February 2000
News Letter
A message from the President:
We had a truly wonderful problem at our January meeting: there weren’t enough chairs and we had to bring some in from a nearby classroom. Just the kid of problem a group like this needs. There were 23 people there, guests included and 3 of the guests joined. That’s a hard meeting upon which to improve.
We welcome the new members and hope they took word back to their other group about how wonderful the presentation was on the subject of 8000 YEARS OF COMPUTING by our founding Father, Gregory Ogle. If you missed it, WHY?
Our February meeting will feature Tim Kling of Kling Computers on the subject of Office 2000. We’ll probably be in Lab 104 again, but check the lobby for directions on how to get to our room.
Several members gave us their E-Mail addresses and I hope to compile a list soon.
IVY TECH has done so much for us and now we have an opportunity to return a favor to them. They will be having their annual scholarship fund raiser. Details will be available at our February meeting.
We still have no one to fill the office of Vice-President. This officer has the responsibility of finding speakers for our meetings. So if anyone knows of someone who can speak to our group please tell me. As you know if the leader can’t find someone to do the job, he must do it himself. It’s poor leadership but better than no leadership. I thought about telling Ross Jordan that he couldn’t leave the job until he found a replacement, but I’m afraid that might apply to me when I want out of my job. There’s a cute picture of a pup in a bowl, he’s on his back and apparently
struggling, unsuccessfully, to get out. The caption says "Most things are harder to get out of than get into."
Let’s remember to both patronize and recommend STAPLES.
Kokomo IBM PC Users Group President
Larry L. Thompson
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CLEANING UP YOUR HARD DISK
Every time I wanted to free up some space on my hard drive I would call my nephew and ask him to help me. I just didn’t know what I could safely delete to free up some space. This month I ran across an article that detailed a four step procedure to clean up your hard disk. The address is http://www.windows-help.net/index.html if you want all the bells and whistles. Here is the four step process.
I. Uninstalling unused components
Many people never bother to check which components of Windows are installed, and which ones can be removed. Are you using the Microsoft Network? If not - and you have it installed - you can safe approx. 2.5MB. Microsoft Fax? Going rate approx. 2.6MB. Microsoft Exchange? A whooping 4.6MB to be saved here!
To uninstall Windows components:
1.Open your Control Panel (select Start > Settings > Control Panel)
2.Open Add/Remove Programs
3.Select the Windows Setup tab
4.Select the components you want to remove and press OK
II. Deleting Temp Files
When Windows crashes, or lockes-up and you have to use Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart, some temporary files will be left on your disk.
This sometimes also happens when Installation routines of programs don't clean up (properly).
These files will be left in your \Windows\Temp folder. You can use Windows Explorer to Find and Delete these files. To be on the safe side, don't delete files with today's date, these files could still be in use (most probably you'll get an error telling you that a file can't be deleted because it's in use).
You can also check your entire hard disk, to see if there are any temp files in other places:
1.Open Windows Explorer, and select your drive (e.g. C:\)
2.Press F3, this will open Find
3.In the Named: box on the Name & Location tab, enter *.tmp
4.Make sure that the check-box for Include subfolders is checked
5.Press Find Now
III. Deleting Other Files
Other files you could delete are files with these extensions:
1.*.bak
2.*.old
3.*.chk
4.*.000
To do this:
1.Open Windows Explorer, and select your drive (e.g. C:\)
2.Press F3, this will open Find
3.In the Named: box on the Name & Location tab, enter *.bak; *.old; *.chk; *.000
4.Make sure that the check-box for Include subfolders is checked
5.Press Find Now
IV. Temporary Internet Files
Another source of "disappearing" hard disk space are the Temporary Internet Files. To speed up your Internet browsing, pages, graphics and other page elements are stored in your browsers cache. It's worth it to clean this cache from time to time:
Internet Explorer 4.x
1.From IE's menu, select View > Internet Options
2.On the General tab, press Delete files under the Temporary Internet files header
Note:
The Internet Explorer 4 cache is seriously flawed. One of these flaws will result in the growth of the Index.dat files, even if you delete your cache using the method described above. Another flaw will sometimes have the effect that although you wanted to delete all files, many files will be left in the IE4 cache.
To work around this:
1.(re)Start Windows in MS-DOS mode
2.Start SmartDrive (Disk Cache) by typing Smartdrv 5120 (where 5120 is the amount of memory in KB to be used by SmartDrive). This will speed up the operation considerably
3.Type Deltree <your tif dir> where <your tif dir> should be the path to your Temporary Internet Files. The default is C:\Windows\Temporary Internet Files. You would have to put quotation marks (" ") around this command, or use: C:\Windows\Tempor~1
4.When done, restart Windows. Your Temporary Internet Files directory will be re-created.
