname ..." etc. With IMDB, simply type in the name of an actor, or movie and the full list of every conceivable piece of data regarding it/them will appear. Lots of fun!

Formulaic Confusion Part 3: Absolute References

2008-01-24T12:02:00.000-08:00

OK, so the final part of our 3-day series on formulas is about absolute references. A cell reference usually looks like this:

Perfectly normal and straightforward so far, so we're going to incorporate this reference into a formula:

=B6*D4+B6

So we're going to multiply the contents of B2 by A3. Still with me? Good. We're going to make lots of copies of this formula though. Imagine that your worksheet looks like this:

You may notice that the formula example is the same from the BEDMAS entry we made (I'll give you a clue - if you haven't read it already, you should!). The formula is going to be located in cell C6, and we are going to copy the formula down from C6:C15. The problem with this, though, is the way Excel copies formulas.

When you copy down one row, it changes the formula you just made by moving any rows referenced in there by one. So if we copy the contents of C6 (=B6*D4+B6) down to C7, the formula will change to (=B7*D5+B7). This is how Excel always works - it usually makes it easier to control your formulas, but here our reference to D4 has changed to D5 which is an empty cell.

To control this, we need to make the reference to D4 absolute instead of relative. Do you see the connection with the words there? Absolute means any reference (to columns or rows) will "stick" when you copy them. Relative means the references will change according to how far you've copied the formula.

So we start adding symbols to indicate the reference(s) will be absolute. The symbol we use is the dollar sign ($). There are three ways of displaying an absolute reference to a cell:

$A$1 $A1 A$1

The first reference ($A$1) means that both the column and row will stay the same when this reference is copied.
The second reference ($A1) means that only the column will stay the same when this reference is copied.
The third reference (A$1) means that only the row will stay the same when this reference is copied.
There's an easy way to make any reference absolute without having to always type in the $. In the formula bar, click once in any part of the reference to the cell you want to make absolute. Then press the [F4] key in the very top row of your keyboard. If you press it multiple times, it will cycle through the different ways of making cell references absolute that I just mentioned above.

So with our knowledge of absolutes, lets quickly return to the example I gave. We're going to make our reference to D4 absolute. So it will look like this:

=B6*D$4+B6

You could also say:

=B6*$D$4+B6

As long as you are comfortable that the cell referenced is absolute the way you want it to be, there's no "wrong" way of doing this.

So thats the end of the three part series on formulas. With thanks to the Experience Matters student who started all this, who made it VERY clear that she preferred to remain anonymous! If you have any further questions, be sure to leave a comment, or email at officegirlgreen @ gmail.com (remove the spaces to email me!).

Formulaic Confusion Part 2: Operators

2008-01-22T08:23:00.000-08:00

No, no, no, I'm not talking about phones, I'm once again talking about Excel! Specifically when you're working with formulas in Excel. The operator is one of the greatest ways of communicating with Excel and telling it what to do. There are several different kinds of operators, and you can find out about ALL of them by searching for "operators" in the Excel Help files. But the important ones, the ones you need to know for your Excel Core Microsoft Office Specialist certification are the following:

Arithmetic Operators
+ (Addition) e.g. 3+3=6
- (Subtraction) e.g. 4-3=1
* (Asterisk for multiplying) e.g. 4*3=12
/ (Forward slash for dividing) e.g. 12/3=4
% (Percent) e.g. 20%

OK, those were pretty simple. They're all located on the number pad (except percent) on the right hand side of your keyboard, as well as the top row of the keyboard, above the numbers (including percent).

Comparison Operators
= (Equal to) e.g. A1=B1
> (Greater than) e.g. A1>B1
< (Less than) e.g. A1< B1
>= (Greater than or equal to) e.g. A1>=B1
<= (Less than or equal to) e.g. A1<=B1 <> (Not equal to) e.g. A1<>B1
These are called comparison operators, because you can use them to compare values. When you compare values, the result is a logical value of either TRUE or FALSE. A great example of where you would use these operators is in the IF function. The first part of this function means you HAVE to compare values, and these operators are going to help you do that.

Reference Operators
: (Colon) (Used to refer to a range of cells) e.g B5:B15 which reads as B5 through to B15
, (Comma) (Used to refer to multiple cells which are not adjacent to each other) e.g B5, B12, B15
You can even mix these operators up together as needed. For example if I asked you to add A12 to A16 AND C12 to C16, you would type it like this:

=SUM(A12:A16,C12:C16)

These operators all work together as part of the "language" you use to communicate with Excel and tell it what you want. When answering questions in the certification exam, don't forget to READ the question carefully to pick up as many clues from it as possible, including what operators you are going to use.

See you tomorrow when we look at absolute references!

