Everyone Asks These Computer Questions Once, Here Are the Answers!

11. Is your mouse not working great? I swear I get this question many times a week and it is a simple and necessary thing to know to master your PC. First if you have an optical mouse do not use it on reflective mouse pad or surface, that makes the mouse pointer jump all over the place. If you have a mouse with a ball you will need to eventually scratch the goop off of the three rollers inside that touch the ball. Flip the mouse over, place two fingers on either side of the ball, press and turn, try either way it depends on mouse, counter clock wise most of the time. The case that holds the mouse ball in should turn and drop out with the ball. There are three rollers, speed and two directional, which may have this, goop, best way to describe it, on the axles of these rollers. Use your fingernail to scrap of the goop moving the axle around to get it all off. Put the ball back in, replace the cover/holder and press and turn other way to lock it back in. Also, use a mouse pad that is does not have a spongy surface. Use the kind with a slick surface because the spongy ones attract dirt that gets into your mouse. I am sure of this one as we replaced all our 100+ mouse pads, with free spongy ones once and a week later I got 5-10 calls everyday to clean the mice.

12. Virus protection is not automatic you have to make sure that you have a subscription to a service, like McAfee, that is a yearly fee, so that you have continuous virus pattern downloads/installations. A virus pattern is simply the file that the virus checker uses to check your computer files against for matches. Everyday new viruses are created so everyday your virus checker needs to be set to go get the newest virus pattern file from the internet. There is only one free virus software I know of from Grisoft the makers of AVG, Associated Content.URL:(free.grisoft.com).

13. In Excel spread the column to fit the width of the widest data in a column by moving the mouse to top of column right in between the two columns, the mouse cursor changes to a line with two arrows, double click and the column width will change and spread to fit the width of the widest data in that column.

14. In Excel if you want to fill say the columns across the top with each month of the year, type in January then move mouse to bottom right intersection of January's cell. The cursor will change to little cross, click and drag to right and Excel will fill in all other months of year. This also works with numbers, type 1 or 10 or 100 and Excel will fill in increments matching amounts, 2, 20, 200 and so on.

15. In Excel to make the cells you are working with have lines around them and/or in between them, highlight the cells you want to put gridlines in and click the tool on menu above that has a darker square with lighter cross inside, choose the gridline that matches what you want, click the magnifying glass to do a preview, save paper.

16. Unless you tell Excel where to print it will cut up the cells, make page breaks, where it decides. To control this choose area you want to print, highlight, go to File menu and choose Print area.... Set print area, and then click the magnifying glass to do a preview. If it is not fitting still try changing the scaling percentage to shrink the page, by choosing from File menu Page setup ... Adjust to %.

17. In the Start menu of Windows XP, under programs, does it look out of alphabetical order? Most of the time it is unless you right click on any program item in list and choose Sort by name, then list will be in order by Alpha first with program groups then by program.

18. Using the Classic start menu... does start menu... programs make you pick a double arrow at bottom to see all the programs? If you want to change this to show all programs, not just recently used ones, right click on the Start menu, pick properties, click the customize button, scroll down in box at bottom with checkbox items and uncheck Use Personalized menus.

19. Classic start menus forces menu to be smaller like the old Windows 98 and automatically puts icons for My Computer, Network Neighborhood, My Documents and Internet Explorer on the Desktop. If you want to put those icons on the desktop using non-classic Start menu, right click on desktop anywhere to get to Display properties, choose desktop tab above, click Customize Desktop button below and check boxes for the four items.

20. Do you need to show someone, who is not present, something on your screen, do a screen shot. To do this, with the something you want seen on the screen, press the Print Screen button to the right of the F12 key. Now the screen capture in on your clipboard ready to paste, so go into a program where you can paste, like Microsoft Word, choose from Edit Menu ... Paste and the image of screen will be in Word document for you to attach and send to that someone.

Florida Fred