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Microsoft Office Word 2016 – Custom Dictionaries

I don’t know about you but I regularly add word to my “spelling checker” mainly to get rid of the red-wave-underlining that clutters the main mistakes. So, I add names of people and other words, but sometimes I add a wrong word and now need to remove it from the dictionary.

This is how to get to and modify your Custom Dictionary:

1. Open the proofing options:

· In most Office programs: Click File > Options > Proofing.

· In Outlook: Click File > Options > Mail > Spelling and Autocorrect Proofing.

· In InfoPath: Click Home > Spelling > Check Spelling Options.

2. Make sure the Suggest from main dictionary only check box is cleared.

3. Click Custom Dictionaries.

All dictionaries (if you have more than one) are listed here, with the default dictionary at the top.

Published on: Sep 4, 2018 on  my WordPress site




Uninstalling Antivirus and Malware Program’s

A member of the U3A group had asked me to come and fix her Windows-7 PC. It was slow and sometimes it seemed to hang, plus sometimes she couldn’t get to her web-mail. So, I went, and saw that she Avast antivirus and malware program fighting with MSE for supremacy. Out came my memory stick (a necessary tool for carrying software that is possibly needed) and I started with loading CCleaner and while that was loading I recalled from somewhere deep in my memory that to uninstall Avast you needed to download a a uninstallation programme from Avast. So, we then downloaded the Avast uninstaller onto her desktop and started it, it started nicely with the usual prompts like: “are you sure …” of course I was otherwise I wouldn’t have gone through with the download! After having given permission to carry on I was then told that the uninstaller needed to be run from “safe mode” would I like it to switch to that? And it made the switch and even continued the uninstallation. When that was finished it prompted me to let it restart and restore to normal windows. Once back to the desktop I ran CCleaner to do a registry clean-up.

Then rebooted the PC and started CCleaner again. This time I wanted to see what was left behind in the Startup’s (Tools, Startup) and I also removed some unnecessary background runs (bear in mind that there are 3 different tabs here: ‘Windows’, ‘Scheduled Tasks’ & ‘Context Menu’.

Don’t delete any unwanted actions just “Disable” the ones you think you don’t need!

And a week later I received this recommendation:

Many, many thanks for all the assistance and help you gave me with my computer.
It was more than helpful.
Also my computer is less sluggish now.
Now that was nice, I don’t always get feedback and it made me feel good.

Published on: Sep 4, 2018 on my WordPress site.




One favourite OAP scam

This is the scenario:

  1. You get a phone call late morning or early afternoon – that pretends to be from BT, SKY, or somewhere popular yearly subscription service; informing you that your contract or insurance is close to expire.
  2. They friendly ask if you would like to continue the contract and then offer you to upgrade there and then (MISTAKE)!
  3. They even say they have your card details from last year, and can you please confirm that the card-number starts (not ending) with 4159. And of course, this is incorrect so you automatically change the card number to the correct one (MISTAKE)!
  4. They might even be cheeky and snail-mail you an invoice asking you to send a cheque, as your payment didn’t go through. So, you do (MISTAKE)!
  5. A week later you might get another snail-mail informing you that if you don’t pay they will send the debt-collectors to you.

 

DON’T RESPOND! Either hang up or say “Sorry I can’t speak now; can I have your name and number please, so that I can call you back”. 90% of the time they will hang up.

Then phone the company in question and query the call/writ. It is most likely a forgery and a scam.

Then report the number and name to the fraud police.




Create an instant shutdown and/or restart icon on your desktop.

You will need to use the windows program shutdown.exe (which is normally located in C:\Windows\System32\) and its parameters.

The table below is a shortened list of the parameters needed for instant shutdown and/or restart plus the help parameter to display all the parameters defined within your windows system.

Parameter

Description

/s

Shuts down the computer.

/r

Restarts the computer after shutdown.

/t <sec>

Sets the time-out period or delay to sec (seconds) before a restart or shutdown. This causes a warning to display on the local console. You can specify 0-600 seconds. If you do not use /t, the time-out period is 30 seconds by default.

/?

Displays help at the command prompt, including a list of the major and minor reasons that are defined on your local computer.

