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FAQS!
FACTS! FAX! 226 (24/08/00)
OFF YOUR TROLLEY
Every day at 11.00am the sandwich trolley arrives in
reception and our receptionist sends out an e-mail to a number of distribution
lists, which alerts everyone to the fact that it's here. Our receptionist would
like to send out an e-mail with the subject line already filled in (so she
doesn't have to type it in every time). The e-mail only has "The sandwich
trolley is here!" as the subject and no text in the body of the message.
Can some sort of template be set up to do this?
Jim
Thompson
What a frivolous and wasteful use of company resources,
you should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself! It’s no wonder our mailboxes are
cluttered with trivia… However, since we are unable to resist a challenge and
on the understanding that this trick is only used for serious applications, try
this. Assuming that you are using Outlook Express or Outlook, create the e-mail
in the usual way – filling in the recipients and Subject fields -- then click
Send to put it into the Outbox. Next, working off-line, drag the e-mail icon
from the Outbox onto the desktop and Windows will automatically create a
shortcut to it. To send it click on the shortcut select Forward, then Send and
away it goes.
A
KIND OF CUT
Is
there a device to insert a dotted line ‘cut here’ with scissors symbol for use
in Word?
Peter
Ashlin
You’ll find some open scissor symbols in the Wingdings
font (Insert > Symbol) just add some dots or dashes and you have a neat
looking ‘cut-line’.
JOHNNY,
WHERE ARE YOU?
I too used to have the Johnny Castaway screensaver
(F!F!F! August 10th) on my work PC until they removed it because
apparently it used up too much memory! However, I have tried to find
Castaway's home page that you recommended, and I got the message that
"This page cannot be found". Have you any other suggestions?
Roy Foster
A typographical gremlin zapped a tilde in the
address published, it should have read: http://www.personal.u-net.com
/~newdawn/johnny/home.html,
it can also be obtained from:
http://www.newdawn.u-net.com
/johnny/home.html
EASIER
OPENING
With reference to Neil Campbell’s request for a way
to view documents created in Word 97 in Word 6 (F!F!F! August 10th).
I had the same problem and there is a better solution. If you go to http://officeupdate.microsoft.com
/downloadDetails/wd97cnv.htm you
can download a plug-in document converter (WRD97CNV.exe) that means you can
read Word 97 and Word 2000 with Word 6/Word 95 and there’s no need to mess
about with copying and pasting. I have used it for a couple of months now
with no problems. I am currently seeking the same type of program to use with
Excel any suggestions would be welcome.
John Cane
There
is an easier way of manipulating Word 97 documents - open them with WordPad, which comes with Windows. It will open Word 2000 documents, which have
the same archive schema as Word 97. You might find that very fancy formatting
gets screwed when you open a Word 2000 document, just as Word 97 does. You then
have a limited selection of "save as". RTF is supported, as is Word
6.0 format. You may want to select View>Options and check "Wrap to
ruler" for your selected output format.
Tony Etheridge
Thanks to everyone who wrote in with alternative suggestions and if anyone can
help John Cane track down a Excel converter we’ll pass it on. We also heard from several readers saying
they couldn’t find any mention of the Word Viewer program on the September PC
Direct cover mount CD-ROM. It is there – at least on all the copies we’ve seen
– it’s not listed in the magazine or on the front of the disc but you will find
it in a folder called Essential Utilities.
LOSE THOSE LINES
Andrew Johnston (F!F!F! 10th August) is seeking a
way to hide the shadow outlines of his tables - presumably so that people reading
his CV as a Word document can't see that he's written it using one or more
tables. Many employers would be thrilled to find a prospective employee who had
discovered that Word could do tables - far too many assume that you can only
create tables in Excel!
One solution open to the determined outline-remover
is the one used by Secretaries in the days of typewriters (i.e. when they had
to do tables the hard way), and that's to use Tabs. The other option available
if only two columns (or three if you're prepared to cheat a bit) is to use
Format/paragraph and then use the Special setting on Indentation to set Hanging
to a distance equal to the width of the first column.
Bill Welland
As someone who manages a
recruitment consultancy, I would advise Andrew Johnston not to use Tables in
Word, if he's sending these to companies like mine. We take the original
CV's from e-mail attachments and then cut and past them into a standard
"house" format, which we then send to prospective employers, as these
standardised CV's have consistency of layout, information etc. Cutting
and pasting from Tables is a pain in the a***, and it's often quicker to get
them retyped. So my advice, is to stick to simple headings and layouts
using indents, bullet points etc....but NOT tables.
Dick Donovan
In response
to the question from Andrew Johnston, he could try using Hotsend, available
free from www.hotsend.com. This enables attachments to be sent and
read by any recipient, even if they do not have the software to read it.
It would not show any table lines, as the program is rather like sending a fax
as an e-mail attachment.
Mervyn Wells
The easiest way to make table
lines disappear is to highlight the table, then go to Format, Borders & Shading
and change the colour to white. The lines are not visible and the effect stays
after e-mailing.
Marjorie
MacVicar
A simple solution to your
reader’s problem is to create a PDF (portable document format) version of their
CV. If the user selects no borders for his table and prints the document
to Acrobat PDF then there will be no lines on his table in the PDF version, and
the formatting will remain the same. In addition the file size will be
smaller for transmission over the internet. If the reader doesn't have Adobe
Acrobat then goto www.tucows.com,
I believe there is a free PDF maker there.
Colin Lamont
Some
ingenious solutions; thanks to everyone who wrote in. In spite of Bill
Welland’s obvious admiration for anyone that knows how to use Word’s table
facility quite a few readers and recruitment professionals pointed out that
simpler methods were usually preferable, especially when sending CVs by e-mail.
STICKY ISSUE
With
regard to John Wright and his Luddite business partner (F!F!F! August 10th),
there is a simpler and more permanent solution to the problem of people
tampering with settings on their computer. Use “Percussive
Persuasion”. Simply beat the offending person with a stout stick each time. The
would-be tamperer will soon learn that interfering with the configuration of
their machine is a painful experience and desist from doing so. If you do not
have a stout stick to hand, a suitably thick walking stick can also be used.
Simon Hawkes
Er.., thanks, we’ll bear it in mind.
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