MS Office now available for iPads + More

Perhaps.. maybe.. iPads might be a little more useful now..

* Microsoft Office for iPad sets the gold standard for tablet productivity

“It took four years, but Microsoft has finally released full-featured Office apps for the iPad. As expected, the new Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps are free to install but require an Office 365 subscription to unlock the full set of features. Here’s what you can expect.” Read more..

But, things ain’t all roses..

* Office for iPad is free, but it’ll cost you

“More and more large software vendors (like Microsoft and Intuit) are making their iPad apps exclusive to subscribers of their SaaS offerings. I don’t like subscription software and it’s a troubling trend.” Read more..

[it is a trend I won’t be buying into, and will not recommend. Remember the Adobe break in? But, yes, the handwriting is on the wall..]

More tech: 10 tech things we didn’t know a week ago

“Behind on the news and hungry for more? Here’s what we learned this week — including the ‘easter eggs’ in early Microsoft code, and how the U.S. will treat Bitcoin.” See slideshow

[the comments are worth a look as well.]

Sunday Beauty a day early:

Click on image to see more by this artist (reco’d)

“Amazing Sky” by Kyrre Gjerstad, courtesy of Flickr Commons

Today’s quote: “What ever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” ~ Napoleon Hill

Copyright 2007-2014 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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All we really have, in the end, are our stories.
Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.
And please, never forget – one person can make a difference.
Find a way to make someone’s day today.
(Best advice I ever heard? Don’t sweat the small stuff.)

How to Add Images and Color to Your Holiday Letters

Word Tricks Makes Letters Merrier (updated for ‘the Ribbon’)

It is the Holiday time of year. (Is it just me, or did 2013 pass-by rather quickly?) Each year at this time, I post this article which demonstrates a few tricks to make your Season’s Greetings letters more joyous, and your documents more visually interesting. Many of you already know the A-B-C basics of manipulating fonts and formatting, and so this will be review.. and loyal readers may remember this one..

Tip of the day: Add some festivity to your documents with fonts and color. MS Word has a lot of features and options built into it that allows for some very creative elements to be added to your correspondence, and is not at all limited to cold, “professional” documents. I’ll use Word for this demo, but you can do this in most text editors, and e-mail programs. Today I’m going to use a hypothetical holiday greeting letter to show how to add some fun. By default, Word sets the font to Calibri at 11 “points” in height. I have typed in my text, to get things started, and will demonstrate using this letter’s “opener”. As it is a header, I have “centered” the text. As you can see, this font and text does not quite convey the joy and cheer and “best wishes” I am hoping to express. In fact, this may as well say, “Memo from Giganti Corp.” Yawn! So first thing I’m going to do is ‘tweak’ the font style, and make some word bigger (louder), to express a less formal tone.  I “highlighted” Season’s Greetings, and used the Font drop-down arrow and selected a cursive font– Lucida Handwriting (explore Word’s various fonts, and find the one you like best). I set the point size to 36. I repeated the process on the second sentence, but set the type smaller.. only 18. I think you’ll agree, this is much more “friendly” than the default’s look. But this is just not Festive enough! Let’s use some color and improve things some more.  I have again “highlighted” season’s greetings to select this font, and then clicked the Font Color button on the Home tab. I then clicked on the little red box in the color-picker. Now season’s greetings is red. I want to alternate letters in green, so I hold down the Ctrl key and use my mouse to “select” every other letter. I didn’t really like the greens available on the color-picker, so I clicked on “More Colors”…. … and selected a green that contrasted nicely with the red– as the box in the lower right corner shows. This is the result of these steps. Much more jolly! But, something’s missing… Let’s add one more thing– a picture of a candy cane. I went on the Internet and found a Royalty-free graphic (though a piece of Clip Art would do just as nicely) and…  Voila! I could ‘go crazy’, and get carried away with adding things here… but I hope you will be able to see by this little demonstration — using only two of Word’s functions — that you are limited only by your own creativity, and that it’s easy to personalize and ’spice up’ your documents. (I should have matched the greens… but ran out of time.. sorry.)

*     *     *

Today’s quote: How ’bout some more Longfellow? “The life of a man consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming dreams, but in active charity and in willing service.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Copyright 2007-2013 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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All we really have, in the end, are our stories. Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

A Word About Word #2 (Some Useful Tricks)

Folks, I have been using Microsoft’s document maker (aka “text editor”, or “word processor”) –  Word – basically since it first came out, back in the Paleozoic Age of computing (circa 1984, or so) so I was pleasantly surprised when I reviewed a Word Tips article where I actually learned something new.

Here it is (you might not know all these either..) Five tips that will increase your Word productivity

“Most of us don’t have time to discover all the ins and outs of the software we use on a daily basis. We learn on the fly, we occasionally pick up a tip or shortcut, and we grudgingly plow through the Help system when we absolutely have to.” Read more..

