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[Windows Picture and Fax Viewer]

If you click on an image file and the first thing you see is a banner telling you that you have to sign up or upgrade (for a fee); or, it just takes too long to see your picture, then your picture viewing process probably has been hijacked.  Certainly it could be improved upon.

Any number of photo processing software programs will automatically take over as your default viewer just because you use them once.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm a big fan of many of the image processing software products.  But, when I just want to take a look at an image, I prefer Windows Picture and Fax Viewer because it's fast and easy.

Naturally, you can right-click on an image and get a list of options to "Open with..."  Better still, I like to know that if I double-click an image, Windows Picture and Fax Viewer will pop up instantly and display the picture that I want to peek at quickly.

If you feel the same way, here's how you restore Windows Picture and Fax Viewer as your default in Windows:

• Go to Control Panel
• Click Folder Options
• Click the File Types Tab
• Scroll down to JPG and single-click
• If it doesn't say Windows Picture and Fax Viewer in the panel below,
  Click the Change button and select Windows Picture and Fax Viewer from the list.
• Follow the same steps for JPE, JPEG, GIF, and TIF file types

Keep frequently used documents readily available so you don't have to use the File menu and search through files and folders to find them.  Word 2007 makes this process even simpler.

Just click the Office button in the upper left corner - two columns appear: commands on the left and recent documents on the right.  To the right of each document is a pin.

Click the pin next to any document that you wish to "stick" to this menu making them readily available.

Keep frequently used documents readily available on Word's menu bar so you don't have to use the File menu and search through files and folders to find them.

Do this by adding a Work menu to Word's menu bar. Simply go to
View | Toolbars | Customize, choose the Commands tab, and select Built-in Menus from the list of categories.

Then choose Work from the list of commands and drag it to where you want it on the top-line menu.

From your new menu, choose Add to work menu to attach a filename to the menu. To remove a filename, press Ctrl-Alt-Minus and click on the item you want to remove.


by Edward Mendelson

In December, RockYou.com was hacked, and a list of usernames and passwords was exposed to the Web, in plain text. A month later, security analysis firm Imperva has analyzed the most common passwords, and the results are depressing, to say the least.

By far, the most popular password on the site was "123456," apparently satisfying a minimum character limit on the site's password restrictions, but doing little for security. A full 290,731 users used this password, far more than the runner-up, the slightly less complex "12345, which attracted 79,078 uses.

For years, security experts have been arguing that users need to use more complex passwords, especially as the computing power and algorithms behind brute-force password crackers become ever more sophisticated. But 30 percent of the RockYou users picked a password less than six characters in length, and 40 percent used only lowercase letters.

"Assuming an attacker with a DSL connection of 55KBPS upload rate and that each attempt is 0.5KB in size, it means that the attacker can have 110 attempts per second," Imperva wrote in a report released on Thursday. " At this rate, a hacker will gain access to one new account every second or just less than 17 minutes to compromise 1000 accounts."

Of the list of compromised passwords, the usual suspects surfaced: "Password"; the site's name, or "rockyou"; "abc123"; and first names, such as "Ashley" and "Daniel". Imperva published a list of the most popular passwords, all of which are extremely weak from a security sense.

The very first tip that Imperva and other security experts, such as Bruce Schneier, recommend for strong passwords is that users avoid using letter and number combinations that appear in the dictionary. The best solution, they say, is to come up with a password that incorporates both uppercase and lowercase characters, numbers, and special characters, such as "$" or "%".

But in the list of RockYou passwords, "the ADC analysis showed that almost 60% of users chose their passwords from within a limited set of characters," Imperva found. "About 40% of the users use only lowercase characters for their passwords and about another 16% use only digits. Less than 4% of the users use special characters."

The problem is that the habit is hard to break. "In 1990, a study of Unix password security revealed that password selection is strikingly similar to the 32 million breached passwords," Imperva added. "Just ten years ago, hacked Hotmail passwords showed little change. This means that the users, if allowed to, will choose very weak passwords even for sites that hold their most private data."

by Mark Hachman, PC Magazine

You can use the scroll button on your mouse to zoom in and out of documents quickly. Just hold down the Ctrl key and roll the scroll wheel forward to get a closer view of the document, or roll it back to shrink it. 

