I recommend Piriform’s CCleaner program as a one-stop troubleshooting step for slow performance. This handy program will find and get rid of trash and temporary files and is completely customizable. Run it regularly to maintain your machine, then run the Registry Cleaner afterward. Be sure to back up your registry first – it gives you this option before the cleaning begins.
The best part about CCleaner is that it is free! Try it at the following link:
This is one I did not know – you can actually edit a Word document while in Print Preview! If you click the Magnifier icon in the Print Preview toolbar, it will change back to the I-beam for editing. Any edits you make will be retained when you go back to the regular view. Just click the Magnifier icon again to get the Zoom function back.
This applies to any Microsoft Office 2007 “recent document” list. You do, of course, know that by hitting the Office Button (the “marble,” the magic button, the round logo at the top left), you can view many useful menus including the Recent Documents list? (In previous versions, it was under the File menu.) This is a very handy shortcut to pull up the last few documents you’ve viewed in Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.
Office 2007 has really improved this little feature with the ability to “pin” something there permanently. If there is a document you don’t want pushed down to the bottom or dropping off of this list, you can click on the little pushpin icon to the right of each document title. This will keep the document on the list permanently, thus providing you a quick and handy shortcut to your most-used documents.
I recently installed Windows 7 on my desktop, on which I previously had Windows XP SP3. The installation went really well with hardly a hiccup. Since I couldn’t upgrade, I was forced to not only clean up my hard drive, but to back up its contents as well (which I highly recommend YOU do!). I bought a 1 TB external drive which now backs up nightly. 1 TB is 1,000 GB, which is an insane amount of space that I doubt I will ever fill up.
I did have two issues pop up: my old Visioneer scanner was not supported, so was not installed during the upgrade. Surprisingly, my old Lexmark Z11 printer was supported, but it didn’t work right away. With some tweaking and some web searches, I got both devices to work with the brand-new OS.
So far everything has worked VERY well, even my old programs which I continue to install as needed. I have to say that I like Windows 7 very much and it’s the first operating system I have ever pre-ordered. Congratulations to Microsoft for a great job on this one.
This blog is to offer help with computer problems and questions. I do this for a living and on the side, and just thought I would try out connecting this to my WebCastle site for interest. Please submit your computer question or problem within the Comments, and I will do my best to help!
Eileen