Workers' Edge

There were some important shortcuts left off the list I described a couple of months ago. I wanted to be able to use my PC without requiring a mouse or any input device other than the keyboard. Since I can't remember all the shortcuts I might need, I listed them in a text file I can open in Notepad using just two easy-to-remember keyboard combinations.

Unfortunately, some very useful keyboard shortcuts were omitted from the initial list, including those that let you move and resize windows by pressing Alt-Spacebar-M and Alt-Spacebar-S, respectively. (Note that the Move and Size options are grayed out when the window is maximized. To set it to the "normal" view, press Alt-Spacebar-R.)

Access controls for moving and resizing windows by pressing Alt-Spacebar.

(Credit: Microsoft)

The Move command places a four-arrow icon on the screen. Press the arrow keys to reposition the window, and press Enter when it's in place to return to the normal view. The Size option uses the same icon, but the arrow keys move the top, bottom, left, or right side of the window. Once again, press Enter when you have the desired size to return the focus to your application.

If you want to move the top down and the bottom up, or the right side in and the left side out, you have press Enter and repeat the shortcut. Or use the Move command first to place one side where you want it and then the Size command to resize it.

Cursor control by the numbers
There's no substitute for a mouse's ability to move the pointer around the screen in any direction and as fast as your hand can drag it. Your keyboard does offer an alternative way to slide your mouse pointer across the screen. Press the left Shift key, the left Alt key, and the Num Lock key to open the Mouse Keys dialog box. Press Enter to activate the feature. Now move the pointer by pressing the numbers along the outside of your number keypad, and press the 5 key to click. Press the left Alt, left Shift, and Num Lock keys again to turn the feature off.

Activate Windows' Mouse Keys feature to convert your number pad into a mouse-pointer controller.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Tomorrow: Take a closer look at Vista's Ease of Access Center.

When the free trial of the security software that shipped with my Vista PC expired, I decided to uninstall it and give the free versions of competing antivirus and firewall programs a try. For some reason, this caused my Internet connection to drop intermittently.

When I uninstalled the new programs and ponied up for the full version of the security suite, the network outages ceased. I never did figure out why my system didn't take to the new security apps, but the hassles I avoided by taking the suite approach to security justified the cost of the program.

The experience got me thinking about whether I need any antivirus software at all. I've got a near-real-time backup service that saves my data files regularly, and I don't usually frequent the Internet's dicier locations.

Ultimately, I decided that security software is really PC insurance. Even careful, cautious, tech-savvy people can fall prey to a malware attack. It would take only one thwarted infection for the program to prove its worth. And sticking with a single security vendor whose products are proven effective is the best way I know to reduce the chances of compatibility problems.

In PC World's most recent review of security suites, Symantec's $70 Norton Internet Security finished a couple of notches above the $80 Kaspersky Internet Security and $70 McAfee Internet Security Suite.

Sometimes it's okay to put down your defenses
Most security programs have some components that are always active. This robs your system some processing power and memory. Just how much processing power and memory depends on the program and how it's configured.

When you're running an application that requires all the system resources your PC can muster, you can reclaim a few by temporarily closing your antivirus program. The fastest way to do this may be to right-click its icon in the system tray and choose Exit or Close. It's a good idea to keep your firewall running at all times, but if none of your open apps have an Internet link active, you can do without virus protection.

If your browser fails to open certain sites or your network link starts acting up in some other way, a short-term solution may be to shut down your security program temporarily. (You can also try clearing your browser's cache.) If closing the security app restores the network connection, add the balky sites to the program's white list of safe Web destinations.

Wikipedia's antivirus page provides loads of background on the programs. Of particular interest are the page's "Issues of concern" and "Effectiveness" sections (scroll down to find them).

About a year ago I tested a Sony GPS device. The device is long gone, but a shortcut to the product's personal My Documents folder remained among the Send To options on my context (right-click) menu.

Getting rid of this useless entry was as easy as opening Windows' Send To folder and removing its shortcut. Press the Windows key and R, type Shell:sendto, and press Enter to open the Send To folder. In the right pane, right-click the shortcut associated with the item you want to remove and choose Delete > Yes.

