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May 1996 WinTips

Win95 Tips of the Month

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Perfect Columns

You may already know how to resize columns in Exchange, Find and Explorer (when you select View/Details), but here's a twist you may not know. If you double-click on the border, Windows will automatically resize the column to the narrowest width that will still show all the data in the column.
Mark Robbins via the Internet

Fastest Restart

Restarting Win95 is normally a four-step process (click on the Start button, select Shut Down, click on the "Restart the computer?" button and then click on OK). You can make it a one-step process by creating an icon on your desktop that restarts Win95. Open Notepad and type @exit. Close the document and give it a name with a .BAT extension. Now stash the file somewhere on your hard disk. Create a shortcut to the file by using the right mouse button to drag it to the Desktop and then selecting Create Shortcut(s) Here. Right-click on the shortcut and select Properties. Click on the Program tab and select the Close on Exit box. Now click on the Advanced button and make sure "MS-DOS mode" is selected and "Warn before entering MS-DOS mode" is not selected. Click on the OK button twice. Give your new shortcut a unique icon and name. From now on, whenever you double-click on the icon, Win95 will restart, no questions asked.

The Name of The Bin

You could change the name of everything on your Desktop except the Recycle Bin-until now. Launch the Registry Editor by selecting Run from the Start menu, typing REGEDIT in the Run dialog and clicking on the OK button. Drill down the following path: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, CLSID, {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E} and change the Default value from "Recycle Bin" to the name of your choice.

Trash the Recycle Bin

If you don't use the Recycle Bin, here's how to kill it. Launch the Registry Editor. Click on the plus signs to drill down the following path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SOFTWARE, Microsoft, Windows, CurrentVersion, explorer, Desktop, NameSpace. Click on each of the strings of characters in this folder until you see "Recycle Bin" in the right pane. Say good-bye to the Recycle Bin, then hit the Delete key.

Get Personal

Here's a quick way to add addresses to your Personal Address Book in Exchange: When you get a message, right-click on the address in theFrom: field and select Add to Personal Address Book.
Dilsad U. Simons via the Internet

Don't Overextend Your Files

If you create a new file in WordPad or Notepad and save it, these applets add a .TXT extension whether or not you've added an extension yourself. You can end up with weird filenames like REPORT.TXT.TXT.
To thwart this extra extension, put quotation marks around your filename ("REPORT.TXT") in the Save As dialog.

Running with The Pack

If you haven't already done so, download the free Win95 Service Pack 1 from Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/software/servpak1/sphome.htm). The Service Pack, posted in late February, contains bug fixes, new device drivers and other goodies that bring your copy of Win95 fully up-to-date.

Quick-Launch Web Browsing

Here's how to turn the Run command dialog into a neat Web launching pad. Create a batch file called GO.BAT with the following line: start http://www.%1.com and put it in your WINDOWS folder. Now, whenever you want to go to a Web site, simply bring up the Run box from the Start menu, type GO <name of site> and hit the Enter key. For example, if you want to go to the WINDOWS Magazine Web site, just type GO WINMAG.

Visit the Win95 Tip of the Day Web site at http://www.winmag.com/win95/m1.htm. Got a hot tip? Send it to melgan@cmp.com or Mike Elgan, Windows Magazine, One Jericho Plaza, Jericho, NY 11753.

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