Tip o’ the Week #180 – A touch of magic

Posted on June 28, 2013 by ewand

As more and more of us continue to enjoy new laptops courtesy of the Windows 8 Refresh program, the fact that most of them are touch-enabled is causing delight and surprise. The best things about touch on traditional laptop devices may be the less obvious uses – scrolling up and down a web page with a lazy flick, or highlighting something to a colleague by pinching to zoom.

Tim Hall suggested a couple of cool tips, namely the new icon that’s appeared on the Office Quick Access Toolbar, to enable Touch Mode – a feature covered in the Office Preview, in ToW 142, but it’s changed the UI and become a good bit more functional. Tim also points out on his Lenovo X1 Carbon Touch, if you double-tap on the screen it will zoom in.

Meanwhile, Darren Strange has also become a huge fan of the Touch Mode in Outlook – not only does it space out the menu options and folders, but it introduces a new shortcut icon list on the far right (beyond the Reading Pane). Darren advocates triaging email by holding the sides of the super thin screen on his shiny Asus Zenbook, then tapping with his right thumb. It’s especially easy to flick up and down through the mailbox, then tap on Reply, then drop your hands to the keyboard for when you need to type.

Here he is, poised to delete some nonsense email that’s cluttering up his inbox:

Tip o’ the Week #178 – Copy as Path, turbocharged

Posted on June 21, 2013 by ewand

Long-term readers of ToW may recall tip 101, which featured the “Copy as Path” command in Windows 7. In a nutshell; hold the Shift key as you right-click on a file in Windows Explorer, and you’ll see the Copy as Path option, which copies the entire path to that file (eg c:\blah\blah\file.doc) into the clipboard. Handy for when you want to point a dialog box from an application at a file you’ve been working on.

Well, Windows 8 goes one better. The Explorer desktop application features an option on the Home tab – simply select a file or folder, then click on the Home menu option to show the tabs (assuming they’re not already visible), and you’ll see Copy path.

If you like to have one-click access to these kinds of super-user functions, there is an even quicker way.

Look above the File menu in the Explorer window, and you’ll see a Quick Access Toolbar – something that’s been in Office for a while, as a place to dock common commands. If you click on the down arrow at the end of the QAT, you can enable and disable the commands which are already on it, but not add new ones. If you want to add the Copy Path command, for example, simply right-click on the command on the Ribbon tab, then Add to Quick Access Toolbar.

Tip o’ the Week #176 – F(u)11 screen ahead

Posted on June 6, 2013 by ewand

This week’s tip might seem a little obvious to some, yet partially unknown to others. Internet Explorer has offered the capability to display a page in full-screen mode, since IE4. Just like the “content, not chrome” ethos of the “~~Metro~~” Modern UI design language, reducing the various window borders and controls, menus, toolbars etc (aka the “chrome”), leaves more room on screen for the web page or other application/document content.

Now, we all know there are two versions of Internet Explorer 10 – the Modern UI version (full-screen, hiding all controls unless you swipe from the top or bottom of the screen or press WindowsKey-Z to display the address bar, tabs list etc), and the more traditional browser with tabs, icons to control the browser behaviour, menus etc. If you’re using the desktop version of IE, try flicking to and from full screen mode by hitting the F11 key – the same shortcut that’s been in IE for 15 years.

Other applications have full screen modes too, and some, like OneNote, also use the same familiar F11 – making your current OneNote page fill the entire screen (apart from the taskbar, unless you’re hiding that too), so useful when you’re note-taking in a meeting and want to make it clear to anyone peering over your shoulder that you’re not just doing email or wasting time.

Office 2013 applications let you switch to/from a full screen view too, by clicking on the Auto Hide option at the top right of the “Ribbon” – like the browser or OneNote applications above, it’s a handy way of making the most of screen real estate, especially if your laptop has a physically small screen. Like a Surface, for example.

Tip o’ the Week #175 – a ‘tastic OneNote add-in

Posted on May 30, 2013 by ewand

Regular ToW readers might recall a previous mention of an add-in to OneNote which provides useful additional functionality, perhaps most notably OneCalendar – which gives you a calendar view, with the titles of OneNote pages which were edited on that day… hover over the title to see a preview of the page, click on it to jump to that page.

