... Windows Tips 'n Tricks 6 ...
As he teaches, so he learns.

Call up all your desktop icons without leaving whatever applications you have currently open. Just click on Start, Run and enter a period (.) without parenthesis, then touch Enter.

Converting a hard disk that uses the File Allocation Table (FAT or FAT16) file system to the FAT32 file system is a fairly easy process. You use the Drive Converter, which you can access from the Start menu.

1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, click Drive Converter (FAT32), and then click Next.
2. In the Drives box, click the drive you want to convert to the FAT32 file system.
3. Click Next, and then click OK.
4. Click Next, click Next, and then click Next again.
5. When the conversion is complete, click Finish.

1. Back up Registry and launch Registry.
2. Under HKEY_CURRENT_USER, select Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Policies/Explorer.
3. Select Edit/New/DWORD value.
4. Change the default name to NoFavoritesMenu.
5. Press Enter and change the contents of the Value Data to 1.
6. Save your changes as you quit RegEdit and restart Windows.

You might have noticed that your Internet Explorer Favorites list is accessible right from your Windows 98 Start menu. But did you know that you can put more than just bookmarks in your browser's Favorites list? To add file and folder shortcuts to your Favorites list, go to C:\Windows\Favorites\, then drag and drop your shortcut into the window.

Perhaps the most common edit most people need to make on a received fax is an "annotation." That may mean filling in a few blanks or adding a comment. Do this with an image editor such as Imaging (in the Accessories menu).

1. In the Imaging program, open the fax file.
2. Select the Text Annotation Tool from the lower toolbar.
3. Click on the fax display near where you want the annotation.
4. Drag out an area for annotation text.
5. When the edit cursor appears, type your annotation.
6. Open File, Save and save the annotated fax.

Faxes you receive with Microsoft Fax are not word processor documents. You can't open and edit them with any word processor. They are images, like drawings or photographs. This means that if you want to edit them, you must use an image editor. Kodak's Imaging for Windows works well.

1. Open Start, Programs, Accessories, Imaging.
2. Open File, Open and find the document.
3. Use the program tools to edit.
4. You can then save your results and, if you like, fax them.

Ever encounter an application that designates itself as the default program for a file extension previously owned by another program? The quickest way to get out of this jam under is to find an example of an incorrectly associated file.

1. Click on the file once to select it.
2. Hold down the Shift key while you right-click it.
3. Choose Open With.
4. Select the correct program.
5. Check the "Always use this program to open this type of file" box and click on OK ... or, if you don't find the program, click on the Other button and navigate to the correct program on your drive.

Like any command line fan, we like to see the extensions of files we're exploring. But with some file types, such as icons, cursors, and (in some cases, when they've been changed) bitmaps, you don't need to see the extensions. Luckily, it's possible to suppress file extensions in some types of files, while all the others stay intact. Here's how:

1. Pick the file extension to suppress, then back up the Registry.
2. Launch RegEdit.
3. Under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, locate the file extension you want to suppress.
4. Right-click the extension name and select New/String Value.
5. Name the string value NeverShowExt and don't change the Data value.
6. Save your changes as you quit RegEdit and restart Windows.

Each filename in Windows consists of two parts:

• File extension: This part identifies the type of file and the program that created it. The extension has a maximum of three characters that are automatically assigned by the creating agent or program.

• Main Filename: You can call the main part of the filename whatever you want, up to a maximum of 255 characters (including spaces).

Most important, when giving a file or folder a name, is to give it the generic part of the name first, and the particular part second.

If you frequently need to work in DOS, you know how frustrating it can be to deal with Windows' long filenames. DOS abbreviates filenames longer than eight characters by truncating them and appending a number to the end. The name of the Windows folder "Program Files", for example, is read by DOS as "progra~1". So, to switch to the Program Files folder in a DOS box, you need to know its DOS abbreviation. There is an alternative, however: simply enclose the long filename with quotation marks. For example, to switch to the Program Files subfolder, type cd "program files" on the command line and press Enter -- no more confusing DOS filenames.

Each filename in Windows consists of two parts:

• File extension. This part identifies the type of file and the program that created it. The extension has a maximum of three characters that are automatically assigned by the creating agent or program.

• Main filename. In Windows Me, you can call the main part of the filename whatever you want, up to a maximum of 255 characters (including spaces).

Note, however, that pre-Windows 95 programs didn't support long filenames. Those programs allowed only up to eight characters, with no spaces

Grammar marks cannot be used in filenames because they have special meaning to the file system.

? and * are used in file searches as a wildcard character.

"" tells DOS that what is between the quotation marks is a long filename. They are also useful at the DOS command prompt and sometimes used in the Windows run command.

\ separates folder name in the file path.

: separates the drive letter from the rest of the file path.

So in effect these characters is the file system grammar. What it means to the computer and to the human are two different things.

If you use My Computer as your file manager, you'll appreciate this nifty trick for selecting more than file at a time. To select a block of files listed contiguously, click on the first file to select it, then hold down the Shift key and click the last file you want to include. With the block of files highlighted, you can then move, copy, or delete them en masse.

To select multiple, non-contiguous files, click on the first file, then hold down the Control key as you continue clicking on other files.

Quickly open a file in an application that's been minimized on your desktop by dragging it to the application's button on the taskbar. Do not drop the file, but rather pause over the taskbar button. After a second or two, the minimized window will be restored on the desktop, where you can drop the file in the window to open it.