Also, down at the bottom, there’s: Additional resources

• 10+ lesser-known shortcuts for formatting Word text
• 10+ keyboard shortcuts for entering special characters in a Word document
• 10 things I can never find in Word 2007 (aka “That *dang* Ribbon!)
• The 10 most useful Word shortcuts
• 10 obscure Word tricks that can expedite common chores

And, yes. People still use Office (Word/Excel/Access/PowerPoint/Outlook) and yes, they “own the disc”. (Frankly, I think you always want to have the disc..)

Audience participation: Is anyone out there actually using Toucan for backup/sync? Or.. tried to? I’d appreciate some ‘feedback’, if you’d be so kind.

Today’s quote: “A man’s health can be judged by which he takes two at a time – pills or stairs.” ~ Joan Welsh

Copyright 2007-2013 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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All we really have, in the end, are our stories.
Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

Remove “Metadata” From Your Files Before Sharing Them

Whenever you create, open, or save a file or document, that file will store information — known as metadata — that you had no intention of including or disclosing to others. Taking a conscientious “extra step” can prevent  embarrassment, and also make you a bit more secure. Here’s the “how to”.

Hidden Attributes and Tags Might Reveal More Than You Would Like

You may not be aware that the documents you generate, and the photos you edit on your computer are “stamped” (if you will) with little bits and pieces of information that the computer thinks are useful — called “metadata“. This metadata is not out in plain site for you to notice, but it’s there. Fortunately, it is not difficult to remove.

[note: “Metadata is not necessarily “bad”. Metadata is essentially there to help the computers do their jobs better and faster, and can be helpful to us as well.]

Metadata for a photograph would typically include the date and time at which it was taken and details of the camera settings, such as focal length, aperture, exposure. It would also contain any titles or keyword “tags” we’ve added to help us organize our albums. (If your camera/smartphone has “geotagging”, your location is pinpointed.)

Metadata for a document would typically include the date and time at which it was created, title, author, subject, number of pages, and the language of the text.

But the metadata will also contain the number of revisions, how long you spent working on it, (possibly) hidden markups/edits, who it is “shared” with, who else it’s been sent to, the Save path (which usually reveals your User Name), computer name, and more.

This can open you up to embarrassment (What? They took 4 hours and 16 revisions to write this ??? And why did they show it Joe?) and/or provide info a hacker might use to gain control of your PC.

Tip of the day: Before you e-mail off your file as an attachment, or turn it in to the boss, it might be a good idea to strip it of the metadata. To do this:
1) right-click of the file and select “Properties” from the context menu. In my example, I’ll use a Word document named BarbaraInvoice.doc.

2) Click on the “Details” tab, and look to the bottom area. Click on “Remove Properties and Personal Information”.

3) A new window will open. Here you will see two choices represented by radio buttons. ‘Remove it all’ is the default, but you can be selective by clicking the second button, and using the window scroll, and remove just certain tags.

4) Click “OK”, and the metadata is gone.

Today’s yippee yahoo: 450,000 user passwords leaked in Yahoo breach

“A hacker group claims responsibility for attack on a Yahoo service, exposing more than 450,000 plain text login credentials.” Read more..

If anyone should know better than that, it should be IT Pros, working at a place like Yahoo..? Ya’ think?

One more reason not to Yahoo!

Today’s free link: Amazon’s Game Downloads area lets you try every title – including new releases – before you buy. There are games for all ages and interests.

Today’s free download: Photographers: I believe this small free utility – BatchPurifier Lite– will allow you direct control over exactly which EXIF (metadata) info you want to remove from your image files. (I have not used this myself, but, there you go.)

Germane to nothing at all: in my world/our local slang, a “yahoo” is a happy-go-lucky idjit (aka a “fool”.)

Today’s quote: “All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Copyright 2007-2012 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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All we really have, in the end, are our stories.
Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

Quick Tip – Turn Off Auto Formatting In Word

If you’ve ever created a numbered or bulleted list in Microsoft Word, you know that Word automatically makes formatting changes once it senses a pattern in your list. However, the auto-formatted text can become a real chore to change when you want to begin a sentence with a number or bullet point without beginning a new list, or use your own listing style — then the “helpful” automation seems less than helpful.

Fortunately, you can disable (aka “turn off”) this automatic feature (and turn it back on again, later, should you want it again).

To turn off auto formatting:

In Word 2003,

1. Click the Tools menu, then select AutoCorrect Options.
2. Choose the AutoFormat As You Type tab.
3. Remove the checkmarks from the Automatic Bulleted Lists and Automatic Numbered Lists, and click Apply.

In Word 2007, click the Office button (“File” tab in Word 2010)

1. Click Word Options, and then click Proofing in the list
2. Click the AutoCorrect Options button.
3. Select the AutoFormat As You Type button (tab in 2010).
4. Remove the checkmarks from the Automatic Bulleted Lists and Automatic Numbered Lists, then click OK, and click OK again.

