2,001 Tips
Tips from the Top
Take the Express Route to Productivity

-- by Fred Langa, Editorial Director, Start columnist

Information @ Your Fingertips You probably already know how to create a shortcut to a document. Here's how to create a shortcut to a specific place in a document. Make sure you can see the desktop from the open document, then simply drag and drop any part of the document (say, a sentence in a word processing document or a range of cells in a spreadsheet) to the desktop using the right mouse button. When you let go, choose Create Document Shortcut Here and close the document. The next time you want to open the document to that place, double-click on the new shortcut. This will launch the document and take you right to the selected text, which will be highlighted.

Letter-Perfect Selection In any open folder, type the first letter of the name of the file you want to select, and you'll go right to the first file in the folder that begins with that letter. Type the letter again, and you'll go to the next file and so on. When you press Enter, that file will open.

Too Many Modems? After you install a new modem, sometimes one or more incorrect modems appear in Control Panel's Modems item. Just remove the modem(s) from the list and restart Windows. If Windows doesn't tell you it detected new hardware, go back into Control Panel and double-click on Add New Hardware. Follow the instructions and have Windows search for the hardware. When the search is complete, click on Details and see if it detected the right modem. If not, correct it.

Whither Welcome Screen? When you first installed Win95, a Welcome Screen popped up, offering tips, a guided Win95 tour and a few other things. If you deselected the "Show this Welcome Screen next time you start Windows" option, you haven't seen it since. To get it back, simply call up the Run dialog (Start/Run), type welcome and click on the OK button.

Recycle Bin Warning The Win95 Recycle Bin can give you a false sense of security. You know you can retrieve items you move there, so you feel comfortable dumping stuff in there without a second thought. But beware! Items from other drives (say, the network or floppy disk drives) you place in the Recycle Bin are permanently and instantly deleted, not stored.

Don't Overextend Your Files If you create a new file in WordPad or Notepad and save it, these applets add a TXT extension regardless of whether you add an extension yourself. You can end up with filenames like REPORT.TXT.TXT. To prevent them from adding the extension, simply put quotation marks around your filename ("REPORT.TXT") in the SaveAs dialog. Do the same in Word if you've chosen an extension other than DOC.

Fastest Restart Restarting Win95 is a four-step process (Click on the Start button, select Shut Down, click on Restart the Computer, 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 away somewhere on your hard disk. Create a shortcut to the file by using the right mouse button to drag it to the desktop, and 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. Click on the OK button and on the OK button again. Give your new shortcut a unique icon and name. Now, whenever you double-click on the icon, Win95 will restart, no questions asked.

Encircle 'em with Squares You can select icons or folders on the desktop or within folders in large numbers by clicking outside the body of icons, pressing and holding the left mouse button, dragging the pointer so that the square surrounds all the icons you want to select, then letting go. Once they're all selected, you can move, copy or delete them en masse.

Turbocharge your Start Menu To launch folders quickly, open My Computer and find the programs you use most. Drag and drop the executables onto the Start button. That will put all your most frequently used programs right on the Start menu.

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