Office | Castellini on Computers - Computer help for beginners

Posts Tagged: Office

7 Google services you have never tried

Google Sign Google started as a college project 12 years ago, then as a startup search engine just 10 years ago. Today, Google owns more than 60% of all web search traffic and employs close to 22,000 employees worldwide.

You probably interact with Google via their search engine primarily. However, you are missing out on some truly great services that Google also provides in addition to their fast and accurate search engine.

In this article, I will share 7 of the many other services Google provides.

Google News

When you arrive at google.com, click the link that says News at the top of the page or you can directly visit news.google.com. Google News is an auto-generated news page that refreshes automatically every 5-10 minutes and displays headlines from more than 4500 news sources around the world. To me, it is the ultimate newspaper?unbiased and unfiltered. And even more helpful, starting a Continue reading →

Changing email addresses – It’s not that difficult

photo credit: TheeErin

AOL made millions of dollars for years because computer users are afraid to change their email addresses. All week long, I hear, “Oh, it’s too hard to change email addresses now.” Or, “It will take forever to change my email address with everyone.”

Come on folks…we’re using computers! You don’t have to fill out a change of address form and march it down to the postal office. You don’t have to send out a post card to every person you know. You don’t have to fill out a change of address for all your bills and utilities.

Changing email addresses is actually pretty painless and can be cathartic as well. In fact, think of it as going into the digital identity protection program. Here’s how to make it a smooth transition Continue reading →

Riding Shotgun with Rick / Tech News — 2 Comments
20
Aug 09

Yet another reason to ditch Microsoft Office for web based apps

photo credit: thoth92

This news story has flown mostly under the radar of most computer users for weeks. In a nutshell, it’s a patent infringement suit brought upon Microsoft by a Canadian company called i4i. The suit alleges that Microsoft knowingly used proprietary technologies in Microsoft Word 2003 and 2007. Last week, a judge in Texas, ruled in favor of i4i and ordered Microsoft to remove Microsoft Word from being sold and fined them nearly $300 million. Microsoft, of course, immediately filed an appeal that will draw the case out even longer.

While the appeal is being considered, Microsoft Word can still be purchased, but for how long? This case builds yet another argument for home and business computer users to consider using online based business applications like Zoho.com or Google Docs. If you want desktop software, look to OpenOffice.org.

Read more on the suit between i4i and Microsoft in the article below:

NewsFactor Network | Appeal Seeks To Keep Microsoft Word on Store Shelves.

Application Tips — No Comments
4
Jul 09

Using templates can save you time

photo credit: Baptiste Pons

The old adage of not reinventing the wheel applies perfectly to computing and document creation. Why spend time creating a document from scratch if someone else has taken the time to put the same type of doucment together already?

A template, in computer lingo, is a pre-formatted document like a resume, flyer, labels, invoice, etc. that you can adapt for your own use. If you are short on time or don’t really have the skill level to put together a more complex document, search for a template and chances are you will find one that fits your needs.

Here are some links you will want to keep handy for online and traditional office products.

Email of the week — No Comments
23
Jun 09

Email of the Week – 008

photo credit: mihirvaze

QUESTION

Name: Norman B. Buckallew

From: Florien, La.,

OS: Windows XP

———————-
I have office 2003 standard addition installed on my computer. When I try use programs such as powerpoint it asks for a key word to install or activate it. I have lost the keywords that came with my computer. I have tried Belarc and it dosn’t give me it keyword for powerpoint or office 2003. Can you help.

Norman

ANSWER

Thanks for writing Norman. Unfortunately, it is not always easy to get those numbers, but I would start by Continue reading →

General Computer Tips / Riding Shotgun with Rick — 4 Comments
29
Apr 09

5 Quick and Easy Steps to Spring Clean your PC

photo credit: solcookie

Spring has sprung and along with your other spring cleaning chores add these five computer cleaning techniques to keep your computer clean, cool, and happy.

Desktops: Unplug all of your cables (label them if necessary) and take the tower outside. Open up the side (usually thumb screws or a latch on the back of the computer) and blow the dust out of the system with a can of compressed air. I recommend starting from the top and moving towards the bottom making sweeping motions from side to side. Pay particular attention to the vents on the case so your computer breathes well. Don’t over spray the fans as you might cause some damage to them by causing them to spin at too high a speed. You might have to repeat this a few times until hardly any dust is no longer evident coming out of the computer.
Mice: If you are still using a mouse with a ball underneath it (turn it over and look at it), go to your nearest office super store, electronics store, even department stores like WalMart or Target and spend Continue reading →

Riding Shotgun with Rick — 5 Comments
25
Apr 09

2 laptop suggestions for college students

photo credit: jarnott

Millions of high schoolers will be graduating soon and will be leaving for their respective campuses (campii?) at the end of the summer. These students will more than likely go to college with a computer…probably a laptop. I would like to suggest two possible laptops ideas for these students.

