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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Thursday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week - October 5, 2005 |
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Automating things in Word and Outlook – I
remember about 20 years ago, a major PC magazine did a survey of how
people actually used their pc’s. This was after the introduction of the
IBM PC. At that
time the most common application done was word processing. Some of the
earliest word processing programs had a feature where you could turn sound on
and a key would make a definite “Click” sound when you hit it, supposedly
to aid manual or electric typists making the transition to computers. At the
time the Number 1 Word processing program was Wordstar. This magazine survey revealed an
interesting finding – Millions of people were using Wordstar,
but they were only using about 7 functions of the programs. These generally were knowing how to open a file, type text into the file,
use the spell check, use the thesaurus, change the font if necessary, print
the file, and save the file.
Despite the hundreds of functions built into the program, most users
were using only 7. Then
about 10 years ago the same magazine did the same survey. By this time, Word Star had been
replaced by Word Perfect; this program had several hundred functions, but
again most people were using only about 7 still. Today the
leading word processing program is Microsoft word, a program which has
thousands of functions built into it, and I think if another survey was done,
most users would now be doing the same basic 7 functions plus maybe one more
– the 8th being sending an email of the
document by simply clicking on
the email icon, which of course now opens a newer program in the industry
– the Outlook email program. So today
let’s learn how to use one new simple function of Word – the
capability to create a macro – or an automated procedure you can run to
automatically type information you find yourself typing over and over again,
like your signature. Open a
blank word document, and then click on Tools – and a menu pops up. One
of the choices when you highlight the word macro is Record new macro –
and click on this choice. A Menubox
pops up, and ask you for the name you want to assign to this macro –
Name it signature. You’ll also see here that you can assign this macro
to a toolbar, or to a key combination.
There’s a box on this menu for you to type in the description of this
macro – and you might describe it as Official Signature – then
click ok.
You'll be
put back in your document, and you'll see a small blue menu box at the top
left of your screen –
which means that now everything you type will be recorded into
your macro. So I'll type a signature – Ima
Bigshot Vice-president
of Obfuscation Acme
Enterprises and then I'll click on the left button on this blue menu box, stopping
the recording. Now
anytime I want to automatically type my signature, I just click on tools -
macro – macros to show all the existing macros – and click Signature and then click run -
Ima
Bigshot Vice-president
of Obfuscation Acme
Enterprises And your
signature is automatically typed ! Imagine what you can do with the power
of this function ! A transcript of this show with all the
screenshots of how to do this is available on my Raw Bytes
website. Next week
I’ll tell you how to do a similar thing with Outlook. For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2005 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html (509)624-7230 |
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