This is what the instant shutdown command line would look like:
         C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe /s /t 0

And the instant reboot command line would look like this:
         C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe /r /t 0

As you can see the only difference is the use of “/s” or “/r” parameter

Now that we know what to use, how do we get it onto the desktop?
Easy! By creating a desktop shortcut icon containing the shutdown/restart command line as follows.

         image         image

  1. Right click anywhere on an empty space on your desktop to open a menu where you can find “New”.
  2. Hover over “New” and another menu appear, near the top of this is “Shortcut
  3. Select/Click on “Shortcut” to open the Shortcut creation wizard.
  4. Enter your command line and parameters
  5. Click Next
  6. Type a title/name for this shortcut – e.g. “Shutdown”
  7. And click Finish

I like to have a pretty self-explanatory icon’s because it’s easier to find than reading the titles – and here is how to do this:

         image          image

  1. Right click on the Shutdown icon, to open a menu
  2. Select and click on “Properties” to open the “Shutdown Properties” window
  3. It should automatically open in the “Shortcut” tab where you will find – near the bottom – the Change Icon… button.
  4. Click the Change Icon… and another window with lots of icons opens.
  5. Scroll through these until you find an icon you like.
  6. Click on it; followed by clicking the OK button to close that window.
  7. Now all you have to do is click the OK button in the “Properties”
    window and that’s it.

One last thing:

You might also want place Shutdown icon on your “Taskbar” and/or your “Start menu”
this action is called “Pin to …” – and here is how to do this:

         image

  1. Right click on the Shutdown icon (as before), to open a menu
  2. This time you are looking for “Pin to Taskbar” or “Pin to Start Menu” (near the top)
  3. Just click either and that’s it.

Note you don’t lose the original shortcut.

To unpin an icon from the taskbar/start menu, just right click on it and click “Unpin this program from Taskbar” or “Unpin from Start Menu” and they are gone; not uninstalled nor deleted because what you unpinned was a shortcut and NOT the actual item.




System Restore Error Code 0x81000203

I was having problems creating “Restore Points” in windows 7.

When I opened “System Protection” everything was greyed out; and all I got was an: “System Restore Error Code 0x81000203”.

Hunting high and low I finally came across this good advice from the following website: https://windowsforum.com/threads/actual-solution-for-system-restore-error-code-0x81000203.184794/

Both “Volume Shadow Copy” and “Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider” must be started and set to automatic. With both of these services active, the System Protection tab will work.

Their link to Microsoft didn’t work but here is a link that works: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/how-to-fix-error-code-0x81000203/0358b3df-a34f-e011-8dfc-68b599b31bf5 This describes how to fix this error for the “Volume Shadow”; but just apply the same for “Microsoft Software Shadow”.

My “Restore Points” are now working. One more suggestion: Don’t forget to click the Configuration button to select the drive, and set the Maximum Disk Space to be used (to something more than zero, depending on how many generations of restore points you want, set it to at least a few GB).

Also just in case, create the first checkpoint yourself.
That’s it, and I am a happy bunny.

 




Scanning (using Canon EX) and create a JPG file

A friend of mine wanted to scan in a picture to publish it onto Facebook.The all-in-one used was a Canon MG2100.

As each of the “Canon Solution Menu EX” works slightly different so I had to listen to what they were doing at the other end of the phone and hope that I could talk them through some sort of solution (without having the User Guide).

  1. We managed to scan using auto scan
  2. Then I was told that there was only a “Save as PDF” available (not quite correct but as always – we only see what we want to see)
  3. So we saved the scan as PDF – oops where did it get saved to?
  4. My instructions were:
    • click the Windows (Start) icon ->
    • click “Recent Items” on the left ->
    • find and click on the “just saved PDF file”.
  5. So now we have the file open – what next?
    • Use the “Snipping Tool” – (which can be found by click the Windows (Start) icon ->
    • Click “All Programs” ->
    • find and click “Accessories” ->
    • and approximately in the middle of that list select and click “Snipping Tool”).
  6. When started it automatically is ready to snipe i.e. what you had on the screen is slightly greyed out
    • so now it’s just a matter of selecting the area you want to snipe –
    • click top left and drag the courser to the down right end position –
    • let go of the mouse and your selection is now placed on the clipboard and visible in the “Snipping Tool” window.
  7. You can now either save the image directly from the “Snipping Tool” or paste it into any applications – like Word, eMail or an image manipulation program.

That’s it – I am not telling you how to post/publish on Facebook.

I downloaded the Canon MG2100 user manual and saw that we could have skipped the PDF file and the snipping, but as I like the “Snipping Tool” I am only glad to pass that information on as well.




