Category: Computer tips

There was a big storm in Mississauga last night, and the weather channel predicted heavy rain, lightning, and “toonie-sized hail”. If you’re not familiar with Canadian currency, a toonie is our $2 coin, and about the same diameter as a golf ball.

Continue reading “Preparing for a Home Office Power Outage”

Usually the Volume icon is sitting in my laptop’s System Tray, and I use it several times a day, to turn the sound up or down. But occasionally it disappears – usually after an update or after installing some software.

Continue reading “Volume Icon Missing in System Tray”

There have been problems with Feedly this week – the site has been up and down, due to a DDoS attack.

I’m glad they’re not giving in to the ransom demands, but I miss being able to check the news stories and blog updates, throughout the day.

Save Your Feeds

If you use Feedly too, you might want to download your RSS feeds list, the next time you’re in there. That way, if you have to move to a different service, you won’t have to start from scratch.

I couldn’t remember the last time that I did that, so I saved mine today. Here are the steps, using Firefox in Windows 8:

At the bottom of the Feedly window, click the three dot button, and click Organize

At the bottom of the Organize page, click the Save as OPML link.

On the OPML page, click the green button, to download your file.

Save the file – I added the date to the file name.

Then, you’ll be able to import that OPML file in a new service, if the problems continue at Feedly.

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You probably use the same replies for standard email messages that you get every day, or every week. Here’s a tip for creating copies of draft messages, that saved me some time today.

I keep a collection of draft messages in Outlook 2013, and copy and paste paragraphs from those messages, to save time when replying to email. For example, if someone says that one of my sample files doesn’t work, I can use this message, as part of my reply.

Create a Draft Message

Today, I had to send a file to several people, and wanted to send each one individually. So, I created a draft message, with the subject line, file attachment, and the message body completed.

I saved that message, so it was stored in the Drafts folder. Then looked for a way to create copies, so I could send out the message several times, without a lot of copying and pasting. I just wanted to fill in the email address, and a personalized note at the top of each message.

Copy a Draft Message

Unfortunately, there’s no command for that, at least not that I could find, so I turned to my good friend, Google, to see what it could suggest. Fortunately, it found the MSOutlook Info site, run by MVP Robert Sparnaaij, and it had the answer.

Forward the Message

The website confirmed my suspicious that Outlook doesn’t have a built in way to send a copy of a draft, without removing the draft.

But, there was good news – you can use the Forward feature, to send a copy. I was dubious, because I didn’t want “FW:” to appear in the subject line. That would look spammy!

I followed the instructions, and it worked just fine, with no indication that I’d used a Forward. Here’s what I did, and you can click here to see Robert’s original post, which includes instructions for other versions of Outlook.

In Outlook 2013:

• Create and save a Draft email
• Open the Draft message
• Press Ctrl + F (shortcut for Forward), to create a copy of the email
  NOTE: If the cursor is in the message body, the Find window will open, instead of creating a copy
• Fill in the copy email address, and any other personalization
• Send the copy, and close the draft – or create another copy to work on.

I hope that helps you save some time!

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I just heard that the Start button (with a menu) will be back in Windows 8.1. Whew! Now I won’t have to reinstall an old version of Windows, to get that feature back.

Apparently it will be rolled out in an update, so I guess we’ll wake up one morning, and find the Start button back in its rightful place.

Which Versions Are You Using?

I’m running computers on three different versions of Windows:

• Desktop is on Windows 7
• Laptop is Windows 8.1 Pro.
• Old laptop is running Windows XP, and I don’t have any plans to update. It’s working just fine, so why mess with it?

How about you? Do you have a variety of operating systems, or just one?

Clearing the Bookshelves

Coincidentally, I was cleaning out my office bookshelves today, and found these two old manuals, for Windows 95 and 98. I guess it’s safe to throw them out now.

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