OneCalendar can be installed as a separate app, then pinned to the Task bar or Start menu if you want to fire it up quickly, without first being in OneNote.

If you have multiple notebooks and if you have hundreds of pages, this is a great add-in, since it quickly lets you see pages you’ve updated, regardless of where they are.

The bigger OneTastic add-in does a load more, too – the newest addition to its arsenal of features being the ability to write and play back OneNote Macros. Even if you have no interest in creating your own, Omer has a whole slew of macros installed by default or available to download from Macroland. Sometimes simple things like being able to quickly insert a horizontal line, or add capabilities common to other Office apps, like auto-fill of tables.

Check out this brilliant – and free – add-in, on http://omeratay.com/onetastic/.

Tip o’ the Week #174 – Presenting tips from the pros

Posted on May 23, 2013 by ewand

This week’s tip comes after another successful “Tech.Days Online” session in late April, delivered by a host of specialists covering a range of developer and IT Pro topics. The Tech.Days Online programme of events is interesting in that it’s delivered “live” to thousands of virtual attendees: in other words, you could visit the Chicago auditorium and see the whole thing being presented to an empty room, except for the camera and audio crew and perhaps a few interested supporters.

Andrew Fryer suggested this update of an old feature of the somewhat-maligned Windows Vista. Pressing WindowsKey+X on a Veesta machine would display the Mobility Center, a collection of tools that are relevant to laptop use. In Windows 8, the Win+X combination has grown somewhat, and throws up a list of potentially useful utilities and quick access to the more commonly used (by technical types, anyway) aspects of the Control Panel. On a laptop, Mobility Center also features here.

If you like it particularly and a few more clicks is too much to ask, you could even start the Mobility Center then pin it to Taskbar for future one-hit execution.

The Presentation Settings applet in Mobility Center will allow you to configure how your machine looks and feels whilst you’re presenting – maybe change the background image of your desktop from a leering photo of your dog/child/spouse, to something a little more corporate and dry. Or don’t let the screen go blank, even if you’re running on battery… To set the options up, click on the projector icon within the Mobility Center.

It doesn’t set your Lync status to tell people you’re presenting, and it won’t configure PowerPoint to send things to the right screen, though… more on that in a future tip.

Tip o’ the Week #164 – Work Anywhere with Windows 8

Posted on March 22, 2013 by ewand

Recruiter Nick Papé recommended this week’s topic. Escalation Engineer with spare time on his hands Ben Phillips wrote a cracking Windows 8 app to inspire Nick, and UC overlord Steve Tassell had this to say about it:

“The app is another step in the consortium providing practical advice and guidance which our growing community so dearly crave. This is also an important vehicle in helping us promote the second annual Anywhere Working week which is running again from 18^th-22^nd March. There are many activities planned for the week but, I want to highlight to you the roadshows running all week. We are planning an ambitious tour of the country taking our Office hub experience nationally. In Partnership with local authorities, we are providing a networking opportunity, technology experience and Ignite-style sessions from businesses and experts already working flexibly. You can find more details and means to register here.“

Of course, Nick and Steve are both very keen to stress the possibilities of remote working using Lync – every “snow day” is another day to celebrate and sell the technology benefits, in other words. Well, news reached us of a looming collaboration between Skype and Lync, and the promise of some groovy new Lync 2013 mobile clients, due in the coming months.

Tip o’ the Week #154 – Outlook 2013 searching – reprise

Posted on January 18, 2013 by ewand

Sometimes, the best bits of content benefit from revisiting, improving or just being done in a different way. It was good enough for Sgt. Pepper, and a mainstay of any self-respecting 1970s concept album (try and hear the Supper’s Ready lyrics at the end of the Squonk reprise in Los Endos, for example. Now, take the anorak off and get back to work). Actors reprise previously-starred roles, to keep the tills ringing, if not the critics singing.

Anyway, this week’s Tip revisits and reprises a topic that’s had a bit of coverage of late – namely, searching in Outlook 2013. See ToW’s passim: #130, #144… and numerous other snippets.

