The Computer Club Newsletter

April  2002

By Ron Uncapher

A good turnout at the April TVCUC meeting saw Jim Deane reprise his February visit with a description of the highly anticipated Charter Pipeline broadband service. At least half of the assemblage heard him for the first time. Deane confirmed that the Pipeline service will be available in the Village in June. The only change was that installation is no longer free for the lower two of the four broadband plans.

At the next meeting Doris Prichard of U of T Health will present her talk entitled "Where to find Health Information on the Internet". Ms. Prichard was in the Village two months ago and spoke to a small gathering at the regular U of T Health topics program. Those few who attended confirm that it will be a worthwhile presentation. She has many good hints on searching the Internet for health information that apply to almost any Internet search. The meeting will be held at the Yacht Club and is open to visitors, so mark your calendars for Tuesday, May 7 at 7:00 P.M.

One of the most frequently voiced complaints I hear these days concerns the inability to open an email attachment. How often have you clicked on an attachment only to have MS Word open to a page full of rectangles, strange symbols, and other random characters? This is usually an example of old version of Word trying to open a file created by a new version of Word, or some other text generating program. A solution to most of these types of problems is to first save the file from your email client to a folder in MY Documents. I have a special folder called "EMAIL ATTACHMENTS" that I created just so I had a place to put attachments where I know I can find them later. In the case of a .doc or .txt file, I first open WordPad. Older versions of Windows have a similar program called Write. Go to START*PROGRAMS*ACCESSORIES*WORDPAD. Then from the OPEN command, navigate to the file you saved. Once opened in WordPad, you can resave the file in Word 6.0, Text, or Rich Text Format. Just click on FILE*SAVE AS… and select the file type by clicking on the "Save As Type" arrow.

If you do not have MS Office, most computers come loaded with Microsoft Works. Select the word processor in MS Works and open the file. Click OPEN and select a file type from the "File of Type" list.

No matter what type of file you receive, be it photo, spreadsheet, text, artwork, there is most likely an application on your computer that will open it. Once you have saved the file, go to your Programs list and select a program that you think might match the type of material in the file. Don’t be afraid to try several programs. There is always an OPEN symbol and FILE command menu that includes the OPEN command.

Tip of the Month: The Title Bar is the colored bar at the top of an application window. Double-click and it acts like the maximize/resize box at the right end of the bar. Right-click on the title bar and you get a choice. The Task Bar is the line at the bottom of the Windows screen. Right-click on a blank area and you get a choice of actions. If you have a program open, there is a tag on the Title Bar with the name of the program. Click on the application tag and you toggle the window on and off.

Don’t forget to check the TVCUC website. There is much new information every month: WWW.TVCUC.ORG .