Remove an unwanted entry from the Send To menu by deleting its shortcut.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Adding an entry to your Send To menu is just as easy. Right-click in the right pane and select New > Shortcut. Enter the path to the folder you want to create a Send To shortcut for, or click Browse, navigate to it, and click Next. Enter a name for the shortcut, and click Finish.

Enter the path to the folder you want to access from the Send To menu.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Note that just dragging a shortcut from the Start menu or elsewhere into this window and dropping it there may not work. You have to enter the exact path, particularly if you want to add a shortcut to Notepad or another application.

Tomorrow: an antivirus-software buyer's guide.

What I really want to do is add a link to Google Docs on the right-click (context) menu in Windows Explorer. That way, I could open a file in Google Docs by right-clicking it in Explorer and choosing Send To > Google Docs.

Well, I wasn't able to figure out how to do this. So instead, I created a shortcut to open Google Docs, and then I browsed to the file and opened it the old-fashioned way.

This won't save you a lot of time, but at least Google Docs makes it easy for you to transmit the file to the service as an e-mail attachment. And, of course, you can send the file to other e-mail recipients at the same time.

To create the shortcut to Google Docs, log in to the service, copy the URL in the address bar, right-click the desktop or any folder window, choose New > Shortcut, paste the URL in the Location field, click Next, type Google Docs (or the name of your choice), and press Enter (or click Finish).

Now navigate to the shortcut you just created, right-click it, and choose Properties. Click in the "Shortcut key" box, and type your preferred keyboard shortcut (I chose Ctrl-Alt-G).

Give your Google Docs shortcut a keyboard sequence to open the service in a flash.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Now you can open the service by pressing the keyboard shortcut you just entered. Once it opens, choose Upload in the top-left corner of the window, browse to and select the file, give it a name (or use the existing file name), and click Upload File.

Alternatively, you can copy the unique e-mail address Google Docs generated for you under E-mail Your Documents and Files, open your e-mail program, paste the address in the To: field, and add any other recipients you want to send the file to. The file will be attached to the message automatically.

Google Docs limits your HTML and text files (including Word's .doc and .rtf) to 500KB, presentations to 10MB from your computer, and 2MB from a Web site (500KB as e-mail attachments), and spreadsheets to 1MB (spreadsheets can't be uploaded as e-mail attachments).

I'll keep looking for a way to add Google Docs to my right-click menu (either via the Open With or Send To submenus, or directly on the context menu), and when I find it, I'll let you know.

Tomorrow: remove unwanted items from your Send To menu.

You could create every document, spreadsheet, and presentation you work on from scratch, but if you're like me, you'll likely spend more time futzing with the file's layout and design than entering the data that comprises it.

That's why I rely on the many free templates and extensions for my favorite productivity apps. I've written in the past about places to find add-ons for Microsoft Office, but there's also a wealth of free extensions and templates for OpenOffice.org's Writer word processor, Calc spreadsheet, and Impress presentation program.

Start at OpenOffice.org's Extensions page. Click one of the options at the top left to list the extensions by application, category, popularity, or other criterion.

One extension that workgroups may find helpful is O3Spaces Workplace Community Edition, which offers version control, check in/check out, and other collaboration features for OpenOffice.org and StarOffice apps. The add-on combines an AJAX Web client with a desktop component that you can access via a system-tray icon. It even works in mixed Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org/StarOffice environments.

I'm less impressed with OpenOffice.org's templates for Writer, Calc, and Impress. Still, I have to admit that they're better layouts than I would be able to devise on my own. One compilation of OpenOffice.org templates that business people will likely find indispensable is Sun Microsystems' own Professional Template Pack, which provides an abundance of templates for business letters, presentation backgrounds, and worksheets.

Preview your templates in OpenOffice.org apps
Before you can select the right template for your needs, you need to be able to see it. Previewing templates in OpenOffice.org apps isn't as easy as you might think. If you click File > Templates > Organize, you see the templates installed on your system and can place them in new or different folders, but you can't see what they look like.

You can view some of the templates via the applications' wizards: click File > Wizards, and choose one of the top five categories. When the wizard opens, choose From template and select one of the templates listed in the window below the radio buttons.