Formulaic Confusion Part 1: BEDMAS

2008-01-21T09:37:00.001-08:00

Last Friday, an Experience Matters student who is currently working on Excel asked me about formulas. She said she just couldn't seem to get the hang of them, and above all, what did she need to remember for the Microsoft Office Specialist exam? Now this answer is going to come in three parts, partly to keep this clear, and partly to make up for the fact that it's almost the end of January, and I haven't posted once in 2008 yet!

The three things I want to address (and in this order!) are: BEDMAS, Operators and Absolute References. Lets start at the beginning, and this will make things incredibly straightforward for all your formulaic needs!

BEDMAS
This is a handy little acronym which I never learned in school, but it is used as a mathematical standard everywhere. Basically, each letter stands for a word to describe a type of calculation. The order of the words signifies the order you do your calculation. Each word is as follows:

Brackets ( )
Exponents m²
Division / (this is the sign to show division on the computer)
Multiplication * (again, this is on the computer)
Addition +
Subtraction -

An example of the kind of question you might be asked is as follows:

You are in charge of putting price tags on 10 products, all of which are to be marked up by the same percentage on cost. You are nearly finished with a worksheet that will do the necessary calculations. The final step involves entering a formula to compute the selling price of the first item and copying it to calculate selling price for other products.

When you open the file to work in, it looks like this:

(If your version of Excel looks a little different to mine, don't worry - I'm using Excel 2007)

The calculation will start in cell C6, and we need to find out two things. First, we need to find out what 25% of the cost is (for row 6, the cost is 8), and then we need to add that number to the original price of the item. I always find that writing the calculation out in "English" helps me visualize the steps I need to take in the calculation. One thing I WAS taught in high school is that if you are looking for 25% of something, the word "of" stands for "multiplied by". So here we say:

25%*8 (which equals 2)

We also want to add the original cost of the item to this, so that at the end we have the total price the item will be sold for. Therefore:

25%*8+8

OR:

D4*C6+C6

Because the BEDMAS rule applies, the multiplication is done before the addition. I'm the kind of paranoid person who definitely understood about brackets, and I would throw them in everywhere to make sure that one part of the calculation would be calculated first. But here we don't need to do anything like that. The computer first works out the 25% of 8, and then adds it to the 8.

Everything clear so far? Well you'll have to wait till tomorrow to find out step two! ;) Tomorrow we'll be talking about operators. See you then!

Happy Wintereenmas!

2007-12-19T11:43:00.000-08:00

It's that time of the year again! Whatever your reason for the season, I hope you all have a wonderful time with family and friends. I am lucky to get a sweet 1 and a half weeks off from work, and am looking forward to it! Hopefully Rogers will have my internet re-connected by that time, but I will take a tiny break from the blog until January!

See you all then!

Jess

Using Paste Special

2007-12-19T11:37:00.000-08:00

If you want to paste numeric data from any program into Word you would normally just copy and paste that data. If you want to create a link from one file to another though, or you want to keep the formatting from a webpage, you must use the Paste Special option.

Paste Special feature lets you select the format of the text you paste according to how you want it represented in your file. For example, you can use Paste Special to paste text in a document as unformatted text. You can also use Paste Special to copy or move selections from other Office programs, such as Excel.

You can also link the selection you paste, meaning that any changes made to the original file are reflected in the new file.

To link between applications, cut or copy to place the text or object on the clipboard; then click the location you want to copy to. Place the insertion point there and choose Edit/Paste Special. In the Paste Special dialog box, make sure Paste Link is selected, then in the As box, select the correct object type. For example, select Microsoft Excel Worksheet Object to embed Excel data into a Word document. You can edit the contents of the linked object by double-clicking the object.

Why Would You Use Tabs?

2007-12-11T08:10:00.001-08:00

At first glance, tabs look the same as indentation, so how are they different? Why would you even use a tab if an indent would get the same result?

When you are working in a paragraph, you use tabs to align the words within it. For example, in a resume, I may want to create the following line. Using tabs, I can space out each set of words and my resume looks more professional.

When you are working with longer paragraphs and sentences, you want to use indents. There are two kinds of indent – the edge of the page indent and the first line indent. The first line indent only indents the first line. The edge of the page indent will indent the rest of the lines in the paragraph either from the left and/or the right hand side of the margins.

Before you start working with tabs, you should be able to recognize different kinds of tabs and what they mean. The tabs I find are used the most often are the left and right tabs.

1) Left

2) Right

3) Centre

4) Decimal

5) Bar

There are two different ways of accessing tabs. You can set them through the ruler, or you can work more precisely through the Format Tabs dialog box.

The Ruler

If you use the ruler, choose the tab you want to work with, then click where on the ruler that you want it to go. To delete a tab from the ruler, drag it off the ruler.

The Tabs Dialog Box

In Word XP and 2003, go to Format/Tabs. In Word 2007, double click on a tab in the ruler, or click on the Tabs button at the bottom of the Paragraph dialog box.

