FAQS! FACTS! FAX!  475 (19/07/05)

Q

In Mozilla Thunderbird is there a way of sorting and printing out the Address Book? The ‘Print’ function seems to choose its own order for entries, even when they have been viewed and sorted! Is there a way of formatting the printout to get complete contact entries on the page, and not have them overflow from one page to the next?

Sidney Whitaker, via email

A

The short answer is no, at least not that I am aware of. The print facilities in Thunderbird are quite rudimentary, however you can easily ‘Export’ the Address Book as a CSV (comma separated value) text file, open it Word or WordPad and then edit and format it to your heart's content.

Q

My Epson Stylus printer has broken down irretrievably after only four years fairly light use, so now I have had to buy a new printer (not Epson). On attempting to uninstall the old printer from Windows XP Professional, I receive the message ‘No printer or utility can be deleted’.

Epson is still listed in Add/Remove Programs but it is shown as having zero bytes. There has also been no change in my unused space (85%) on defragmenting, when surely it should have decreased a bit? My question therefore: have I actually removed the printer or not?

Andrew Sheppard, Dublin

A

My guess is you have, printer driver and utility files are usually quite small so it would happen very quickly and you may not have noticed the confirmation dialogue box. For the same reason I wouldn’t expect to see any significant change in disc usage before or after printer installation, especially on a multi-gigabyte hard drive. However, before you install your new printer just make sure that there are no shortcuts to your old printer in Printers & Faxes on the Start menu. On a more general note uninstall programs rarely remove every last trace of an application. Its not unusual for them to leave behind a folder containing log or configuration files, in case the program is re-installed. If you come across any old Epson folders open them up and if they are empty or the files just contain plain text then they can be safely deleted. Though as usual refrain from emptying the Recycle Bin for a few days, just in case…

Q

My PC runs Windows ME and the hard disk is partitioned with 7Gb on the C: drive and 23Gb on D:. My problem is that the C: drive is virtually full, whilst D: is almost empty. How can one who is barely computer literate move the program files from C: to D: without cocking up the system?

Peter Evans, via email

A

Moving program folders from one drive to another doesn’t work because the program will no longer be recognised by Windows. The safest thing to do is backup the data created by the programs you want to move and copy the folders to the D: drive. You can then uninstall the programs, one at a time, and re-install them on the D: drive. You will normally be given the opportunity to specify which drive a program is loaded on during the early stages of installation and there should be an option within the program’s Tools menu to point it towards the folders containing the data.

Q

I have valuable family information, collected over many years, created by an old DOS program called ‘Pipedream’. These are stored on a split drive in my Windows 98 computer. I have now got a new computer with Windows XP Home.  Is there any way I can transfer this DOS based information, stored on standard floppies, to Windows XP so that I can email to relatives abroad?

Leonard Dickson, Barton on Sea, Hants

A

There’s no reason why you cannot copy the files from the floppies directly into a newly created folder on your XP machine and from there email them as attachments. Incidentally, although DOS isn’t included with Windows XP you can still start your computer in MS-DOS mode by booting from a Windows 98 Startup disc so if you still have the original Pipedream program try loading it, you might find that it still works.

Q

A few months ago I upgraded to a Windows XP SP2 powered computer. After loading in my software programs, Photoshop, PageMaker, AutoCAD etc, I wanted the shortcuts on the desktop. This I went about in the normal manner, however, I ended up with two icons for each program. If I click on either one the software launches but if I delete one, the remaining one does nothing other than bring up a message saying that it cannot be deleted. Can you offer a reason and ideally an answer?

G. Webster, via email

A

I am not sure why you chose to manually create desktop shortcuts since most if not all of the programs mentioned will automatically create one (or give you the option to do so) during installation. If you can’t delete a desktop shortcut by right-clicking on it or dragging it to the Recycle Bin you should be able to zap it from within Windows Explorer by going to C:\Documents and Settings\<yourname>\Desktop. Once you’ve got rid of the non-working shortcuts you can create new ones manually by opening the program folder, right-click on the ‘.exe’ Application file and select Send To > Desktop (Create Shortcut).