Save any document as a PDF file
Saturday, July 24th, 2010 | Author: Brendan

So you are writing a word document, quickbooks invoice, excel document, etc. and you want to save it as a PDF so people will not be able to edit your work and will have an accessible file format.  Unless you have purchased Adobe Acrobat (not Adobe Reader — which is the free one) then you don’t have the option of saving any file as a PDF.  With a free download (another open source piece of software) you can install PDFCreator and you will be making PDFs in no time.

Goto: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

1. Download the file and then follow the steps through the installation process.

2. You will now have the ability to save documents as a pdf as well as it will create a “printer” to make PDFs.

If you go to print a document ( durango pc repair + P) and select the PDFCreator “printer” then it will prompt you where you want to save your PDF file so that you can email or store it.

I hope this helps and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask!

Category: General, Software  | Leave a Comment
Microsoft Word Page Break Tip
Thursday, July 01st, 2010 | Author: Brendan

When using Microsoft Word there are many times where you need to skip to the next page, for references or other reasons.  Instead of pressing “Enter” many times to get to the next page there is a much easier way to enter a page break and skip to the top of the next page.

1. Press “Ctrl” and “Enter” to insert a page break and advance to the top of the next page.

I hope this easy shortcut helps your word processing!

Category: Shortcuts and Tricks, Software  | One Comment
How do I check what programs are using the most resources?
Thursday, June 17th, 2010 | Author: Brendan

So your computer is running slow and your not sure why?  A good place to start is see which applications are using the resources in your computer (CPU or Central Processing Unit / RAM or Random Access Memory).  To do this follow the steps below:

1. Press all three buttons together (“ctrl” + “alt” + “del“) or right click on the start bar on the bottom of the screen and select ” Start Task Manager“.  For Windows 7 or Vista, after pressing “Ctrl” + “Alt” + “Del” you will have to select “Start Task Manager“.

2.  Now you will see the “Task Manager” screen.

3. Click on the tab that says “Processes“.  You will see many columns and the two that are most important for this purpose are “CPU” and “MEMORY“.  (see image below)

4. If you click on either of the tabs (RAM, CPU) it will sort lowest to highest and vice versa.  Order from highest to lowest and see which programs are requiring a lot of resources as their might be an issue with this program.

Note: “System Idle Process” is good, and under the CPU column, System Idle Process should be above 90%.  (That means that 90% is available for any tasks needed.  If it is much lower than that you have too many processes running.

Windows Task Manager

Category: Maintenance, Software  | Leave a Comment
How to Print with a keyboard command
Monday, June 07th, 2010 | Author: Brendan

To save some time… as always it is faster to use keyboard commands instead of removing your hands from the keyboard and using the mouse.

If you need to print a document, webpage, pdf or any other item all you need to do is press “ctrl” and “p” buttons to initiate the print options (see image below).  This will save you several seconds instead of taking your hand off the keyboard to go to the mouse and going to “file” then “print”.

Example:
1. You are browsing the internet and want to print a page

2. Press “ctrl” and “p”

3. You press enter if you don’t need to change any options.

4.  You printed your document without even moving your hands from the keyboard :)

Category: Shortcuts and Tricks  | Leave a Comment
Outlook or Internet Based Email?
Friday, June 04th, 2010 | Author: Brendan

Ok… so in my work I still see too many client using Outlook and Outlook Express.  These options compile a large mail folder (.pst in Outlook .dbx in Outlook Express) on your computer that requires a lot of space on your hard drive first off.

Second, what if you want to check your home email from the office, or while traveling, etc.?  With Outlook you are confined to only check emails from your home computer, if your hard drive fails, all of your personal information (emails & contacts) can be lost.

Why are soo many people still limiting what they can do with their email?  Comfort I guess… but the benefits of using a third party like Google’s Gmail to manage your Pop3 (the kind you would set up in Outlook) email is easy, safe, accessible worldwide, and searchable.

If you set up your email (ex: example@gobrainstorm.net) through an internet based email service, you will still be sending email as example@gobrainstorm.net not the Gmail account you set up, so nothing will change in regards to your email account except for the way you access your emails.

Don’t be so tied to these programs and break free by using a FREE and more convenient option.

How to set up POP3 in gmail, http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Set-Up-a-POP3-Account-in-Gmail .

Take control of you email!

