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Create your own special characters in Windows XP

Have you ever wanted to create your own font or maybe just a special character—for example, a character showing your initials for approving documents with your “signature”? You can easily create your own characters using a hidden Windows XP tool called the Private Character Editor. Here’s how:

1. Press Windows + R to open the Run dialog box.

2. Type eudcedit in the Open text box and click OK.

3. When the Private Character Editor launches, you’ll see the Select Code dialog box. Click OK.

4. A user interface that looks and works very much like Paint will appear. Here, you can use standard tools to create your characters.

5. When you finish, select the Save Character command on the Edit menu.

Once you save your new character, you can access it using the Character Map tool. Here’s how:

1. Press Windows + R to open the Run dialog box.

2. Type charmap in the Open text box and click OK.

3. When the Character Map appears, select the Font drop-down list and select All Fonts (Private Characters).

4. Select your character, click the Select button, and then click the Copy button.

You can now paste your font character into any document that you want. Automatically

Store sent mail efficiently in Outlook

When you reply to an e-mail, Outlook stores a copy of that message in the Sent folder.

If you’re like us, your Sent folder has thousands of messages. If you need to find a specific message later, you must sort through all those messages, and that takes time.

Instead, you might send your replies with the original message. For instance, suppose you automatically route all your messages from your boss into a folder named, appropriately enough, MyBoss.

If you want Outlook to store your replies in MyBoss with the original messages, do the following:

1. From the Tools menu, choose Options.

2. On the Preferences tab (which should be selected by default), click E-mail Options in the E-mail section.

3. Click Advanced E-mail Options at the bottom of the Message Handling section.

4. In the Save Messages section, select the In Folders Other Than The Inbox, Save Replies With Original Message check box.

5. Then to save and close click ok, ok, ok.

Outlook will apply this setting to all of your personal folders. Just remember that Outlook saves replies with the original message and not in the Sent folder only when the original message is in a folder other than the Inbox. Outlook continues to save all replies sent from messages in the Inbox in the Sent folder

Get rid of a jammed print job:

As you know, print jobs occasionally become jammed in the print queue.

You can see the print job in the queue by going to
Start | Printers And Faxes and double-clicking the appropriate printer.
 
While the queue lists Printing as the status, the job never prints, and other print jobs begin to stack up behind it.

If you cancel the jammed print job, the Status column indicates that you've deleted it.

However, it never completes the delete operation, and the jammed print job remains right where it is.

When you encounter a jammed print job, your first instinct may be to reboot the system, which will flush the jammed print job from the queue. But there's an easier way.

Follow these steps:
1. Open Control Panel, and double-click Administrative Tools.
2. Double-click Services.
3. Scroll through the list of running services, and select the Print Spooler service.
4. Click the Stop Service button on the toolbar.
5. After waiting a moment, click the Start button on the toolbar.
6. Close Services, and close Administrative Tools.

When you return to the print queue, the jammed print job should no longer be there. If it is, you should now be able to delete it normally. Keep in mind that you may have to manually update the queue by selecting Refresh from the View menu.

Outlook Tip: Turn an E-mail Into an Appointment

You just got e-mailed the date, time, and agenda for an upcoming meeting.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could add all that info to your Outlook appointment calendar with just a few clicks?
Here's how!
All you do is drag the e-mail from your Inbox to Outlook’s Calendar icon (usually located in the lower-left corner of the screen). appointment with the body of the e-mail in the notes section.
Set the time and date as needed (Outlook can’t automatically pluck this info out of an e-mail, alas), tweak the subject line if necessary, and presto: You’re done.

At times Internet Explorer may freeze or be very slow. This may indicate a problem with an add-on that has been incorporated into Internet Explorer. A troubleshooting tactic is to close Internet Explorer and then re-open it without add-ons.

To start Internet Explorer with no add-ons

Depending on your version of Internet Explorer, do one of the following:
In Internet Explorer 7, do the following: Close all Internet Explorer windows. Click Start, click Run, type iexplore.exe –extoff, and then click OK. Internet Explorer will open a new window with all add-ons turned off.

In Internet Explorer 6, do the following: Close all Internet Explorer windows. Click Start, and then click Control Panel. Double-click Internet Options. Click the Advanced tab. Under Browsing, clear the Enable third-party browser extensions (requires restart) check box. Restart Internet Explorer.

If this fixes the problem then you will want to remove any recently added add-on(s) and test by opening Internet Explorer normally.

Using the Manage Add-ons feature To change the status of an add-on or to update an add-on, follow these steps:
1. Start Internet Explorer.
2. On the Tools menu, click Manage Add-ons.
3. Click the name of the add-on.
4. Use one of the following methods:

• Click Update ActiveX to replace the add-on with the current version. This option is not available for all add-ons.
• To enable an add-on, click Enable, and then click OK.
• To disable an add-on, click Disable, and then click OK.

Don't waste time during a spelling check – You don't have to repeatedly click Ignore or Ignore All every time the spell-checker stops on a proper noun or a term that's commonly used in your documents. Click Add (Add To Dictionary in Word 2002 and later) so you don't waste time checking the same words over and over.

Use the contextual spell checker to avoid silly mistakes – Word’s spell checker can help you cut down on spelling errors, but what if you type the word right and it should be write? Until Word 2007, the spell checker would have ignored the error. For those of us who consistently type to for too there for their, or site for sight, Word 2007 has a new feature that not only checks for the correct spelling but also for the correct context. To enable the contextual spell checker, just click the Options button and click Word Options. Then, choose Proofing in the left pane and select the Use Contextual Spelling check box under When Correcting Spelling And Grammar In Word. Click OK, and then try it out: Type "Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of there country". Word will underline there in blue. You can right-click the word to select the correct spelling: their