OBSCURE WINDOW QUESTIONS

obscure Windows questions I’ve been asked. I hope you find them helpful, and if you have specific questions on how to do something in Windows, contact me, and I’ll add it to this page.
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Turn on the Windows Quick Launch Toolbar
1. Right click on the Start button. A menu will pop up.
2. Left click on Properties.
3. Click on the Taskbar tab.
4. Put a check in the box next to Show Quick Launch and click OK. You'll now see a small toolbar now next to the start button that has the Show Desktop icon, Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer on it.
I started with this Windows tutorial because the quick launch toolbar is very useful. You can customize it by adding program icons to it. Here's what my quick launch toolbar looks like; I have all the programs I use the most on it:

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Place a Picture of any Windows Dialog Box into a Word Processing Program
1. Open the Windows dialog box you want to paste. Make sure it is the active window and that the edges are not off the screen.
2. Hold down the Alt key and press the Print Screen key on your keyboard. This will paste a picture of the window onto the Windows clipboard.
3. Open your word processing program. Put your cursor where you want the picture to go.
4. Press the Shift + Insert keys together to paste the picture onto the page.
Note: If you are going to paste multiple pictures into a single Microsoft Word document, I would recommend that you do this instead:
1. Copy the pictures to the clipboard as directed above, but then paste the pictures into the Windows Paint program first (using the same method in Step 4).
2. Save the picture as a jpeg file (*.jpg) in your My Pictures folder. Call it pic1.jpg if you want.
3. Open Word. Go to Insert | Picture | From File to place the pictures in Word.
Reason? Word does not handle the Shift Insert method very well, and I have corrupted large documents by inserting multiple pictures with the Shift Insert method.


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Turn off Sticky Keys
Did you know that after hitting the shift key 5 times in a row, you'll get a pop up asking you whether you want to enable a feature called "Sticky Keys"?
If you click OK, Sticky Keys will be enabled and from that point on, you'll just get sounds whenever you press the CTRL or ALT key. Annoying.
To turn Sticky Keys off permanently, do this:
1. Press the Shift key 5 times in a row.
2. Click the Settings button.
3. On the Keyboard tab, click the first Settings button.
4. Uncheck all the checkboxes, and click Ok. Sticky Keys will be turned off now.

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How to Cut and Paste "Clean" Text from One File to Another in Windows
This Windows Tutorial is one of my most popular.
Say you want to copy some text from a webpage into a Word document. You probably already know that you can copy and paste the text using the generic steps below:
1. Highlight the text you want to cut and paste with your mouse, and then press Control + C on your keyboard.
2. To paste the text, put your cursor in the receiving document, and press Control + V to paste it.
Simple, right? Except that when you copy from a webpage or from another Word document, all the formatting comes with it, and messes up the formatting of the document you're working in. Annoying.
You could paste it into a new page and manually remove all the formatting, but here's an easier way:
1. Highlight the text you want to cut and paste with your mouse, and then press Control + C on your keyboard.
2. Open Word, and click on the Edit menu.
3. Click on Paste Special
4. From the Paste Special dialog box, choose Unformatted Text and click Ok. Voila, nice clean text!
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Restore the "Show Desktop Icon" to Quick Launch Menu on the Windows Taskbar

See the circled icon in the picture above? That's the Show Desktop icon.
If the Show Desktop icon has been accidentally deleted from the the Windows Taskbar, the procedure below will recreate the file.
1. From the Windows desktop, right click and choose New | Text Document. This will create a new Notepad file on your desktop called newtextdocument.txt.
2. Open this new Notepad file.
3. Copy and paste the bolded text below into the document.
[Shell]
Command=2
IconFile=explorer.exe,3
[Taskbar]
Command=ToggleDesktop
4. Click File, Save As, and save the new file with the file name
Show Desktop.scf
(If you followed this Windows tutorial correctly, the file icon picture should change to show the Desktop icon like the one in the picture above.)
Now you can drag and drop the icon onto the Quick Launch bar or where ever you want the shortcut to appear.
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Here's a quick Windows tutorial that will make computing so much easier:
Create a Desktop Shortcut From the All Programs Menu
Let's say you want to create a shortcut to the Spider Solitaire game on your Windows Desktop. Here's how you would do this:
1. Click on the Start button, and go to All Programs
2. Point to the Games folder and then to the Spider Solitaire game.
3. Right click on Spider Solitaire and then left click on Send to..
4. Click on Desktop (create shortcut).
5. Done!
Easy, huh? You can follow these steps for any program listed in All Programs.
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Here's a helpful Windows Tutorial if you accidentally deleted a shortcut:
Recreate a Deleted Shortcut
Let's say you accidentally deleted the shortcut for Spider Solitaire from the All Programs menu. Here's how you get it back:
1. Right Click on the Windows Desktop.
2. On the menu that appears, choose New, then Shortcut.
3. A Create Shortcut dialog box appears.
4. In the shortcut path field, type the path that you see in the picture below:

5. then click Next.
6. Type Spider Solitaire as the name of the shortcut, then click Finish.
7. You should now have a Spider Solitaire shortcut on your Desktop.
Most of the non-Internet games for Windows are in that Windows System32 folder, so you can use the same steps above add the name of the game that was deleted.
Here are the game names for convenience:
• Hearts: mshearts.exe
• Spider Solitaire: spider.exe
• Solitaire: sol.exe
• MineSweeper: winmine.exe
• Freecell: freecell.exe
Pinball has it's own folder: Look under C: drive, Program Files, Windows NT, Pinball, Pinball.exe
Alternatively, you can remove and re-add them as components of Windows. Go to:
1. Control Panel | Add or Remove Programs
2. Add/Remove Windows Components
3. Accessories and Utilities
4. Details button
5. Games
Uncheck the games you are missing from your Games menu, and OK your way out. Then go back in and check off the same games, and OK your way out. That should put them back in your menu.
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Here's a few more Windows Tutorials..
Click here for a few more Windows tutorials on:
• MS Office, including Outlook 2003, Word, Excel
• Internet Explorer
Here's a tutorial on Windows File Associations
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Done with Windows Tutorials, take me back to the Home page.


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