... Windows Tips 'n Tricks 18 ...
As he teaches, so he learns.

If you need to select more than one item on your desktop of in a folder, rope them all in with a simple click and drag.

In any folder or on the desktop, click a blank area, then drag the mouse to draw a box around the items you want to select. Release the mouse button, and everything inside appears highlighted. Miss a few? Hold down Ctrl as you click other items to add to the selection. (Tip: Don't release Ctrl while you're clicking, or you'll lose your initial selection.). See next tip.

You can select more than one file at a time by holding down the Ctrl key while you click on your selections. If the files are contiguous (there's a nice word), then holding down the Shift key will highlight the group. This works in Windows as well as many other programs. See above tip.

How do you selectively erase an element in your painting when it is interwoven with the rest of your artwork? Before you start trying to move the Eraser tool in, out, and around other drawn elements, remember that Paint's Eraser tool will selectively erase (or replace) a single color in your drawing. Drag the tool over any part of the canvas, and everything but the selected color remains untouched.

First, click the color you'd like to erase or replace. Then, right-click the color you'd like to replace it with (for example, white, if that's your background color). Select the Eraser/Color Eraser tool, then hold down the right-mouse button as you drag the mouse pointer back and forth over the color you're trying to erase or replace. Only the selected color disappears.

To send a Web page via e-mail, go to the Web page you wish to send, right-click and choose Send Page or hit the Mail icon and choose Send Page. It might be easier with less time uploading and downloading to just send the URL.

If you've ever used the Send To list (right-click the an item on your desktop, select Send To, and so on) to send items to a floppy disk or other location, then you know how handy this command is. But what you may not know is that this list is customizable. Add your own favorite locations, and you can move files around your system faster than ever. Suppose you have a folder called My Pictures that you use to store all of your scanned photos. Add a shortcut to this folder to the C:\Windows\SendTo folder, and it will appear in the Send To list. In one Explorer window, locate the My Pictures folder.

In another Explorer window, (again, the beauty of the Explorer window is using one window with both left and right panes, something I strongly suggest you do), locate the Windows\SendTo folder. Right-click and drag the My Pictures folder directly over the SendTo folder, release the mouse button, and select Create Shortcut(s) Here. The next time you want to send a picture to your My Pictures folder, right-click it, select Send To, and choose My Pictures in the resulting list.

Do you frequently move items to your desktop? Add this common destination to your Send To menu, and from then on, you can accomplish the move using the right mouse button. To add the desktop to your Send To menu, simply place shortcuts to the Windows\Desktop folder inside the Windows\SendTo folder. An easy way to do this is to open the Windows folder, right-click and drag the Desktop folder directly over the SendTo folder, release the mouse button, and select Create Shortcut(s) Here.

You may also want to rename the new desktop shortcut now inside the SendTo folder. I changed the icon to a small picture of a fire and I named it "Hell" ("send to hell" get it? ) From now on, moving an item to the desktop is a simple, right-mouse operation. Just right-click any file, folder, or shortcut, select Send To, and in the resulting list, select Desktop. No clicking or dragging necessary

If you rely on the SendTo option in the right-click menus of Windows to open your files, you can make adding new programs to the SendTo menu a snap by adding a shortcut to the SendTo folder right on the SendTo menu. If you can understand what I just wrote, you can probably figure all this out by yourself. I'll try again: With the SendTo folder listed in the SendTo menu, you can add new programs on the fly by using the SendTo menu. To add the shortcut, open Windows Explorer and locate the SendTo folder (usually C:\Windows\SendTo). Right-click the Send To folder and choose Copy. Then open the SendTo folder, right-click in a blank area of the file list and choose Paste Shortcut. To send a program to the SendTo menu, right-click on the executable file, point to SendTo, and choose Shortcut To SendTo.

Here's another shortcut to his SendTo menu. We have the Start Menu. It's always there, just a keypress or click away. We also have the taskbar, where most of our open programs sit. Then there's the system tray, which holds our clock and 16x16 pixel icons. What about the Quick Launch menu? By default, it sits next to the Start Button. You can add and remove contents at will via drag & drop operations, but what about going through the Windows Explorer?

First, you'll need to find where your Quick Launch folder resides. It's most likely sitting in C:\Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer. Once you've found it, create a shortcut for the "Quick Launch" folder. "Cut" this newly-created shortcut to the clipboard (select it and press CTRL+X).

Now, open your default SendTo folder; it may be found directly within the Windows directory. Press CTRL+V to paste the "Quick Launch" shortcut. The next time you need to add a file or program directly to your Quick Launch menu, just right-click its icon and send it through the SendTo menu.

I also find that dragging the newly created shortcut directly to the SendTo folder is just as easy, especially if you are in the Windows Explorer with the double pane.

For a quick method of sending files to the Recycle Bin, you can create a shortcut to the Recycle Bin in your SendTo menu. To create the shortcut, open Windows Explorer and locate and open the SendTo folder on your system (usually in C:\Windows\SendTo). Drag the Recycle Bin icon on the desktop to the SendTo folder. Choose Yes when prompted to create a shortcut. Then, to send a file to the Recycle Bin, right-click the file, point to SendTo and select Shortcut To Recycle Bin. (Note that this method will not work for deleting files from floppy diskettes or other files not on your hard drive. They will be deleted to cyberspace rather than moved to the Recycle Bin.)

