You get Office, you install it and start using it well that's what Microsoft would like you to believe. Out here in the real world there always some customizations that you'll want to do before starting work.
The real Word mavens will have their own templates, toolbars, macros and such but today we'll look at the simpler things that everyone should consider. We'll focus on MS Word, but many of them also apply to other Office components.
Most of changes you'll make are in the Tools | Options menu.
Most Recently Used list
The list of recently used files at the bottom of the File menu defaults, inexplicably to just 4 documents. It's been that way for many years and it's the first thing I change. Murphy's Law says that the document you want will be just off the bottom of the list. Under Tools | Options | General change the 'Recently used file' counter to the maximum of 9.
Measurement Units
You get the choice of Inches, Centimeters, Millimeters, Points and Pixels. For me Word always seems to revert to Imperial measurements even though my regional settings should switch it to metric. It doesn't matter which one you prefer, just check Tools | Options | General to see if it's set to the units you want.
View options
This change is a bit controversial and every time we mention it I get a pile of contrary opinions ... you have been warned. I always switch on the 'Paragraph Marks' option under Tools | Options | View. Seeing the funny reversed P character can be distracting at first but it is essential to understanding the way Word works and why it does what it does.
I know that in a perfect world you shouldn't need to see paragraph marks but Word ain't perfect (nor is the world) and sometimes you need to peek under the bonnet / hood to check out the inner workings. Some people also turn on the display of tab marks, it can help in fathoming formatting mysteries.
Task Pane
Personally I like the Task Pane in Word 2002 / XP but if you don't then go to Tools | Options | View and switch off Startup Task Pane.
Saving
There was a time when Word was so unstable that you had every saving and backup option set, kept your rabbits foot handy and avoided cracks in the sidewalk. Recent versions of Word aren't so bad but those cautious habits can still serve you well.
In Tools | Options | Save there's various options to change, depending on your version of Word. You can choose from either fast saving documents or making backup copies. Fast Saving sounds like a good idea but generally it's not needed these days. Word speeds up the saving of a document by adding to the end of the document just the changes you've recently made, instead of saving the entire changed document. This works fine most of the time but you can have troubles recovering or converting from a fast saved document. On modern computers it's hard to tell the difference between a 'fast' save and a normal one.
Better to stick with the default option 'Always create backup copy' but reduce the time between automatic saves from 10 minutes to 5 or less.
Menus
In Office 2000 and 2002 the pull-down menu's start by showing a limited set of options, the rest appear when you pause over the menu or click the chevron at the bottom of the menu. Again, some people like these limited menus while others (myself included) prefer to have all the options exposed and than have the menus bouncing around before my eyes.
To change the menu options choose Tools | Customize | Options and check 'Always show full menus'.
In the bottom half of that dialog box make sure that both these options are set on: 'Show ScreenTips on toolbars' and 'Show shortcut keys in ScreenTips'.
There may be other changes you prefer to make -- by all means do so! The important thing is to customize Word and Office to suit you, not what Microsoft declares as their 'lowest common denominator' defaults or even my suggestions for that matter.
Mea culpa! Mea maximal culpa!! (Oh, no Peter; not the woodshed again). As Mayor LaGuardia once commented when I make a mistake, it's a doozy. But fortunately the WWW readers won't let me get away with anything! In the last issue, I talked about index.dat and said it was part of the Registry. Nope. That's user.dat and system.dat. Gotta learn to keep dis and dat straight.
Index.dat, at least the one in the cookies folder, **does** store information on your cookies. If you are paranoid about your privacy (and you should be because the privacy thieves are out to get you), you may want to delete it. You cannot delete the active cookies\index.dat file from within Windows. With Windows 95 or 98, you can do this by booting in MS DOS mode. With Windows Me, NT or Windows 2000 (with Me this may require you to turn on multiple user capability), you can log on as another user and delete the index.dat file under your usual profile. Under Windows 9x, if you are really paranoid, you can add a line to your autoexec.bat file that deletes index.dat every time you boot up. In any event, deleting index.dat shouldn't cause any problems since if you do, when you next boot up, a fresh index.dat file is created.
Have you noticed that your taskbar clock has a lot more company lately? That area is called the System Tray, and programs can tell Windows to load an icon there to give you status information and let you right- or left-click to perform operations. This is a handy thing, but it can be done to excess, and too many programs are loading at startup and slowing down your system.
Sometimes the program provides a friendly way to clean up the System Tray. Right-click on the program's tray icon to see whether you have the option of turning it off.
If you're running Windows 95: Go to the Windows > Start Menu > Programs > Startup folder in Windows Explorer. You can add or remove programs here for startup.
If you're running Windows 98: Go to Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Information. Then select Tools > System Configuration from the Menu. From that dialog box, click on the Startup tab. Now you can deselect those programs you want to load at startup.
If your program wasn't in the Startup folder, check the Registry. Go to Start > Run and type regedit. Go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > Software > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion section. Look for the Run key, which contains a number of strings--programs Windows loads. You can delete keys at your discretion.
Q: Further to your answer to How do I back up my Favorites, how do I back up my dial-up networking (DUN) settings? I use several ISPs and if I had to re-format my hard drive I'd lose them all. I notice you can't just use Explorer to copy the folder(s) to a floppy disk. I'm still using Windows 95.
A: Good question. Luckily, there's an easy solution: Just drag all your connections from the Dial-Up Networking folder into a separate folder. I stick 'em in a folder called \My Documents\Backup\DUN (as I always remember to backup My Documents, this makes it easy for me). You'll see that when you drag the files into the new folder they gain a .DUN extension. You can double-click any of these DUN files to activate a connection and see its properties. This method doesn't always save your usernames or passwords (although it did when I tried it - I believe it depends on the version of Dial-Up Networking you're using), so make sure you have copies of those.
Here it is, step by step:
Unlike the tight security you'll find on Win2k or WinXP, password 'security' on Windows 9x or Me is a snap to bypass. To get rid of that annoying logon screen, do this:
Click Start, Settings Control Panel.
Double-click the Network applet.
On the Configuration tab, select Windows Logon as the Primary Network Logon, then close the dialog box.
Delete any file in the \Windows folder with the extension .pwl.
Reboot.
The password prompt will appear one last time. Press Enter (don't press Escape) and you'll never see it again.