Try it - it works on other formats as well - even this one!

[Shift key]

If you hold down the Shift key while selecting the File menu in Word (or in Outlook when composing a message), the menu options change. You get handy options to Save All and Close All open files.

N.B. In Excel, you get a Close All—but not a Save All—option.

[Shift-Enter]

When you're creating a bulleted or numbered list in Word or PowerPoint, you might want an item to appear on the list without a bullet. You can start a new line without a bullet by pressing Shift-Enter. The next time you press the Enter key, the new line will continue the bulleted or numbered list.

Another useful trick: In Excel, you can press Alt-Enter to start a new line within a cell.

Smart Tags, which were introduced in Microsoft Office XP, are small XML-based icons that dynamically appear above or below data when an action is possible. Some Smart Tags are specific to an application, like Stock Symbol Smart Tags in Excel, or to a specific type of data, like a name or address in Word or Outlook. The most universal is the Paste Options Smart Tag, which appears whenever data is pasted into any Office application.

To ensure that the Smart Tags option is active, select AutoCorrect Options in the Tools menu in any Office application and click on the Smart Tags tab. Make sure the Label text with smart tags box is checked. There you will find numerous recognizers such as address, financial symbol, person name, and others, as well as a choice to remove Smart Tags altogether. Keep in mind that these choices will affect all Office applications where Smart Tags are an option.

Paste options: After pasting data in any Office application, clicking on the Smart Tag (which looks like a clipboard) will open up a menu with numerous formatting choices, including Match Destination Formatting (which will format the data being pasted in the same way as the rest of the document) and Keep Source Formatting (which will keep the text being pasted in the same format it had in the source document).

Address Smart Tags: Certain Smart Tags can perform handy actions. For example, if you type the name of one of your Outlook contacts into a Word document, a Smart Tag will provide options to send e-mail, open the contact information (if it exists), insert the person's address, or schedule a meeting. Smart Tags associated with an address include options to add the address to your contact list and to display either a map or driving directions (which automatically brings you to http://mappoint.msn.com).

Excel error-checking: Error-checking Smart Tags in Excel appear when a cell entry violates a set of rules for a function or formula. The choices offered help users spot possible errors in calculations and enable them to correct the errors or change the error-checking options.

Stock symbol: The Stock Symbol Smart Tag in Excel recognizes stock symbols and lets users get information from MSN MoneyCentral.

Other Smart Tags: Microsoft has provided an API for developers to build custom Smart Tags. Others are available on the Web. You can see a list of the ones currently available by clicking on More Smart Tags in the Smart Tags dialog box.

by Laura Delaney

Next month, HelpDeskNow is conducting an in-house lab on Virtual Server.  Virtual is becoming quite a Hot Topic.  Tune in next month.  We may have to create a separate category for Virtual.

[Select the text or graphic that has the formatting that you want to copy.]

This is real time saver in Word 2007 - try it!

You can use the Format Painter, located on the Home tab, to apply text formatting and some basic graphics formatting, such as borders and fills.

Select the text or graphic that has the formatting that you want to copy.
 
Note 
If you want to copy text formatting, select a portion of a paragraph. If you want to copy text and paragraph formatting, select an entire paragraph, including the paragraph mark.

On the Home tab, in the Clipboard group, click Format Painter.


The pointer changes to a paintbrush icon.

Note   
Double-click the Format Painter button if you want to change the format of multiple selections in your document.

Select the text or graphic that you want to format.
To stop formatting, press ESC.

Notes 
For graphics, the Format Painter works best with drawing objects, such as AutoShapes. However, you can copy formatting from a picture (such as the picture's border).
The Format Painter cannot copy the font and font size on WordArt (WordArt: Text objects you create with ready-made effects to which you can apply additional formatting options.) text.