Preview the templates in OpenOffice.org by running a wizard and selecting "From template" on the first screen.

(Credit: OpenOffice.org)

Another way to get a glimpse of your templates is to click File > New > Templates and Documents. With Templates selected in the left pane (it should be highlighted automatically), double-click a folder in the middle pane to view the templates in that category. Select one to preview it in the right pane. When you find one you like, click Open and start entering your data.

Preview the templates in OpenOffice.org via the Templates and Documents dialog box off the File > New menu.

(Credit: OpenOffice.org)

A wonderful resource for OpenOffice.org templates, tips, and tutorials is Kaaredyret's all-purpose site.

Monday: customize Windows' context (right-click) menu.

For whatever reason, the last time I booted my Vista laptop the network icon was missing from its usual spot next to the clock in the system tray.

I right-clicked the Start button, chose Properties, and clicked the Notification Area tab to recheck this option under "System icons," but it was grayed out.

I found the solution on Colin Cochrane's blog. Here are the steps in a nutshell:

Back up the Registry by creating a restore point.
Press the Windows key, type regedit, and press Enter to open the Registry Editor.
Navigate to and select HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify.
Delete both IconStreams and PastIconStream in the right pane.
Press Ctrl-Alt-Delete and select Start Task Manager.
Select the Processes tab, choose explorer.exe, and click End Process.
Choose the Applications tab, click New Task, enter explorer.exe in the text box, and press Enter.

Your icons should reappear.

Return missing icons to Vista's system tray by editing the Registry, stopping explorer.exe, and restarting the process via Task Manager.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Another option for taskbar problems is the free Taskbar Repair Tool Plus, which I found on Kelly Theriot's Kelly's Korner.

Tomorrow: the best OpenOffice.org templates and clipart.

On Monday, I described Vaita's free Outlook Duplicate Items Remover, an add-on that finds duplicate copies of Outlook messages, contacts, calendar entries, and tasks. Now, I'll continue to trim my bloated Outlook in-box by using another freebie: the Kopf Outlook Attachment Remover created by Bruno Marotta.

After you download the program and restart Outlook, you see a floating Attachment Remover toolbar that you can drag and dock at the top of the screen along with all the other toolbars to keep it from blocking your view. Click the toolbar's one-and-only button to open the program's one-and-only dialog box.

The Kopf Outlook Attachment Remover shrinks your in-box by storing attachments in a separate folder and placing links to the files in the original messages.

(Credit: Kopf/Bruno Marotta)

You can choose the folder to scan for attachments, the type of files to remove, the size limit (the default setting is to remove all file attachments more than 10KB in size), the folder to place the attachments in, and whether to replace the file with a link or text message, or to simply remove it.

The add-on will recreate the structure of the folders and subfolders you scan, but I wish it offered a way to separate attachments by file type or by sender prior to the scan. This would let me detach all the PDFs from my boss, for example.

Since Outlook Attachment Remover is donationware, be sure to drop a couple of bills in the hat if you find the program beneficial.

Wednesday: tweak the Registry to return missing icons to the system tray.

Sometimes I wish I was one of those people who manages to keep their e-mail inbox empty by assigning the messages they need to keep appropriately named folders and deleting the mail they don't need.

Most of my inboxes have thousands of entries dating back years. And since I've combined my ISP's POP mail account with my Gmail account, the inbox-overflow problem has gotten out of hand.

Rather than spending half a day manually removing the duplicates, I installed Vaita's free Outlook Duplicate Items Remover. The program places an "ODIR" entry on Outlook's standard toolbar. Click it and choose "Remove duplicate items" (or press Alt-O, R) to open the add-on's window showing your Outlook folders. Select one of the folders and click the "Remove duplicate items" button at the bottom of the window.

The free Outlook Duplicate Items Remover add-on makes finding and removing duplicate Outlook entries a breeze.

(Credit: Vaita)

In just a few minutes, I watched the number of items in my inbox shrink from 4,081 to a more reasonable 2,656 (and counting). The program places the duplicate messages in a folder named ODIR_Duplicate_Files. I looked through this folder for non-duplicates erroneously identified by the add-on but didn't spot any.