While you're at it, why not remove targets in that SendTo folder that you never use, and add some shortcuts that make more sense (notepad? wordpad? your word processor?). After I added the Recycle Bin shortcut, I changed the icon to a fire, and labeled it Hell. It was one of those urges I couldn't resist. So who says Buddy has all his marbles?

If you need to share a word processing document with someone, but you don't know which word processor they are using, save it in Rich Text Format, which will retain most of your formatting and can be accessed by most word processing programs.

This key has a little magic to it and can be quite useful in Windows. Hold it down during the OS boot process and your startup apps will be skipped. When loading a CD-ROM, use it to bypass the impending Autorun sequence. What else can this 'shifty' key do? Slide through your Start Menu for a second. Pick a program you want to launch, but keep your SHIFT key depressed during the process. What's this?! The menu stays up instead of disappearing ... allowing you to launch other utilities without having to start back at the Start button? Yeppers! Think of the seconds you'll shave with this shortcut, especially when you need to launch several utilities in succession to one another.

Some programs that you install don't place a shortcut on your desktop by default. They do, however, create an entry in your Start menu (usually in a Programs submenu). To add a shortcut for a new program to your desktop, first navigate to the item in your Start menu, then press Ctrl+Shift while you drag and drop the item to your desktop. When prompted, choose Create Shortcut Here. This creates a shortcut on your desktop while leaving the item in its original spot on the Start menu.

While small and simple, they suck system resources (sometimes silently). Each one takes up quite a few bytes; if you need as much disk space as humanly possible, start getting rid of "extra" shortcuts. Got more than 10 icons on your Desktop? You're not wasting space (area) as much as you are seconds; it takes less time to refresh 5 icons than it does 50. Same goes for your Start Menu, it's easier to find a needle in a smaller haystack, pal. Convenience is one thing; productivity is another.

The icons at the top of your screen are shortcuts for items found in the menus above them. Most programs give you more choices for customization when you use the menu items instead of the icons.

Your Windows 98 desktop has icons you can use for starting many of your programs. One way to quickly create desktop shortcuts to any type of file is to just right-click an item and choose Send To, Desktop (create shortcut) from the Context menu.

A "shortcut" is an icon that provides easy access to any program, document, or folder. A shortcut icon in Windows generally looks like the original icon, but it has a small arrow in the lower-left corner.

The original (nonshortcut) icon for a program, document, or folder represents the actual file. So, if you delete the original icon, you delete the entire underlying file. This is not a good thing. A shortcut, on the other hand, is a small link to the original icon. You can create, move, copy, and delete shortcuts at will, without worrying about deleting the actual underlying file.

Just delete the Show Desktop item from your Quick Launch toolbar by mistake? Don't worry, you can get it back.

1. Open an Explorer window, navigate your way to the Windows\System folder
2. Locate a file named Show Desktop. (If you don't see one, then scroll down to the next tip.)
   
3. Open a second Explorer window (the right way is to now use the left pane), anyway, navigate your way to:

   Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch.

4. Right-click and drag the Show Desktop file from the System folder into the Quick Launch folder
   
5. Release the mouse button, and select Create Shortcut(s) Here. That shortcut is right back where it started.

In the above tip, you saw how to restore the Show Desktop shortcut to the Quick Launch toolbar, assuming you've deleted it by mistake:

1. Open the Windows\System folder and locate a file named Show Desktop
   
2. Create a shortcut to this file in the Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch folder (that's only a shortcut; the original, .exe file, is in the System folder).

Don't see a file named Show Desktop in your System folder? Then you'll need to create one.

1. Select Start, Programs, Accessories, Notepad, and type the following:

   [Shell] Command=2 IconFile=explorer.exe,3 [Taskbar] Command=ToggleDesktop

2. Select File, Save, then navigate your way to the Windows\System folder.
   
3. Name the file "Show Desktop.scf"
   
4. Finally, click Save and close Notepad.
   
5. Now just create a shortcut to this file in the:

   Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch folder, as described previously, and a Show Desktop item will appear on your Quick Launch toolbar.

Create a shortcut on your desktop for a fast one-click shutdown of Windows. Right-click on a blank area of your desktop and choose New, Shortcut from the context menu. In the Command Line text box, type the following:

c:\windows\rundll.exe user.exe,exitwindows

Make sure that there isn't a space between the comma and the exit windows parameter, or the command won't work. Click Next. Give the shortcut a meaningful name, such as "Exit Windows", or "I'm Out" in the Select a Name for the Shortcut text box. Click Finish. Now you can simply double-click the icon to exit Windows.

Of course, you can use a similar technique to create a Restart shortcut. Just follow the steps above, but in the Command Line text box, type "rundll.exe user.exe,exitwindowsexec" sans quotes. You can name that shortcut Restart, I'm Back (whatever).