Computer Quandaries
by Dale Atchison
Tampa Bay Computer Society


Here are questions from some of my clients and TBCS members, along with the best answers I could give them; most of my answers were arrived at by searching the Internet using Google.   In those cases where I say things nice or otherwise about a particular program, please note that I'm expressing only my opinion, and not necessarily that of TBCS, its members, or its board of directors.

I am interested in adding Excel to my computer.  At this point, I just want to view --- and maybe print --- spreadsheets sent to me by my colleagues, but I will eventually need to be able to create and edit them as well.  Where do you recommend the most cost-effective place to buy software these days?

ExcelViewer will do for just viewing and printing.  It's free, from Microsoft.  Download it here.

You can check at  newegg.com  or  CompUSA.com  to see what you'd pay for MS Office.  You could even lie and say you're a student or teacher, and use the Student and Teacher version.  Or go to eBay and see what you'd pay for an earlier version.  Or, for full Excel functionality, without paying the multiple hundreds of dollars for MS Office, check out OpenOffice.org 3.0, a complete, free Open Source office suite that does everything you'd ever want to do with any office tool.  I'd have written a glowing review for it already, but reviews by Ira Wilsker and Stew Bottorf have already made the point:  with Open Office out there, you don't need to spend money on a commercial, 'boxed' office suite.
download.openoffice.org

I'm using Microsoft Word.  All of a sudden, my font sizes are much smaller than they used to be.  How do I get them back like they were?

In the Standard Toolbar, there is a 'sizing' control near the right-hand end: a window with a number in it.  Is the number 100% ?  It should be, unless that causes a horizontal scrollbar to appear, in which case you should click the drop-down arrow next to the number and select Page Width.

And the fonts look slightly larger when View is set to Normal than when it is set to Online or Page View.

I had five photos that I wanted to send in one email.  I tried desperately to get all of them to go.  However, I was stymied, and I could get only two attached to each email --- I had to send consecutive emails, three in all, in order to send the five photo attachments.  I was able to get the first two photos attached, but the remaining photos came up with an envelope type icon in front of it instead of the regular attachment icon, and it would not go through.

First question: are you using Outlook Express, another 'POP3' email client, or are you reading and composing your mail online, from within a Web browser?  And may I assume we're talking about sending JPG files, not BMPs?  JPEGs are twenty to fifty times smaller than the equivalent BMP, with no discernible loss of picture quality.

To send pictures or any other types of files using Outlook Express or any other POP3 client (assuming you've already set the client as your default mail client), just highlight all the files you want to send, right-click any one of the highlighted files, then left-click Send To  »  Mail Recipient.  This should open your default email program with all the files already attached, just waiting for you to add a note to the message body, address the message, and press Send.

If you were trying to attach pictures to an email message you were composing online, the most likely problem is that the email program timed out waiting for the larger pictures to upload (you have a dial-up IJ account, if memory serves me).  There might also be a limit imposed on the total attached file size --- pictures just out of your digital camera are HUGE, and need to be shrunk before emailing.  By default, Win XP offers to shrink all pictures before attaching them to your default email program, but that doesn't happen using Web-based email.  You can use the photo software that came with your camera to save smaller versions of each picture for emailing, or you could even use MS Paint to shrink the pictures to sizes that will fit on a computer screen and email in less than a few hours --- any recipients with dial-up accounts will thank you for it.

Before giving you detailed instructions for using Paint to shrink and/or convert large pictures to something that can be emailed efficiently, let me expound briefly on a few assumptions that affect the choices you will make.

  1. Most pictures fresh out of a digital camera are 1600 pixels wide, 1200 pixels tall, and have a 'color depth' of 16,000,000 possible hues.  (If I'm wrong on any of this, it's the color depth, which might only be 64,000 possible colors --- still more than you need for an email photo.) Some newer cameras now output pictures of  2400x1800  or  2400x1600 ; again, still too large to email.
  2. The original photo as it came from the camera was saved as a JPEG.
  3. You're not intending to have the picture, as received by your friend or family member, printed full-size for public display or sold as honest-to-God art; you just want Mom and cousin Lucy to see how big the dog or the baby have gotten since their last visit.  (Notice how I put the dog before the baby in that last sentence?  That probably says volumes about the kind of father I was.  But no matter now.)

Right-click the picture, then select Edit.  Assuming you haven't allowed a different program to set itself up as the default picture editor, MS Paint should open with the photo already loaded.  If any other program opens, use it if you're familiar with it, or close the program, right-click the picture again, and choose Open With  »  MS Paint.

First things first: from the menu, select Image  »  Attributes.  In the Units section, push the 'radio button' next to Pixels.  The width and height of the picture will be displayed in the appropriate boxes, labeled Width and Height.  Make note of them, then click Cancel or OK.  Next, click Image  »  Stretch/Skew, and type in a percentage in both boxes --- the same number in each box, or you will distort the picture!  --- that will cause the final picture to be no more than 800 pixels wide by 600 pixels high; click OK to effect the change.  (No sense mailing a picture that won't fit on the recipient's screen.)

If the picture was already a GIF, or JPEG, you're done.  Click File  »  Save As  »  type in a name almost identical to the original, but with an indication in the name that this is a shrunken version of the original  »  choose a location for the altered file  »  click Save.  If the file is a BMP or TIFF, it's still 'way too big; click on File  »  Save As  »  change the Save As Type to JPEG  »  choose a location  »  click Save.  If it was a PNG file, it will be smaller than a BMP but still nearly three times the size of a JPEG; consider using Save As to make it a JPG (the extensions JPG and JPEG are interchangeable --- either will be the same size and will work exactly the same with any photo program).

Mail the altered photo, keeping the larger original on your hard drive for future viewing, cropping, or copying to a CD.

At the risk of being more than average dumb, please send along an email telling me, again, how to make emails full screen size and, if possible, how to make them stay that way --- meaning so we won't have to make the changes every time.

First, make sure Windows is set to remember each folder's View settings.  Open My Computer, then click on Tools  »  Folder Options  »  View.  Make sure there's a check mark next to Remember Each Folder's View Settings.  Click OK till you're back at the desktop.

Next, open Outlook Express.  Once you've double-clicked a message to open it in a separate window, grab the title bar and drag the window to the upper left-hand corner of the screen.  Then, grab the diagonal bars at the lower right-hand corner of the screen, and drag that corner to the lower right-hand corner of the screen.  Outlook Express should remember that window setting every time you open a message from now on.

I just did something, not sure what --- and the bar with the start button disappeared.  How do I get it back, and move it from the top to the bottom ?

You've accidentally shrunk the taskbar.  No big deal.  Just move the mouse cursor slowly over the place you last saw the taskbar, all the way to the edge of the screen.  At some point, the cursor will turn into a double-headed arrow; use it to click and drag the taskbar one increment toward the center of the screen.  Let go of it, then click the center of the taskbar --- not the edge --- and drag it back to whichever edge of the screen you prefer.

A little experimentation will show that you can make the taskbar several thicknesses high --- a waste of screen real estate in most cases, but some folks with vision trouble like it that way.

Thanks for Asking!

That's all for this month.  I welcome questions on any computer-related problems you might have.  Please email your questions to:

Dale@ComputerRepairShop.biz



I send these guys a few dollars every month... sure wish you would join me.
And 100% of your labor charges go to this rescue, too.