To insert or modify a tab in the Tabs dialog box, just start at the top of the box and work your way down. I will demonstrate this below, using the Word image showing the Student, and their Class, Instructor and Grade.

Start by typing in the Tab stop Position. This basically means, where on the ruler do you want the tab to go. In our example above, the first tab is at the 1" mark.
Next, choose your alignment. Out first tab is a left tab.
Then, if a leader is necessary, choose which kind you want. Here we don't choose a leader at all.
Finally we click the Set button.

At the end, click Set and not OK, to leave the dialog box open and continue working with tabs. If you click OK, the dialog box closes, and you have to re-open it again to apply your second tab. For practice, try typing the text indicated in the picture above into your own version of Word. Once you've set your tabs in the dialog box or ruler, don't forget to APPLY your tab i.e. press the Tab key on the keyboard! This is the most common thing to forget about tabs!

The Default Tab Stops indicate how much your tab will indent your text if you just press the Tab key, without setting a tab in the ruler. For example, the default tab stop is usually set to a 0.5". This means that every time you press the tab key, it will move your text over by half an inch.

The Leader is a type of underline which links one piece of text to another. You see this most often in tables of contents, where a dotted leader is used to link chapter titles to page numbers.

File Sizes

2007-11-30T11:27:00.000-08:00

NOTE FOR ADVANCED USERS: If Paul H was critiquing my blog posts, he’d say that I was being too vague in this one. But I’m warning you now, this is an OVERVIEW of files sizes, which means not trying to be so specific that I end up losing my readers in how many KB are in a MB. ~Thank You~ J

OK, so when you’re working with the files on your computer, you know that they take up a certain amount of space. And you know that your hard drive only contains a limited amount of space anyway. So we’re going to go through the basic ways that file size is measured, what that means, and how that relates to typical file that are stored on your computer.

The smallest way to measure file size is to think about the smallest piece of information you can input into, say, a document like a resume. The smallest thing you can input is anything you’ve typed in. This is known as a character, which may be a letter, number, punctuation, symbol etc. Basically, every time you type something on the keyboard, that takes up 1 byte of information. Instead of writing the word byte all the time, we shorten it to B or b.

SO:
1 character = 1B (byte)

Now the next measurement up from here is measured when we’ve typed 1000 characters into our document.

1000 characters = 1000 bytes = 1KB (Kilobyte)

The next measurement is measured when we’ve typed 1,000,000 characters (this resume is getting pretty long here!).

1,000,000 characters = 1,000,000B = 1000KB = 1MB (Megabyte)

So you can probably start to see the pattern here now. Every time we move onto our next measurement, we add three more zeroes to the number. The following table will demonstrate this clearly though:

File Size Measurements

1 character = 1B
1000B = 1KB
1000KB = 1MB
1000MB = 1GB
1000GB = 1TB

GB represents a Gigabyte, and TB is very exciting and represents a Terabyte. Normal users will most likely be looking at GB these days, but if you’re computer nerd like me, we’re getting very excited about the TB’s!

So far this is all pretty straightforward, but how does this fit in with YOUR file, I hear you ask? Well, first of all we’re going to think about the kinds of files that you might be using, and also the different places you might be storing those files.

Different File Types
Most often, we are used to working with document files. Any file that mostly (or exclusively) contains text. These take up the least amount of space, because text is very easy to measure. Remember, 1 character is the equivalent of 1 byte.

Photographs and graphics are more difficult to measure, and because they are so detailed, they are much bigger to store than a document. They are usually about 2MB (it varies, depending how much detail has gone into the picture, and how physically big it is on-screen).

Sound files such as MP3s are also pretty detailed, and are usually about 3MB (again, it varies, but this is more likely to be the size, since most songs are about 3½ minutes long).

Video files are about as detailed as MP3s, but are usually much longer since you can view a TV show or movie on your computer. Typically, they are about 250-500MB in size for an average quality recording. For a really good quality recording they are about 700MB+ (it can STILL vary, but then we start looking at the scary world of animation vs. live action shows/movies!)

Different Storage Mediums
A storage medium is anything that will store your information. It may be portable, or it may live inside your computer and never come out. Most storage mediums are portable. Below is a list of some of the most common storage mediums, and how much storage they contain:

Floppy Disk	1.4MB
CD	700MB
DVD	4.2GB
New storage devices: Flash Drive, MP3 Player, Digital Camera, iPod etc	Many sizes including: 128MB, 256MB, 512MB, 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB+

The last thing we’re going to do is bring ALL of this information together and compare the sizes:

1 character = 1B
1000B = 1KB
1 document = 1MB+
1000KB = 1MB
1 Floppy disk = 1.4MB
1 Photo = 3-4MB+
1 MP3 = 3MB+
1 CD = 700MB
1 Movie = 700MB+
1000MB = 1GB
1 DVD = 4.2GB
1000GB = 1TB

So this should give you an overview of the way file sizes are determined, and what kind of storage you can use. For storage, I recommend flash drives over anything else, because they’re so transportable and easy to use. A 1-2GB flash drive will cost you around $20-$30, which is pretty reasonable for all the storage space you’re getting. The current Experience Matters group commented to me only this morning that they had all the files for their textbook stored on a 512MB flash drive, and still had over 425MB of space left over for personal files.