Both of my ideas involve good systems that will allow college kids to word process, chat, email, listen to music, watch DVD’s, browse the web wirelessly(for school research of course), create presentations, spreadsheets, download and edit photos and much more. Neither involve Windows and thus don’t require a degree in computer security and maintenance. One of the computers costs between $1200-1800 and the other costs less than $700.

My recommendations stem from first hand accounts from parents whose college kids call home frequently with tales of woe about a slow, non-functioning new computer. Students need to have their computers operational, and running around to the campus IT people or dropping the computer at a fix-it shop for expensive repairs. These two recommendations will keep calls home for repair money, tales of woe, and computer down time to a bare minimum. Continue reading →

Application Tips / Riding Shotgun with Rick — 21 Comments
11
Feb 09

Stop the Microsoft Office Agreement (EULA) from popping up every time you start Outlook, or Word or Excel

Office EULA If you are using Microsoft Office 2003 and Windows Vista, you might run into a situation where the End User License Agreement pops up every time you start Outlook, Word, Excel or other Office programs. No matter how many times you click “I agree”, the license keeps appearing. To stop the EULA from appearing, follow these steps:

Close ALL Microsoft Office related programs (Outlook, Publisher, Powerpoint, Excel, or Word)
Click Start –> Computer
Double-click the C drive (your primary hard drive)
Double-Click the Program Files folder
Double-Click the Microsoft Office folder
Double-Click the Office 11 folder
RIGHT Click on any of the Office applications (Winword, Outlook, Excel)
Click Run as Administrator
The program will start and ask you to agree to the EULA (agreement) again and click I agree or Yes
Close the program
Close all open windows

Now you can use your Office 2003 programs normally.

Riding Shotgun with Rick — 17 Comments
11
Jan 09

Windows 7 – First Impressions

Windows 7 Desktop

I just finished installing the Windows 7 Beta version released by Microsoft on Friday. I installed it on my Toshiba Intel dual-core processor with 4 GB of RAM. It was running Windows Vista which took more than 4 minutes to fully boot (I consider the boot up process to be finished when the hard drive stops spinning and I don’t have to compete with a still booting computer to do what I want to do), and running any applications was like walking through molasses. I can say that my expectations were pretty low, but I am pleasantly surprised…so far.

It took exactly 21 minutes from when I inserted the install DVD until I reached a workable desktop. Very impressive! The setup was painless and required very little input. In fact, it was so easy, I think that the folks at Microsoft must have taken a page out of the Linux/Ubuntu installs. It was easily the fastest and easiest install of any version of Windows. I hope it doesn’t change much with the final version.
Bootup time is faster than Vista too. With my fresh install of Windows 7 and no security software, boot time was just under 2 minutes.
Overall, the new OS feels snappy and clean. I haven’t seen any User Account Control (UAC) pop-ups yet.
On my Toshiba laptop, like Linux, I didn’t have to install a single driver. Once the quick install finished, my wireless, Ethernet, sound, video, SD card, and web cam all worked perfectly.
Microsoft has revamped and simplified the wireless connectivity…again very Ubuntuish in my opinion.
This beta version of Windows 7 also includes the new Internet Explorer 8 which doesn’t feel much different than 8, but is supposed to be more compatible and flexible than 7. I will test it a little, but still prefer Firefox. I will probably install Google Chrome as well to see how it runs in Windows 7.
The revamped Start menu has a new feature that when you hover on a recently used program it will also present to you your most recently used documents for that program. Nice.
The taskbar has also been changed, but I need to work with it some more before deciding exactly how those features affect uability and productivity.
I plan on installing AVG or Avast antivirus and OpenOffice to test them and will report more about speed and usability.

I’m writing this article and took the two screenshots in Windows 7 using the Snipping Tool introduced with Vista. I did use picnik.com to edit the photos, however, since the updated Paint program, although it does have a new Crop and Resize feature, the resize feature doesn’t have much flexibility.

Stay tuned for more articles about Windows 7 leading up to its release later this year, or early next year. If there are questions YOU have about Windows 7, leave a comment below and I will test them out for you.

Windows 7 taskbar