How-To Geek

AutoRecover is a Microsoft Office feature that will keep you from losing work in the event of a system crash or power outage by automatically saving your document at certain time intervals.

The Ribbon feature in Microsoft Office 2007 is full of features that make it easier to navigate through options, but it takes up a lot of space. If you think the Ribbon is too big, you can put it into a pseudo “auto-hide” mode and still retain all the functionality, but with a much smaller footprint.

Adding your contact information as a Signature to your emails is very useful in a corporate environment, but also for personal emails as well.  You can add a signature the same way as you would in 2003, but you can also use The Ribbon as a new way to add your signature.

How many times have you had a Microsoft Office application crash or lock up your system? The worst culprits seem to be Outlook and Access for me.

Do you wish the IE7 Menu bar was located where it was in IE6?  Here is how to quickly create a registry fix to move it back to the top.

Setting a manual exception for a certain program.

If you are annoyed with Windows popping up a balloon notification telling you things you already know every time you turn on your machine, here is a quick tip on completely disabling them.  (Note this requires a registry modification so be sure to back up your registry before making any changes.)

Google has just released a new experimental search that lets you navigate through search results using the same shortcut keys as Gmail and Google Reader. The problem is that Firefox’s default search box doesn’t default to it.

Microsoft’s SQL Server has a tool called Profiler that you can use to monitor every SQL query that hits the database. This is extremely useful for programmers as well as database administrators to troubleshoot the exact queries generated by an application.

In the corporate environment, Excel is king. So when you have an Access database report that you would really prefer to analyze in Excel spreadsheet form, there’s an easy way to convert it.

Microsoft Access is used within many businesses to store and access information. You can also create a simple report easily using the Report Wizard.

Everybody loves Gmail, but some people use a desktop client, especially in corporate environments where Outlook is king. Adding your Gmail account to Outlook 2007 couldn’t be easier.

You can use Mail Merge in Word 2003 to create mailing labels for a database full of customers. 

The Microsoft Office 2007 color scheme certainly fits in Windows Vista, but fortunately for those of us unhappy with so much light blue, the color scheme can be changed.

Every Geek uses Gmail… it’s pretty much required. And now you can set Gmail as the default client in Ubuntu without any extra software. (Windows requires the Gmail notifier be installed)

When you know you are going to be out of the office for a few days, you can set up the Out of Office Assistant to reply automatically, letting people know that you are enjoying your vacation while they are stuck at work. You can also add rules to forward messages based on different criteria.

Automatic Updates is a great feature. Your computer stays protected from threats without worrying about it… but if it’s 3am and I’m trying to play a video game, the last thing I want is for the automatic updates to pop up and remind me every 5 minutes that I need to reboot, interrupting my game… Drives me crazy!

If you’ve tried to use the built-in “Extract Here” functionality in Ubuntu’s File Roller to extract either a single or a multi-part zip or rar file and ended up with a “Password required” error, then you might just assume the files are password protected when in fact they are not.

If you encounter this error message as often as I do, you will thank your various gods for this extension, which allows you to hide the warning message on a per site basis, for both Firefox as well as Thunderbird.

Did you know that you can run more than one Firefox profile at once? This can be extremely useful if you want to test out extensions more easily, create a web development profile, run a slimmed down profile just for Gmail, or if you just want to have a clean profile.

If you are concerned with video game performance, or you are trying to fix some problems with any 3D application, you can ensure DirectX 9 on XP is running at peak efficiency by running a diagnostic. 

Changing this in XP was extremely simple, but in Windows 7 or Vista it’s buried behind a few more menus. Here are three routes you can take to open up System Properties:

The System Restore feature in Windows Vista is very important to keep enabled, what with all the problems Vista users are having with compatibility. Even so, the disk usage can get out of hand if you install a large amount of software.

For those times when Windows completely freezes and you can’t even open the start menu, you can also restart your computer from Task Manager instead of just powering the machine off.

Ubuntu has an option for adding a Trash Can icon to the desktop, which might be a comfort for those of you migrating from Windows.