I have just installed Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

It all started after I successfully installed Ubuntu on a XP laptop; it’s cd/dvd player didn’t work and because of the way Ubuntu installs (from boot up) I couldn’t use an external dvd player; but had to make a bootable flash drive and tell Ubuntu help me installing (this meant that Ubuntu created a dos bat file telling where the software could be found). After that I could perform a total installation.

So being rather of an inquisitive nature, I just had to install Ubuntu onto one of my win7 learning pcs (it kindly comes with “Libra Office”, “Firefox” and much more software, that I still haven’t worked out how to use and access). I installed it as a dual-boot system; and found that Ubuntu is the controller of which environment to boot. There are 15 seconds to decide whether to boot Ubuntu or win7.

The choice is displayed on an Ubuntu coloured screen. Ubuntu is the norm and unless win7 is required this will be loaded; it’s a matter of moving the cursor down to win7 & hit the [enter] key to load windows. Loading Ubuntu is way faster than loading win7.

I have managed to change the normal background to something grey and easy to look at. I have also managed to look at and use documents from my windows directory. That was easier than I had anticipated.

It was so easy to install my Wi-Fi Canon printer, way easier than onto a win7 pc

All I needed to do to access to my Dropbox was a quick installation and all my files are now available in Ubuntu. The same applied for Twitter; it was so easy and quick.




How to revive an old XP-PC to a useful PC

First you have to ask yourself if it’s worth it – for instance:

  1. has it got enough memory (2gb or more)
  2. is the processor good enough (2mhz or better)
  3. is there 6gb or more free disk space on your hard drive

If you answered “Yes” to all the above questions you can then safely install Ubuntu (Linux) onto your PC/Laptop.

You can install it either as the ONLY operating system on your PC or change your PC to become a dual boot system; where you have to answer (at boot time) which system to use (a Ubuntu screen where both Ubuntu and Windows are the choices).

By using dual boot you can then when you need to re-boot and use Windows for example for your scanner – that is – if you can’t find the Linux driver for it.

Linux Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS will automatically install:

  1. Rhythmbox – Music Player
  2. Shotwell – Photo Manager
  3. GIMP – Image Editor
  4. PiTiVi – Video Editor
  5. FireFox – Web Browser
  6. Thunderbird – Email reader
  7. LibraOffice – similar to OpenOffice Word, Excel, PowerPoint …

Ubuntu offers thousands of apps available for download from the software center. Most are available for free and can be installed with just a few clicks.




Just a Snippet I came across

How many times have you wanted to be able to cut just a little piece out of a screen display, be it from an advert, an internet picture or just some text somewhere on your screen?

 

Up till now I had to: take a screenshot (using either [Print Screen] {whole screen} or [Alt]+[Print screen] {active window only}) and paste it into a picture manipulation program; then cut out the bit I was interested in and save that bit.

 

Once, while I was fixing a customers PC I saw an icon of “Snipping Tool” and ask my customer what it was, he didn’t quite know as his daughter might have put it there. So I made a note and checked when I got home; this is what I found.

What is the Microsoft snipping tool?

clip_image002
Snipping Tool is a screen shooting utility included in Windows Vista and later.

    It can be found in “All Programs” -> “Accessories”.

  • If you want it on your desktop:
  • Right-Click it and “Send to” -> “Desktop (create shortcut)”

clip_image002[4]

You can use Snipping Tool to capture a screen shot, or snip, of any object on your screen, and then annotate, save, or share the image.

    It can take screenshots of an open window using:

  1. “Free-Form Snip”
  2. “Rectangular Snip”
  3. “Window Snip”
  4. “Full Screen Snip”

 

    Snips can then be annotated using a mouse, then:

  1. Save As: a PNG, GIF, JPEG or MHT file,
  2. Send To: as e-mail attachment or part of e-mail body.

 




Windows 7 Gadgets

Have you ever lost your Win7 gadgets?

You went out in the morning and they were there,
you came back late and they were gone!

Swear, swear!
How to get them back?
This might work; at least it did for me.

  1. Type “windows feature” in ‘the search programs’ on the Start menu.
  2. Select “Turn Windows features on or off”.
  3. Wait while windows collect all the information
  4. Scroll down to “Windows Gadget Platform”
  5. If it is ticked, un-tick it and reboot your PC.
    then repeat step 1-4 and go to step 6.
  6. If it is un-ticked, tick it and reboot your PC.
  7. This time – after the final reboot your gadgets should be back.