A Through Z Computing Tips

Maybe you've been watching someone else working on their computer, or you saw something on TV, or maybe you are just wondering if there is an easier way. Microsoft understands that everyone is different and they've built their operating system and programs understanding these differences. To accommodate for these differences, they've made many different ways to do things on a computer. Some of these methods are listed below. Many of these are simply just time-savers designed to save you time while working on a computer. Enjoy these tips and if you have ideas or requests for other tips, please visit our Contact Us page and submit your idea.

Tip #1 - Right - Clicking
Try it, almost anywhere. If you don't use the right-click button on your mouse very often, you should try it. You'll usually notice a menu open with more options. You can right-click to copy something, paste something, and much more. You can do this when you highlight text, you can right-click on buttons, pictures, etc. Also, try holding down the "Shift" key when you right-click. You'll see a few more options that aren't normally there. Have fun and right-click!!

Tip #2 - Forwarding Email Properly
1. Highlight the important text in the source email (usually done with clicking and dragging over the important text)
2. Choose "Edit" from the menubar at the top of the window
3. Choose "Copy" to copy the text to an invisible clipboard.
4. Open a new email and click in the body area of the email (where the bulk of the message usually goes)
5. Choose "Edit" and then "Paste"
6. Your text should be in this area now (put in a subject in the subject line and address the email to all of your friends)
(Special Note: if you don't want everyone else in the world to get your address book, send the mail to yourself and "bcc" or blind carbon copy everyone in your address book. This way, nobody else can see who you sent the email to.)

Tip #3 - Blocking email messages (Microsoft Outlook)
If you constantly get email advertisements in your email inbox, you're not alone. Some of these messages can be blocked either by blocking the sender, or blocking certain text in the body of the message. To block the sender in Outlook, right-click on "Message" in the message list, then click on"Spam" and then click "Block Sender" and this should block any further emails from that same person. You've probably seen that some of these messages are the same, but from different people each day. This is the spammer's way to "unblock" themselves from your list. So you might want to find some keywords and block those as well. To do that you must first recognize if the words in the email are text or a picture. Your email cannot block text within a picture and this is another way spammers are getting around these means of blocking them. To check if it is a picture or text, open the email and try to right-click on an area of the advertisement. If it is a picture, you'll have the option to "copy picture", however, if it is actually text, you should be able to highlight some of the text. If you can highlight any of the keywords, like viagra, or refinance, you can block these types of messages by following these steps:
1. Click "Rules" from the Home tab at the top of Outlook
2. Click "Create Rule"
3. Follow the instructions in the wizard on what item to block, whether it is a word in the subject line or something in the body.

NOTE: USING THIS FEATURE CAN CAUSE GOOD EMAILS TO BE DELETED IF THESE EMAILS CONTAIN THE SAME WORDS YOU ADDED TO THAT LIST. IF YOU KNOW HOW TO CREATE A NEW FOLDER IN OUTLOOK, YOU CAN CREATE ONE AND CALL IT "SPAM" AND SEND YOUR EMAIL TO THIS FOLDER RATHER THAN DELETE IT. YOU CAN ALSO ALWAYS GO IN AND MODIFY THIS RULE LATER IF NEEDED.

Tip #4 - Keyboard Shortcuts
You may or may not know that there are dozens of keyboard shortcuts to make things easier. First, what is a keyboard shortcut? A keyboard shortcut is a set of keystrokes that is designed to perform a task. For example, if you have some text highlighted on your computer, you can press and hold the CTRL key and then press the "C" key on your keyboard to perform the "copy" function. This will copy the text to an invisible place on your computer called your clipboard. It is stored on your clipboard until something else takes its place. You can then paste this text to a different place on your computer, like into an email or document. CTRL+C is just one shortcut and there are so many more that will save you time. Here's a short list:

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