FAQS! FACTS! FAX!  288 (08/11/01)

Q

My time display has decided to show 't' instead of AM after the time. The PM display is not affected. I have tried to change the display but the 't' is immovable!

William Cross, Oakham, Rutland

A

Windows has an obscure facility that lets you add text to the clock display in the taskbar, and it may be that is what you have inadvertently done. Go to Control Panel, open Regional Settings and click the Time tab. The two boxes 'AM Symbol' and 'PM Symbol' are editable, in other words, whatever you type in those boxes (up to 8 characters) will be displayed, providing the Time Style is set to hh:mm:ss tt or h:mm:ss tt, and there's enough room on the Taskbar to display it. Go ahead, personalise your clock?

Q

My Word 2000 cannot print or even print preview a text box or clipart insertion. I use the Inset menu. The graphics come up when composing on screen OK. Then, when I call up 'Print Preview' the graphic disappears.

D. Curtis

A

My guess is that you are either in the wrong 'View' – change to 'Print Layout' on the View menu -- or the option to print Drawing Objects has been disabled. You can find this by going to Options on the Tools menu, select the Print tab and look under 'Include With Documents'. Incidentally, if you are unfamiliar with the way Word handles text and various kinds of 'Objects' (pictures, graphics, boxes etc.) and the principle of 'layers' – and this is not very well explained in Word Help or most tutorials -- there's a useful article in the Microsoft Knowledgebase at:

http://support.microsoft.com/

support/kb/articles/q167/7/38.asp

Q

I have a top-level folder called 'My Work' in drive C. Below this I keep all other folders. I have one folder called LettersCV, within this I have a CV folder. When I go to open a file in my LettersCV folder or try to open a file in CV (i.e. CVs I have written) I get following error message:

Word Encountered File Corruption While Opening " c:\work\letters\cv\specusol.doc." part of this document may be recoverable. Attempt recovery now?' Then another message: WinWord An error has occurred in your program. To keep working anyway click ignore and save your work in a new file. To quit this program click close'.

It does not matter which option I choose - I cannot open any of the files in the above mentioned folder. I have other folders, e.g. Excel spreadsheet and other Word documents (i.e. other letters in My Work folder) and these open fine. New Word documents are okay too.

Rakesh Shah

A

Corrupt Word files can be a real pain but fortunately Word 97 and 2000 comes with a little known text extraction utility that actually works on any file or document containing text, even if it wasn't created by Word. To set it to work on your dodgy CV in Word click the Open dialogue box, go down to the Files of Type drop-down menu and look for the item 'Recover Text File from Any File', select your CV document then click Open and the text it contains should be displayed. Needless to say any special formatting etc. will be lost but that's probably a small price to pay. If the Recover Text option isn't there pop in your Word installation disc, run Setup and it should start in maintenance mode, click Add/Remove, select Converters and Filters and you should find it under Text Converters.

Q

In F!F!F! October 25th you showed how to zap the drop-down list of previously visited addresses recorded in Internet Explorer. You would be doing a great service if you would repeat the format for doing the same with Netscape Navigator.
Bob Sandford

A

It's actually a lot easier since Netscape only stores the last 10 or 15 addresses typed into the 'Location' box, so if you just enter some new addresses the old ones will drop off the bottom of the list. There is a Registry hack that can get rid of them en-masse but it's not for novices. Full details of how to do it, and 'cleaning' instructions for all versions of Netscape can be found at: http://help.netscape.com/kb/consumer/19961024-3.html

Q

I have tried removing unwanted addresses in Internet Explorer as per your method from Start in the opening Windows page, both with Internet Explorer opened and unopened.  In both cases the Clear button under Documents Menu is "greyed-out" and inoperative.  Can you help please?

Jonathan Bacon

A

The greyed out button is a mystery but I do have a another way to get at those addresses and that’s to use our old friend Tweak UI, which has a very useful facility called 'Paranoia' that – amongst many other things – that can eradicate all kinds of 'history' lists tucked away inside Windows. Tweak UI is part of the Powertoys suite, an unsupported set of tools developed by Microsoft for configuring the Windows 'User Interface', without having to mess around with the Registry. It's available free from the Microsoft web site (address below) and incidentally, despite what it says, the Windows 95 version works fine in Windows 98. More recent versions can often be found on computer magazine cover discs. 

http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/ downloads/contents/WUToys/W95PwrToysSet/Default.asp

Q
I have written a little program which may assist Peter Allison and his blind client (F!F!F! October 25th). It is intended as a simple internet timer utility, timing the amount of telephone usage made in each day (and total each month) displaying this in large red figures automatically when the internet connection becomes active and hiding itself when the connection is dropped. Once run the first time, it should automatically start each time Windows is started.

However of most use to Peter Allison is the fact that when a connection is actually made, a bleep will be sounded by the PC speaker, and as the connection is dropped a further bleep will be sounded. Not only that but an alarm can be set to sound every 1, 5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes a connection remains active, this way should you accidentally leave the connection open, the alarm will sound on every anniversary of the interval until such time as the connection is deactivated. The program is freeware, and is a 210k download. It can be found at: www.markstevenson.nildram.co.uk/iclock.htm
Mark Stevenson 

Surely the nicest way to know when you are 'on' or 'off' the Internet is to hear the dulcet tones of Joanna Lumley saying "Welcome to AOL" and "Goodbye".
John M

A

Excellent, many thanks for those suggestions.

Q

Whenever I open Word it appears in the grey bar at the bottom of the screen which I then have to click and hit maximise. By contrast, when I click on Excel it starts immediately. How can I make Word start immediately?
Stephen Robertson

A

It sounds as though Word has been set to start 'Minimised'. This option can be found by right-clicking the Word shortcut on your desktop and selecting Properties. Select the Shortcut tab and in the 'Run' drop down menu click 'Normal Window' then OK.