Right click your "Start" button, then choose "Explore" to enter Windows Explorer and choose "View" then "Folder Options" then select the "File Types" tab. In the "registered file types" window, scroll down to file type you want changed and highlight it. Below the window, in the "File type details" section, it will say "Extension... Content type... opens with..." Next to "Opens With" it tells you which is the default program for opening that file. To change it, do the following:

1. With the file type icon still selected, press the "edit" button on the right of the window.
2. Now, in the window labeled "Actions" you'll see a selection called "Open" in bold letters.
3. Highlight this bold word "Open" (or whichever word/phrase is in bold letters).
4. Now, click the "Edit" button at the bottom (Between "New" and "Remove").
5. Next to the "Application Used to Perform Action:", click the "Browse" button and browse to the program you want to use to open the selected icon.
6. Highlight it, click OK, click Close and Close. That program should now open your selected icon.

Another way is to find a shortcut to for that file type. Highlight it and holding down the Shift key, right click the shortcut icon. Now highlight the "Open with" line and in the resulting window, scroll down to the program you want to open that shortcut. Click it, click OK, and job is done.

Sometimes you may have files you want to locate by date rather than by name. For example, if you saved a game file, but then forgot what it was called, you may not know where Windows put it.

To find your elusive file, first click Start, then go to Find. Select the Select Files or Folders option and left-click. When the Find screen appears, there should be three tabs at the top. Select the Date tab. Now, select the All Files or Find All Files (Modified, Created or Last Accessed) buttons, depending on what you want to find. Then select one of criterion buttons that best suits your need. There are three options: date range, monthly, and daily. If you have selected All files, the three lower buttons are shadowed out.

For the above example, select the During the Previous button along with the Find All Files [Created] selection and choose During the Previous and change the number to one (this is the default). Then click on the Find Now button and Windows will pull up a list of files that you added within the last day.

Have you misplaced a file somewhere on your hard drive that you can't for the life of you remember where you saved it to? Let Window's Find Files feature give you a hand in tracking it down.

Click the Start button and choose Find, Files or Folders. In the Name text box, type the name of your file (e.g., memo.doc or todo_list.txt). If you can't remember the exact name of your file, use a wildcard. A wildcard is a symbol you can use in a filename to indicate that characters are missing. The asterisk symbol serves as a multiple character wildcard, for example. If you can't remember whether the file is called memo.doc or memo_to_buddy.doc, you can simply type memo*.doc (note the dot before doc), and the Find function will locate all files starting the with the name "memo."

Next, select the drive you want to search from the Look-In drop-down menu and check Include Subfolders, so it will perform a thorough search of your hard drive. Click Find Now to start the search. Windows will create a list of all the files matching the name you indicated in a box at the bottom of the dialog box. If Find located the file, you can open it by double-clicking on it in the list.

What if your file has multiple words ... let's say you placed a file in your computer named "Directions from Long Island" … how would you use the "Find" utility to find it? You can't use the quotes as you might with a search engine; and if you show the spaces you get all files in your system that have any of those four words. What do you do with the spaces?

Answer: Just stick a question mark (?), called a single character wildcard, wherever there's a space. Type it like this: "directions?from?long?island" (no spaces and without the quotes) and presto, you have your file. I wonder if I'm the only one amazed by this; but then I'm still amazed how a can opener works.

Can't find an icon on your cluttered desktop? Just press the first letter of the name of the icon. Press that letter again, if necessary.

File management can be an ominous task, especially at the office where each new day results in a dozen new files. Worse, you may have used a cryptic naming convention that made sense six months ago, but its logic has since turned fuzzy, and now you can't tell what's what. If you need to find a file that you can't remember the name of but know a keyword or name that appears in the document, use Windows Advanced Options - Containing text, Date last accessed, and File type feature. This allows you to search the complete contents of every file on your hard drive, not just the filenames, to find a match for the keyword you specify.

Click the Start button, point to Find, select Files or Folders. You're on the Name & Location tab. Now click into the "Containing text" box and type the keyword(s) (e.g., Brighton Beach) or name (e.g., Buddy). If you remember which program originated the document, click the Advanced tab and choose the file type from the "Of type" drop-down list. Now the Find feature will search only files of that particular type (and save considerable time in the process). Click Find Now to start the search. Files that contain your keyword will appear at the bottom of the box.

A "write-protected disk" simply has been tweaked so that nobody can copy to it or delete the files it contains.

To write-protect a 3 1/2-inch floppy disk, flip a disk over so that the round, metal thingie is facing you. Look for a tiny black sliding tab in a square hole in a corner of the disk. Slide the tab with a pencil or your thumbnail so that the hole is uncovered. The disk is now write-protected.

To remove the write-protection, slide the little black tab so that the hole is covered up.

Quickly erase a floppy diskette by taking advantage of Windows' disk formatter. Insert the diskette into the floppy drive, then open My Computer. Right-click on the "A:" (or the appropriate drive letter of your floppy drive), and choose Format from the context menu. Select "Quick (erase)" under Format type, then click Start. When it completes, close the Format Results dialog box. Your diskette is wiped clean and ready for use.

Floppy diskettes can wear out surprisingly quickly, and their very construction makes them prone to all sorts of subtle--and not so subtle--damage. If you encounter a diskette that won't let you open or save files (but other diskettes will), your diskette is probably damaged. Before trashing it--and your hard work--use a disk utility, such as Windows' ScanDisk, to check the disk for damage and repair it if possible. To use ScanDisk, insert the floppy disk into the drive, click the Start button, point to Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and choose ScanDisk. Select your floppy drive from the drive list, click Thorough, make sure Automatically Fix Errors is checked, then click Start. When the process completes, try your diskette again and see if the problem has been repaired.