Category: General  | One Comment
Office Software
Thursday, May 27th, 2010 | Author: Brendan

As the release date of Microsoft Office 2010 looms near I want to highlight alternative options for you to consider before purchasing this software.

I am firm believe in open source, free software… and if you haven’t tried Open Office, you might be pleasantly surprised with this free Microsoft Office imitation.  As Microsoft Office continues to change the extensions on their file formats (with Office 2007 added an “x” on the extension so you can’t open it with older versions of office like 2003) to force you to buy their latest software.  If you want to do a little research I would recommend Open Office (http://www.openoffice.org/).

Open Office includes:

Writer (similar to Microsoft Word)

Calc (similar to Microsoft Excel)

Impress (similar to Microsoft PowerPoint)

Base (similar to Microsoft Access)

Draw (similar to Microsoft Visio)

Category: Software  | 2 Comments
Connecting Your Windows 7 PC With An External PC
Sunday, May 16th, 2010 | Author: Brendan

So it could be for a presentation, could be you want to watch Hulu from your computer on your tv, or you are connecting your laptop to an external monitor to have two monitors.

Well with Windows 7, it is very easy to transfer your output to either duplicate your screen, extend your screen (so that you can have two different desktops), or turn off multi-monitor display.

1. Press and hold the durango pc repair key and press “P” and you will see the below image.

2. While holding the durango pc repair key press “P” each time it will change the options for outputting display.

3. If you want to turn off the multimonitor display just press durango pc repair and “P” until the farthest left option is selected and the picture will return to just your main computer.

Try it out… play with it… this is a very convenient way to hook your PC to your TV or external Monitor for multi-tasking.

Category: General, Windows 7  | Leave a Comment
Copy/Paste Shortcuts
Friday, May 14th, 2010 | Author: Brendan

Regardless of your computer experience, there is always a need to copy text from one application and paste into another.  I feel that most of my clients have the experience to highlight the text you want to copy and then they go up to the menu bar and select copy.

But there is an easier way to copy/paste so that you don’t have to take your hands off the keyboard.

1. Highlight the text, web address, picture, or any file that you want to copy and press “Ctrl” and “c” to copy the item.

2. Select the destination where you want to paste the copied item and press “Ctrl” and “v” to paste the item.

That is it!  This seems like a trivial item which will only save you a second or two, but it will simplify the way you copy/paste.  Enjoy.

Category: Shortcuts and Tricks  | Leave a Comment
Outlook Back Up Tool
Tuesday, May 04th, 2010 | Author: Brendan

If you are a Microsoft Outlook user, like many of my clients, your Outlook mail file (.pst file) get extremely large if you do not clear out your email folders on a regular basis.  Many clients I know like to keep their emails for years so they have records, but Outlook begins to run slow and have many error as these files grow.

If you plan to keep old emails what I would recommend is backing up your emails files every few months and then cleaning the files out within Outlook, so you have a record if needed but Outlook continues to run smoothly (or as smooth as possible).

There is an add-on from Microsoft for Outlook, click here for download information, that can make backing up your mail files a breeze.

After you download and install you simply:

1. Open Outlook

2. Select the “File” menu

3. Click “Backup”

4. Select the Folders you want to back up, the location to save them (preferably an external drive), and click “ok“.

5. Once the process has finished verify you have the back up files where you selected to back them up to, then delete the files in Outlook that are not needed.

6.  Right click on “Deleted items” in Outlook and “Empty Deleted Items” to permanently delete these messages and free up space and hopefully eradicate some Outlook errors.

Hopefully that helps you clean up some errors and reduce your overall mailbox (.pst file) size.

Category: Maintenance, Software  | Leave a Comment
How To Select Multiple Files At Once
Friday, April 23rd, 2010 | Author: Brendan

So whether your burning files to a cd, copy/pasting, or any other task that you need to select multiple files it can be time consuming and tedious if you select one file at a time.  This should help for all sorts of tasks where you need to select multiple files and in the past have selected one at a time.

Their are several ways to select multiple files:

If continuous (file 1 – 100 for example):

1. Click on the first file, then hold the “Shift” key and click on the last file.  Every file in between will be selected.

If you want random files but not everything in between:

1. Click on the first file you want, then hold the “Ctrl” key and select the next file, then the next file, and so on.

If you want to select all the files within a folder:

1. Press and hold the “Ctrl” key, then press “A“, and all files will be selected.

Category: Shortcuts and Tricks  | Leave a Comment
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