If you trust the program's ability to tell duplicates from singles, you can simply delete the contents of the ODIR_Duplicate_Files folder. I played it safe by moving the folder's files to compressed folder on a thumb drive before deleting them.

I may not save a ton of time or hard-drive storage space by ridding myself of duplicate Outlook files, but every little bit helps.

Tomorrow: pare Outlook further by removing the attachments from your messages.

These days you can't be too careful about what you download. A new Firefox add-on from Florian Queze called View Dependencies takes some of the guesswork out of knowing the content of a Web page, and the source of that content.

After you download the free add-on and restart Firefox, you'll see a Dependencies tab when you click Tools > Page Info to view information about the page that's currently open. The tab lists the files on the page, their URL, and their size. (Note that on at least one page I tested the file size was not available.)

See a list of the files on a Web page via the View Dependencies add-on

(Credit: Florian Queze)

I used View Dependencies to check about a dozen popular home pages, and the two with the most individual files were Amazon.com with 150, and ESPN.com, which was comprised of 119 separate files when I last visited. The page with the fewest files listed was the classic Google home page, which does its magic with a total of two files. Compare that to the 27 files downloaded at my customized iGoogle page, 29 at Gmail, 18 at Wikipedia, and 39 at the View Dependencies download page.

You can right-click an entry and choose Open in New Tab or Open in New Window to view just that one file. Other context-menu options let you copy the entry, copy just the URL, or just the host name.

Do I really need to know the source of Javascript ads that run on ESPN.com, or the server that hosts the images on the page? Perhaps not, but knowing a little bit more about the content of a Web page can help me decide how much I should trust it.

Monday: organize a cluttered Outlook inbox.

Someday, browsers will make it easy to retrace our Web steps by providing total recall of every page we've opened. Until then, we get the imperfect history features in Internet Explorer and Firefox.

They're imperfect because they seem to remember every page I've visited except the only one I actually need to return to. At least Firefox gives you a few more options for changing how it records your surfing history. With Internet Explorer, the only two options you get are to 1) change the number of days your history is stored and to 2) clear your history completely.

Tweaking Firefox's history settings
To adjust the history settings in Firefox, click Tools > Options > Privacy. Here, you can reset the number of days the browser remembers the sites you visit (the default is nine), or tell Firefox not to record the data you enter into forms and the search bar. You can also erase Firefox's memory of the files and programs you download. The default in both cases is to remember.

Reset the number of days Firefox remembers your browsing history via the Privacy Options dialog box.

(Credit: Mozilla Firefox)

When you press Ctrl-Shift-Delete to clear Firefox's private data, you're shown seven options, five of which are selected. I usually just want to clear the cache--Gmail sometimes balks at downloading my in-box unless I clear out the browser's store of temporary files.

To change the defaults, reopen the Privacy Options, and click Settings in the Private Data section. Check the items you want to clear, uncheck those you don't, and click OK. The next time you open the Clear Private Data dialog box, your new defaults will be the only ones checked.

Customize the categories of private data that Firefox deletes by default when you click Clear Private Data.

(Credit: Mozilla Firefox)

By default, Firefox shows up to 50 entries in each history folder. You can reduce Firefox's memory consumption (and possibly slow some page reloads) by reducing this entry via the browser's configuration options. Type about:config in the address bar, and press Enter. Scroll to and double-click browser.sessionhistory.max_entries, and enter the maximum number of pages you want Firefox to remember for each site you visit.

Internet Explorer's meager history options
When you click Tools > Delete Browsing History in Internet Explorer 7, you're given five options: Temporary Internet Files, Cookies, History, Form data, and Passwords. Or click "Delete all" to clear all five.

Internet Explorer 7's Delete Browsing History dialog box gives you five options.

(Credit: Microsoft)

To change the number of days IE stores your browsing history, click Tools > Internet Options, click Settings under "Browsing history" on the General tab, and click the up or down arrows in the History section at the bottom of the resulting dialog box.

Change the number of days Internet Explorer 7 retains a list of the sites you've visited via the Browsing History Settings dialog box.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Tomorrow: a Firefox add-on that shows all the files downloaded by the current page.