Listed below is your HelpMeRick.com reading assignment for the day.

 

If you ever have the need to create a PDF file so you can share it easily with others, or have the need to convert a PDF file into a word processing file, then I recommend giving PDF Online a try. In just a few steps, you can upload a file you want to convert to a PDF or upload a PDF file you want converted to a Word file. Once the file is uploaded, it takes just a minute or two for the service to perform its magic and give you your finished product. Amazingly simple and amazingly accurate.

When you are on a particularly long web page and need to find a term or phrase, click on Edit from your menus, then Find (or Find in page on some browsers). The keyboard shortcut is Ctrl + F. You will be presented with a small window that allows you to enter a word or phrase and then the computer will look for that word on the page and bring you right to it.

As with many other features, Mozilla Firefox's implementation of this feature is superior to all other browsers, as it gives you helpful extras like find the next or previous occurrence of the word or phrase you are looking for and even has an option to highlight all the occurrences on the page. (See the accompanying picture). 

This tip is especially helpful for genealogy researchers. Sometimes your eyes can become crossed looking for a surname in a sea of text. Use the find function instead and cut your work and eye strain in half!

If you need to look for the same term again on the same page, you will notice that the function gives you the option to find again without retyping.

This type of search works best with single words, but you can experiment with phrases as well. You can also use the Find function in Word Processing documents, email, spreadsheets, and PDF files as well. Watch the short video below to see this tip in action in both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Many people simply copy their digital photos onto their computer wherever a given piece of software puts them and they have no idea where that is. These notes will help you setup a system for managing your digital photos so they will be easy to find and backup even without programs like Picasa.

Here are a few links that will help you:

Rick Castellini's file management PowerPoint presentation

In this first installment, I take you on a short tour of the Zoho word processor known as Writer. Writer offers all the tools that almost anyone needs in a word processor with the convenience of being available on any computer using any operating system or browser and at no cost to the user. Some of Writer's features include:

• Secure access to your documents from anywhere
• Ability to export documents as PDF, Word, RTF and other formats
• Collaboration tools for allowing others to work on your documents from any location
• One of the best Thesaraus applications I've seen
• Footnotes, headers, footers
• Tables
• Text styling
• Open multiple documents at the same time
• And any number of features you are used to using in a word processor

Watch this short tour of Zoho Writer to learn more and see it in action. 

Technically, it can be done through a series of computer hocus-pocus, Jedi mind tricks, a great deal of knowledge about the Windows clipboard, Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Word and a lot of time. Knowing that this client didn't have these tools at his disposal, I elected to tell him that it couldn't be done.

Adobe Acrobat forms (PDF files) are not easy to edit or annotate because the purpose of a PDF is to preserve the formatting and integrity of the original document. Some PDF form designers can make their forms fillable using our computers, if they choose to do so. For example, many government sites like the IRS have forms that can be downloaded and printed or filled out right from our computers. Again, these forms are designed this way and not all PDF forms can be filled in via computer.

It bothered me all day that I still didn't know of a better solution for this common question; how to fill in a PDF (Adobe Acrobat) form on the computer. I did some research tonight and found that our new favorite PDF reader (Foxit Reader) has this capability built-in (see illustration). However, the free version will let you fill it in, but if you save, print, or email the filled in form, it will have some verbiage along with it stating that the feature is a pay feature. If you pay Foxit $40, you can use the feature and not have the trial verbage printed on your form. If you need to fill out a lot of PDF forms, this looks to be a great solution.

I write and talk about Web 2.0 all the time and lo-and-behold there is a]]> http://helpmerick.com/how-to-fill-out-a-pdf-form-with-your-computer.htm/feed 8 http://helpmerick.com/a-faster-way-to-view-pdf-files.htm http://helpmerick.com/a-faster-way-to-view-pdf-files.htm#comments Wed, 26 Dec 2007 21:15:59 +0000 Rick http://helpmerick.com/wordpr/?p=1884 For years, most of us have used Adobe's free Acrobat Reader, later named Adobe Reader, to view PDF files. PDF stands for Portable Document Format and is the easiest way to distribute files and forms to many people without worry about compatibility. Like most commercial software, Adobe's product used to be small, fast and work well. Since version 5 (now they are on 8), the product has become as bloated as many other big name software packages today. It remains free, but will plague your system with slow performance and lots of many irritating automatic updates.