Ask Ask Mr. Modem! – March 2009     
www.MrModem.com   


Use AutoCorrect to Automate Word  

Q.  Every time I open a program on my XP computer, it is listed in the lower left-hand section of the Start Menu. How can I keep that from happening? It’s easy to delete, but I would rather it didn’t appear in the first place.

A.  As is frequently the case, one person’s “feature” is another person’s “annoyance.” What you describe is considered a feature of Windows XP that makes it easy for you to return to recently used programs. You can, however, disable it by right-clicking a blank spot on your Taskbar, then selecting Properties. In the “Taskbar and Start Menu Properties" window, click the Start Menu tab > Customize... button > General tab.

Near the center you will see the Programs section and a box in which you can adjust the number of programs that appear on the Start Menu. Click the down arrow until the number is zero to prevent any programs from being displayed. Click OK > OK to save your changes and exit.


Q.  First, I would like to thank you for writing your weekly newsletter. It’s excellent and I never fail to learn something every week. Okay, now to business: Is it possible to have Microsoft Word automatically capitalize the first letter that appears after a colon?

A. Word does not have the ability to do that on its own, but with a little fancy keyboarding, you can create a work-around to perform that task. What you need to do is set up an AutoCorrect entry to replace any occurrence of a colon, with a colon-period combination.

Then, as you are typing, when you type a colon followed by a space, Word will automatically change it to a colon followed by a period and a space. Word's AutoCorrect feature, thinking that the next letter, after the space, is the first letter of a sentence, will capitalize it. When you have completed your document, perform one quick Find and Replace (CTRL + F) to change the colon-period combo back to a colon.

While I’m all for automation, sometimes it’s just as easy to do things the old-fashioned way, so I’d tend to manually capitalize a word, unless it was something that came up frequently. I figure if it was good enough for my old Smith Corona, it’s good enough for my high-falooting computing.  


Q.  When I try to create a Desktop shortcut to a Web site, it says one already exists, but I can’t see it. Do you have any suggestions, Mr. M?

A. You can view a list of all the items on your Desktop by clicking Start > Run, type “desktop” (without the quotes) and click OK. As an alternative, right-click a blank area of the Desktop and select Arrange Icons By > Auto Arrange. All icons will snap to a pre-configured grid pattern, revealing any icons that might have slithered out of view. If you’re using Windows Vista, right-click a blank area of the Desktop and select View to get to your Auto Arrange options. Regardless of the method deployed, you will then be able to see any existing shortcuts.


Mr. Modem’s DME (Don’t Miss ‘Em) Sites of the Month

Guess the Show Name
This is a goofy-yet-quasi-entertaining site in which your task is to think of the name of a TV show or movie, then answer a series of “Yes” or “No” questions. The ultimate objective is for the site to guess the name of the show or movie that you have in mind.
www.guessthename.com

How Stuff Works
Have you ever wondered if flour can explode, or how a car’s differential works, or what makes your refrigerator cold? Me neither, but this is a fun site that’s chock full of information. Did you ever wonder what the derivation of “chock full” is? Theories abound, though one popular theory suggests that “chock" relates to the word “choke” and that the phrase derives from "choke full," or "full to the point of choking." (Who would have thought this column would be educational, too?)
www.howstuffworks.com

Recipe Converter
If you have a favorite recipe that serves six or eight people, and you want to scale it up or down to serve one or two or ten or 20, the Recipe Converter will get the job done. Simply fill out the online form by entering your conversion factor, such as .5 to cut a recipe in half, or 1.5 to multiply it by one-and-a-half, and the ingredients. After revamping your recipe, if you want to save the results, either print the page or click File > Save As to save it to your hard drive or other location.  
http://tinyurl.com/e3jwk

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