Any questions?

Goodbye to Computer Basics 2007

2007-11-29T12:19:00.000-08:00

So not only was last night my last class of the current Computer Basics group, but it was my last class of 2007. I've been making some updates to the workbook that I'm planning to hand out next year, and there's an upcoming post this weekend about file sizes which will be included in the new workbooks.

Regarding the class themselves though, I want to say a few things. In all honesty, this group was one of the most hardworking groups I've taught to date. We had a couple of setbacks (because of my health), but overall we had a lot of fun and I think we all learnt a few things.

This was my first class where I was even able to sit back a little, because my Beautiful Assistant RandyTM was really keen to teach quite a few parts of the course for me! Randy put a lot of thought into the segments he presented and it was much appreciated by me, and enjoyable for all of the students.

Speaking of the students, I'd like to thank everyone who was involved in this course. Everyone worked hard and was able to bring something unique to the course. Without mentioning any names, I saw students with more knowledge helping those with less, students with less knowledge build their confidence, and heard almost everyone asking questions (when certain students weren't asking them on behalf of everyone else!).

Thank you all so very much! It's a very long day for me, because I start at 9am on Wednesdays and then work through till 7pm, but it makes it all worthwhile when you're all so interested. I'd love to keep in touch with you all, and I hope we see each other again soon!

Jess

Viral Complications

2007-11-24T13:24:00.000-08:00

It's that time of the year again. Afternoons are getting darker, there's snow underfoot and the office flu is doing the rounds. But the common cold isn't the only thing you need to protect yourself from. Did you know that only 47% of home users have up-to-date anti-virus software installed on their computers?

Anti virus software runs in the background of the operating system. This means that from the moment you turn your computer on, until you switch it off, the anti virus program is watching your system in case anything untoward occurs.

A virus is

A computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user.

Source: Wikipedia

They are usually not installed intentionally, and are very different to spyware or malware. They are usually sent through emails, but not always. If you check your emails through a web based account (e.g. Yahoo or Hotmail) then you have added protection. Yahoo and Hotmail use anti virus software to scan all the attachments that are attached to your emails. If you use a program such as Outlook to check your emails, though, you leave yourself more open to the possibility of a virus attack.

If you are connected to the internet, it is good practice to have an anti virus program. Like I said before, if you use Yahoo or Hotmail that reduces your chances of accidentally downloading something, but it doesn't make you immune. So practise the following steps to help maintain the safety of your computer:

1) Install an Anti Virus Program
There are two ways to get hold of anti virus software. You can download it, or you can purchase it. Any computer store such as Best Buy or Future Shop will have the latest versions of Norton Anti Virus or McAfee, and for a 1 year purchase these will cost you about $40-$50 (Canadian!). After 1 year has passed, you are given the option to renew your license at a discounted price. This is perfect for anyone who is very new to using the computer.

If you're pretty comfortable with installing software and downloading programs, I recommend Avast or AVG. These are both free for home users, and are very easy to use.

2) Keep your Anti Virus Program Up-to-Date
If you never look at your software again after installing it, you're really wasting your money. Go through the instruction manual and learn how the software works. Learn how to tell the software to Automatically Update, and set it to look for new virus definitions every day. That way you're always running the latest version of the software.

3) Scan Your System AT LEAST Once a Week
The anti virus software is always looking for any viruses that try to run on your computer, but a file that is downloaded and hasn't been opened can still contain a virus. If you share your computer with anyone (e.g. your kids!) then you may not even be aware these files are on your computer. Scanning the computer locates these files and allows you to deal with them before they cause problems.

Hopefully you've learned something new, something interesting, or both! Please email me if you have any questions, and until then GESUNDHEIT! (Bless you!)

The Introduction

2007-11-23T10:59:00.000-08:00

Hi!

This blog is mostly going to be useful for anyone who wants help working with their computer. I've been teaching computers for over 5 years now, and am a Certified Microsoft Office Specialist Master Instructor (don't laugh - I'm very proud of this!), as well as an IC3 Authorized Instructor. I mostly teach Computer Basics and the Microsoft Office applications right now, and this blog is aimed at anyone who wants extra tips or info about any of those subjects. As I find things I think you'll find interesting, I'll post those as well!

Have fun reading!

Jess