Woody wrote a blog post about today’s topic – namely the way that Outlook now handles searching. Outlook has had built-in search capabilities for ages, but in 2013, it’s much easier to switch between searching within just the current folder (eg Inbox) and searching everywhere. It has also introduced further granularity like searching across just the current mailbox (or archive file).

Care must be taken, though – you might search for a term and find that the results include folders where you’ve archived stuff, or could be your Sent Items folder… so take it easy on the Delete key. The “Current Mailbox” | “Current Folder” selection is remembered for certain folders, so might change as you move from one to the other.

If you do search across multiple folders, when you hover your mouse over a result that’s of interest, and you’ll see a little bubble which tells you the folder that it’s in.

Alternatively, right-click on the “ALL Unread” menu immediately below the search box and choose “Folder”, and you’ll see your search results grouped by the folder the messages come from.

Tidy.

Tip o’ the Week #152 – Zoom, Zoom!

Posted on December 21, 2012 by ewand

If you ever see someone make a presentation or give a demonstration, who says “you can’t see this, but…” or “this is an eye test, but…” then you have to ask, well why are you showing it (or trying to)? Better still, throw things at them and make a jolly good scene.

If you’re presenting, don’t use small fonts and don’t put diagrams on screen that people sitting more than 6 feet away won’t be able to decipher – unless you make the point that you’re only including the slide for future reference when you give the audience the slides: and move on quickly. Oh, and think about your screen resolution too: 1600×900 might look fine on your desktop monitor but it’s not so good when the audience is far away.

When you do demos, take a tip from one of the gods of the big-stage presentation world, who regularly shows very in-depth technology (code, registry, lots of programs with very small fonts and densely packed hexadecimal numbers, etc) that would normally have people bored rigid.

Mark Russinovich (a very technical fellow) regularly presents at TechEd type events in front of thousands of cheering fans, who queue to get to the front of his sessions. And for a the best part of a decade, Mark has been showcasing one of his own tools during his demos – originally, without even saying what he was doing. He got so many people asking him what was that tool that made it so easy to see the tiny tiny text on screen, that he released it and now often mentions it whilst he’s presenting.

ZoomIt

Thanks to David Weeks for highlighting this tool; it’s free, it’s small (and you can “run” it from the website so you might be able to fire it up on any PC you’re using for presentation). Check it out here. The ZoomIt tool allows you to – using shortcut keys – zoom in to wherever the mouse is, to draw/mark on-screen and numerous other capabilities. Mark uses it to great effect – he’s often one of the top-rated speakers at TechEd, even if he’s in-depth and his style is quite, er, dry. Check out Zoomit, especially with the ability to freeze whatever’s happening, zoom in on it, and be able to annotate what’s seen on the screen.

WindowsKey +

Another option is to use the built-in magnify capability in Windows – just press WindowsKey and the plus key. This will fire-up the magnifier utility, and works well with Modern Windows 8 apps too: there’s even a special mode for touch-enabled machines to make it easy to zoom in and out.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, ToW Readers. Normal service will be resumed in January…

Tip o’ the Week #145 – Fun with Drag ‘N Drop

Posted on November 30, 2012 by ewand

Some things in computing have been around for so long, that it’s hard to envisage or remember a time before them. Take the humble mouse – Mr Scott might not recognise what it’s for, but at least until touch and gestures take over the world, we are all familiar with its basic operation.

Doug Engelbart prototyped the original “mouse” (pictured left) and despite it being patented, never managed to really make anything of it – though Xerox did. Well, Xerox PARC boffins developed the idea, but it took a young Californian Hippy to really put it to the market. The mouse moved on from a couple of metal discs in Engelbart’s version, to a rubber coated ball then laser or LED variants, driven largely by Microsoft’s hardware designers evolving how the thing was being used.

Basic rodentry activity is pretty well understood, but there are a few Windows-oriented actions that a lot of people just don’t seem to realise they can do. In Windows 8, for example, the mouse is a central way of invoking a lot of the new UI capabilities – and it’s not about clicking on a specific place, but more about making gestures with it.

