Eric Blackhurst, though not able to be present, communicated a treasurer's report
indicating that the Group has about $429 in the bank as of this month. As always, we
encourage attendees of the meeting to join the Group, though
anyone can participate without being a paying member.
Mike Molloy (EPICUG Vice President) announced that meeting dates for 1998 had been
established, this year on different nights of the week throughout the year. Here is the 1998 Meeting Calendar.
On this particular evening, most members present were Windows95 users, though some
Macintosh tricks were discussed. Lee Lasson moderated and demonstrated most of the Tips
and Tricks using his notebook computer and the Library's projector.
Several members offered alternatives ways of highlighting text with both mouse and
keyboard. Discussed several ways of using the clipboard to avoid typing URLs, etc. Several
members noted that in most Microsoft products, three left-clicks with the mouse would
highlight a paragraph.
Mike Molloy showed the group how you could drag a paragraph selection in Microsoft Word or
WordPad and drop it on the desktop to form a "scrap."
Richard Junghaus handed out and discussed a solution for printing phone numbers out of
Access97 reports.
You can right-click on a Windows Taskbar button to bring up a menu allowing you to
close the task without actually going to the task.
To set a browser's default page (when it starts up), you can go to the browser's
configuration settings and set the default.
You can quickly start Windows Explorer by right-clicking the Start button and then
selecting Explore.
You can also start Windows Explorer by holding down the shift key and double-clicking
the My Computer icon.
You can get more control over dragging items in Windows Explorer by right-click
dragging instead of left-click dragging. This will bring up a menu to allow you to Move,
Copy, or Create a Shortcut (or Cancel). Someone else noted that dragging files on the same
disk will move the files, but will copy files if they're dragged to a different disk.
When we need a program to handle ZIP files during the meeting, we downloaded Winzip 6.3
from the Winzip site. This went very fast
thanks to the Library's T-1 connection!
Curt Gunther reported that Tucows.com had a great
many useful internet utilities. Another member noted that the http://www.Windows95.com site was also very good.
Mike Molloy downloaded, installed, configured, and demonstrated a free PC Magazine Utility called Robotype.
RoboType saves keystrokes by letting you type short abbreviations in place of longer
blocks of text. A few keystrokes or mouse clicks will expand an abbreviation. RoboType is
a 32-bit application that runs under Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0.
We also discussed how you can use the Character Map accessory in Windows95/NT to find
and insert special characters and symbols like: © ® ¼ ™ ñ Ñ, etc. ¶
We also talked about how to insert special symbols using Word.
Curt Gunther also demonstrated advanced ways of using, configuring, and docking the
Shortcut Bar which comes with Microsoft Office 95/97.
He also showed several ways of viewing and using the Control Panel Fonts Explorer.
Mike Molloy showed the group his Acronym Finder
site, a place you can look up various computer and technical acronyms.
The meeting adjourned at about 9:15pm and several members went to McDonald's for
"local" coffee.