(Optional: you may also want to un-check “Format beginning of list items like the one before it”, if you are using different list formats in your document.)

To “re-enable” the Auto-formatting feature, apply these steps but restore the checkmarks.

Today’s reco(s):

• Putting Registry-/system-cleanup apps to the test

“The most contentious software category has to be PC-system/Registry cleaners. Some users find them invaluable; other users consider them worse than useless.” Read more..

• Firefox updates for security, user add-on control

Mozilla on Tuesday released Firefox 8, the latest iteration of its open-source web browser, which includes a number of new features and defense against seven vulnerabilities.

The more noticeable adjustments to the browser include a search box that accommodates queries across Twitter. In addition, the new version prevents the default installation of plug-ins distributed by third parties, a move that is designed to put more control into the hands of Firefox users.” Read more..

• 30 Incredible Job Sites for Freelance Computer Techs

Are you a tech looking to do some freelance work? Check out this resource (other freelancers may want to look too).

Today’s quote:

Copyright 2007-2011 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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How To Add Images And Color In Your Holiday Letters

Word Tricks Makes Letters Merrier

It is the Holiday time of year. (Is it just me, or did 2010 pass-by rather quickly?) Each year at this time, I post this article which demonstrates some tricks to make your Season’s Greetings letters more joyous, and your documents more visually interesting.

Tip of the day: Add some festivity to your documents with fonts and color. MS Word has a lot of features and options built into it that allows for some very creative elements to be added to your correspondence, and is not at all limited to cold, “professional” documents. I’ll use Word for this demo, but you can do this in most text editors, and e-mail programs.

Today I’m going to use a hypothetical holiday greeting letter to show how to add some fun. By default, Word sets the font to Times New Roman at 12 “points” in height. I have typed in my text, to get things started, and will demonstrate using this letter’s “opener”. As it is a header, I have “centered” the text.

As you can see, this font and text does not quite convey the joy and cheer and “best wishes” I am hoping to express. In fact, this may as well say, “Memo from Giganti Corp.” Yawn! So first thing I’m going to do is ‘tweak’ the font style, and make some word bigger (louder), to express a less formal tone.

I “highlighted” Season’s Greetings, and used the Font drop-down arrow and selected a cursive font– Lucida Handwriting (explore Words various fonts, and find the one you like best). I set the point size to 36. I repeated the process on the second sentence, but set the type smaller.. only 18. I think you’ll agree, this is much more “friendly” than the default’s look. But this is just not Festive enough! Let’s use some color and improve things some more.

I have again “highlighted” season’s greetings to select this font, and then clicked the Font Color button on the Formatting toolbar (If this is not showing, click here to read how to customize your toolbars). I then clicked on the little red box in the color-picker. Now season’s greetings is red. I want to alternate letters in green, so I hold down the Ctrl key and use my mouse to “select” every other letter. I didn’t really like the greens available on the color-picker, so I clicked on “More Colors”….
… and selected a green that contrasted nicely with the red– as the box in the lower right corner shows. This is the result of these steps.

Much more jolly! But, something’s missing…

Let’s add one more thing– a picture of a candy cane. I went on the Internet and found a Royalty-free graphic (though a piece of Clip Art would do just as nicely) and…

Voila!I could ‘go crazy’, and get carried away with adding things here… but I hope you will be able to see by this little demonstration — using only two of Word’s functions — that you are limited only by your own creativity, and that it’s easy to personalize and ’spice up’ your documents.

Copyright 2007-2010 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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Microsoft Office 2010 Technology Guarantee

Buy Office 2007 Today, Get Office 2010 Free

Today I received notice, via Amazon, that for a limited time Microsoft is offering a free upgrade deal. Purchase, install, and activate a qualifying Office 2007 product between March 5, 2010, and September 30, 2010, and you’ll be eligible to download Office 2010 at no additional cost. The Microsoft details page is here.

I noted, also, that Amazon’s price for Home and Student Edition is very competitive, and I was pleased to see that the option to have it on disc was free too. The Amazon page is here.

Some thoughts on Office 2007/2010:
I have been using “the new Office” since the beta of Office 2007, and am currently running the beta of 2010. I find the modest improvements in 2010 quite nice, but since I am not doing a lot of “online collaboration”, nor in a true business environment (no cubicle for me), I am not able to leverage all of its advanced features.

I have no trouble with the “new” Ribbon menu bars, and I love being able to preview, and then apply, formatting ‘dynamically’. But – and this is a pretty big ‘but’ here – longtime users of Office (97 – 2003) do not always find the transition to the new menus so… pleasant. Fortunately, Microsoft provides many aids for easing the transition to the newer way, such as the Office 2010 menu to ribbon reference workbooks. There is a learning curve going from Office 2003/older, yes.

Copyright 2007-2010 © Tech Paul. All Rights Reserved. post to jaanix.

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