Move your mouse to the top left of your screen, and you’ll show a thumbnail preview of the last “Modern App” that you were running, if at all. You can click on it to switch to it, and keep clicking to switch through any other apps you’re running (including the Desktop itself).
When you move the mouse to the top left, if you then start to move down, you’ll see a list of all the Modern Apps you’re running, including the Start menu, shown in the bottom left. If you put the mouse in the bottom left, you’ll see the Start screen.

There are a few further actions that are as old as the hills, yet many people never discover them or get told about them. Everyone knows about drag & drop, right? You know, click on a file to select it, hold the button down to pick it up, then drag it and release to drop it somewhere else…?

Did you know if you have an Application open (in trad Desktop mode on Windows 8, or in many previous versions), and you drag a file onto its icon on the task bar, that will bring the application window to the foreground… and if you subsequently drop the file into the open window, it will open the file or do something else interesting with it?

What could “something else interesting” be? Well, if you’ve a file on your PC that you want to attach to an email, for example, then go Explorer or where the file is located, drag the file to the taskbar where your email is open, hold it over the Outlook application icon and you’ll see a list of open messages… drag and hold over the one you want and (even if you get a little “no way Jose icon”, meaning you can’t drop it yet) you’ll bring that message window to the front.

Simply now drop your file into the waiting window, and attach it to the message. Where this really works well if is if you want to send someone a document you already have in email – instead of saving it out of the original message then re-attaching it, or worse, dragging it to your desktop just so you can send it on, simply:

Start writing the message you want to send (and if in Outlook 2013, “Pop Out” that window)
In the main Outlook window, find the message with the attachment you want to forward
Click & Drag the attachment from that message to the taskbar, hold it over the Outlook icon, then hold it over the thumbnail of the new message – this will cause your new message window to come to the foreground
Move your mouse over that new window and let go – you’ve now dragged and dropped, and attached the prior attachment to a new mail. Hooray!

Of course, you could use SharePoint, or SkyDrive Pro, or any number of ways to do it properly. But who’s got time for all that?

Tip o’ the Week #130 – Searching in Outlook

Posted on August 10, 2012 by ewand

Ever since the 3^rd party “Lookout” add-in was built for Outlook about 8 years ago, the pilers have inherited the earth. That’s pilers. No connection with Chaka Demus.

Research as far back as the early 1980s into how people organise their desks suggested there were “filers” – meticulously organised people who have a place for everything and put everything in its place, or “pilers” who just let it all build up.

Actually, it’s more complicated than that – pilers have “hot”, “warm” and “cool” areas of their desk defined by the level of activity, so stuff they were working on was commonly nearby. Filers on the other hand, might inadvertently squirrel stuff away and forget all about it. Common belief might be that outwardly more “organised” people are more effective, but the research shows this isn’t necessarily the case. Read more here.

Lookout introduced the ability to just search across your whole mailbox, in literally an instant – doesn’t sound all that special today but in 2004, it was absolutely revolutionary. Imagine searching your whole mailbox (all 200Mb of it, wow!! – though some companies gave their users bigger mailboxes) in the blink of an eye… No longer did you need to file anything, or remember the subject line, or the date it was sent – recall any attribute of the message and you can always find it later.

As it turns out, Microsoft bought the company and then incorporated similar technology into Outlook and Windows directly. The main man in LookoutSoft left MS after his career peak and a couple of years, to go and work at a grubby advertising company. Never mind.

Anyway, back to the present day. Outlook gives the user the option of searching within folder (press CTRL-E to jump straight in and type a search query, then press CTRL-ALT-A to expand the search to all folders if required).

The Ribbon changes when activating the search box to show a bunch of criteria that can be searched upon, with a click:

There are, however, a few other options… mostly to do with the way one expresses a query in the search box. Just type in a word and your query will return any item which contains that word, however if you put subject: search word or subject: “search phrase”, then you can restrict the search results to only key words from the subject line.

Similarly, from:”joe blogs” or from:”joe bloggs” subject: “blah blah” will restrict ever further to just mail from an individual or even specific mail from that person with certain words in the subject.

There are some other esoteric search terms, too. Running out of mailbox space? Try messagesize:>5mb and you’ll see only the huge emails. Or for the same filter, simply add messagesize:enormous.

Many more examples of search criteria can be found here.