Netscape Communicator 4.x
1.From Netscape's menu select Edit > Preferences
2.Click on the + sign next to Advanced in the Category window
3.Select the Cache entry
4.Press the Clear Disk Cache button
Jerry Henry
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Cookies & Web Bugs: At our last meeting the subject of cookies come up and what to do about them. I received a news letter from Winmag.com. that had an article on cookies this article led me to the following URLs: that shed some light on the subject. http://www.winmag.com/fixes/webbugs.htm http://www.tiac.net/users/smiths/privacy/wbfaq.htm http://www.tiac.net/users/smiths/privacy/realjb.htm http://www.tiac.net/users/smiths/index.htm Some of this stuff is pretty scary if you value your privacyThere doesn't seem to be very much we can do to protect ourselves if we insist on surfing the internet. Check it out! Howard Ogle
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E-MAIL MESSAGE FILTERS
This is for Netscape Messenger
Create a folder called TipWorld (go to File, New Folder, type TipWorld, and click OK). Now go to Edit, Message Filters. Click New. In the Filter Rules window, give your new filter a descriptive name (such as TipWorld Stuff). Select Match Any Of The Following. Beneath that, make it read as follows: The Subject Of The Message Contains TipWorld. This means Netscape should check whether the subject of any new message has the word TipWorld in it. Now you want to tell Netscape to file TipWorld messages in the TipWorld folder. Make the appropriate changes so that the next part of the filter rule reads Then Move To Folder TipWorld. (Most of this should already be selected--you'll probably just select TipWorld in the Folder drop-down menu.) Give the filter a description if you wish, then click OK. You can create filters based on other message fields as well: sender, date, age, priority, and so forth. Choose to have selected messages moved to the appropriate folders, marked as read, or even deleted.
Jerry Henry
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IT'S ALL ABOUT THE PLUG-INS, BABY Plug-ins are add-on programs that can make your Web surfing faster or more entertaining. For Netscape to interpret multimedia Web pages, it requires plug-ins. The more popular plug-ins are available for download from Netscape's Web page. To find out what plug-ins you have on your system, go to Help, About Plug-Ins. To find out about the latest plug-ins available from Netscape, browse to http://home.netscape.com/plugins The most popular plug-ins are Macromedia Flash and Shockwave (for multimedia browsing), RealNetworks' RealPlayer G2 (for downloading audio and video), and QuickTime (also for audio and video).
Jerry Henry
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FRESH RELOAD
When you click the Reload button on your toolbar, Nescape reloads parts of the page from many places. Most of it comes from your cache folder. If you want to force Netscape to redownload the page from the Web site, otherwise known as a fresh reload, just hold down the Shift key as you press Reload. This will make Navigator get all the information from the Web site as though
it were the first time you’ve visited. This also clears the old version of the page from memory and replaces it with the new one.
Jerry Henry
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ORGANIZE YOUR DATA FILES
If you’re like most Windows users, as you create data files, you probably store them in various locations all over your system. However, this method of file storage makes for time-consuming backups. (You do back up your data files on a regular basis, right?) Why not store all the files you create in one central location? From then on, backups will be a snap, and you won’t risk losing important files.
First, create the storage area--a new folder on your hard drive; or, if your drive is partitioned, one virtual drive. Name the folder or drive something appropriate, such as "Data" or "My Data," then create subfolders inside. Of course, the number of folders you create and their names will
depend on your work habits. For example, you might create "Personal" and "Work," with a number of different folders within each.
Now move your existing data files into the new folders. Sure, it takes a few minutes and there are some minor annoyances to deal with but just think--the next time you perform a data backup, everything is in one place.
Ed Danley
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WORKING WITH E-MAIL MESSAGES IN WORD
This Word question is from reader Christopher V:
"I prefer to open my e-mail messages in Word 97. Is there any easy way to get rid of all those greater-than (>) symbols and one-line paragraphs in the e-mail message? I have been deleting them all manually, but would like an automatic method."
You can do a search for the symbol and replace it with nothing. The paragraphs are a bit more trouble. However, you can search for the paragraph symbols (^) and replace them with a space.
Open your e-mail message in Word and press Ctrl-H to open the Find and Replace dialog box. Click in the Find What entry box and type a greater-than symbol (>). Leave the Replace With entry box blank and click Replace All. This should take care of all the greater-than symbols. If there are some you need to keep, don’t click Replace All; instead, click Find Next and replace the symbols one at a time.
Now, click in the Find What entry box again and delete the greater-than symbol. Enter the paragraph symbol and press Tab to move to the Replace With entry box. Press the spacebar to enter a space, and click Find Next. This allows you to make a separate decision for each paragraph symbol. If you don’t mind ending up with a single paragraph, you can click Replace All instead.
After you finish with Find and Replace, press Esc to close the dialog box.
Ed Danley
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YOUR E-JOHN HANCOCK
Have your ever received mail from someone that always has a small one-line or two-line message, quote, or Web address attached to the bottom of the message? It’s called a signature. It can be a means of expression, or a simple tag line indicating your e-mail addresses or home page. If you use e-mail for work, it can include a work phone or fax number.
You can create a signature file and automatically attach it to every e-mail you send using Netscape Messenger. First open Windows NotePad, WordPad, or any simple text program. Write your signature exactly as you want it to appear at the bottom of your e-mail. Now save it in your Netscape user folder (usually Program Files/Netscape/users/your name) as signature.txt. To change your preferences to include the signature, go to Edit, Preferences and click the plus sign
(+) next to Mail and Newsgroups. Select Identity and click the Choose button. Locate your signature.txt file in your user folder and click Open. Every time you start a new message, your signature appears at the bottom. If you choose, not to have a signature for a particular message,simply delete it from the end of the message.
Ed Danley
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Larry Thompson, 457-5622
Treasurer Richard Coop Sr., 459-8731
Member Services Rodney Malkoff, 453-1159
Newsletter Editor Jerry Henry 453-4144
Newsletter Distribution Marcy Young
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This Month’s User Bucks
Ed Danley $1
Jerry Henry $1
Norman Ogle $1
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Newsletter editor Jerry Henry
jhenry@netusa1.net 453-4144
Keep those articles coming in Word
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