MS Word - Adjusting a Form Template

Just got back to having computer access and received a call from my wife. A form I had made up for her, using Microsoft Word 2003, needed to be adjusted for some new product and she had ten orders to type up and run on the dot matrix printer with the new information.

The problem was that she nows very little about how to use Microsoft Word and needed it down right away to keep from having to do everything by hand.

Luckily, I was able to walk her through sending me a copy of the DOT (Word Document Template (Microsoft)) file, via email. Once I saved that DOT file to my hard drive, I was able to open it, adjust it and email it back to her.

To make the adjustments in MS Word 2003, I did the following:

• Right clicked on the DOT file.


• Selected Open from the drop down menu. (If you just double click a DOT file to open it, you will get a new blank document instead of opening the DOT itself.)


• Made the Forms Toolbar visible:




• View on the MS Word menu bar


• Select Toolbars


• Click on Forms





• Clicked on the Protect Forms icon, it looks like a little padlock, to unlock the form.


• Replaced three text items with Text Form Fields, with the same formatting as the replaced text; also changed text in another area, but straight text not a Text Form Field.


• Clicked on the Protect Forms icon again to lock the form again.


• Hid the Forms Toolbar again.




• View on the MS Word menu bar


• Select Toolbars


• Click on Forms




• Saved the DOT file with a new name, reflecting today's date and the new function.

Once the form was adjusted, I emailed her the new DOT file and walked her through how to save it in a folder in My Documents containing forms of the same type and then walked her through creating a shortcut for this one to the desktop.

The whole process took about a half hour and saved a lot of work on her part. Now she just needs to double click on the shortcut item, fill in the information that changes, print the multi-part form on the dot matrix printer, sign it and move on to the next order of business.

She has some other forms, that are not multi-part, but those I have done for her in PDF (Acrobat Portable Document Format) and have to do those differently as you must have the complete Acrobat application to create or adjust them.

If you have special forms or are interested in forms, leave a comment and let me know how you handle problems.

As Thursday is Thanksgiving Day, there will be no posting. I will be spending time with my family, as we all should, and will post Friday this week instead.

Have a great Thanksgiving!!

XP - My Computer Speed Up

Our office has been moved to a new
building, and in the process of getting all the computers setup for
the network and various printers, co-workers noticed that when I open
up the My Computer folder on my machine it loads very quickly
compared to theirs.

Once our IT people had left, after
getting everybody connected to the appropriate network modules and
printers, I showed those interested how I had gotten mine to speed
up; here is how I did it.

• Open Windows Explorer.

  
  

• Select My Computer.

  
  

• Click on Tools, in the menu bar.

  
  

• Select Folder Options from the
  drop down menu.

  
  

• Select the View tab.

  
  

• Uncheck the box in front of
  “Automatically search for network folders and printers”.

  
  

• Click OK.

  
  

Now the My Computer folders should
display more quickly.

*************************************

Note:

Due to the move and a similar operation
at my home base, this will be the final posting to this blog, until
Tuesday, November 21, 2006. I will be unable to do any updates until
then.

Please use the comments to leave me any
suggestions or questions, you might have and I will get back to
posting as soon as possible.

Firefox Add On - Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer 0.84

I use Firefox 2.0 on my desktop and the BPCA laptop, as well as Firefox Portable 1.5.0.8 on a USB Drive. Getting my bookmarks and RSS feeds synchronized manually was very tedious and error prone.

When I upgraded the other day to 2.0, one of the recommended add ons was the Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer, so I thought OK give it a try.

I made back ups of the various profiles, as I always do in case of a foul up and then installed the Foxmarks extension, available at https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2410/, and ran the setup on each of the computers and the USB drive. Now I have the same bookmarks on each of my devices.

Part of the setup includes getting a free account at http://foxmarks.com/, where all your bookmarks are stored. Also, you can access your bookmarks from that site, using the user name and password created during setup, from anywhere, yes even using IE provided Javascript is enabled.

More in depth information is available through the Foxmarks FAQ: http://www.foxcloud.com/wiki/Foxmarks:_Frequently_Asked_Questions#Help.21_Something_strange_happened_to_my_bookmarks._What_do_I_do.3F.

I find this to be a very useful Firefox add on, making my collection of bookmarks available no matter where I am accessing the Internet from.

What are your favorite Firefox add ons?

Open Source - Firefox 2.0

Well I finally downloaded Firefox 2.0 and installed it.

Just for my own reference, I backed up my whole PC and then just doubled clicked the Firefox Setup 2.0.exe file and ran the installer. I did not remove my 1.5.0.7 version or any of its components first.

The installer ran in less than a minute and when Firefox started up I found that everything worked must faster, and that my installed extensions (now called add ons) worked with no problems.

In regards to add ons, I particularly like that Firefox now restarts itself, with my permission of course, and then immediately I have access to the add on. This is much simpler and quicker than the previous versions.

All of my bookmarks and prior settings seem to have come out OK. If upon further use, any problems turn up, I will let you know about them through this blog.

All in all, I am quite impressed with the improvements I have seen so far.

I can not compare this to the new Internet Explorer 7, as I have not yet installed or tried it. I very seldom, need to use IE anymore for anything and do not even have it at work yet.

For right now, I think that I will stay with my current Firefox Portable 1.5.0.7, as 2.0 is only in release candidate stages at this time, but when Firefox Portable 2.0 is put out as a full version I intend to switch over to that also.

Let me know about your experiences with Firefox 2.0, good or bad, by leaving a comment to this post.

Interesting Blog - Daily Cup of Tech

I ran across this interesting blog recently and am adding to my Blog Roll.

Daily Cup of Tech

This blog by Tim Fehlman, contains a lot of useful technical information. What really caught my interest was his 31OCT06 posting Build a USB Drive Mail System, in which he gives detailed instructions of how to set up a totally portable email system on a USB drive, using free software.

I have been using Thunderbird Portable and earlier versions for quite some time now, but have a 256MB USB drive that I am going to set up this way, so that all I have to do is plug it in and take care of my email when away from home.

This fits in very nicely with the presentations "5 Things You Can Do With a Portable USB Drive" and "Portable Applications" given at the 17OCT06 BPCA meeting.

Tim is a self professed "USB drive nut" and many of his postings are regarding USB drives.

Check it out for yourself, and let me know how you like it.