Special Characters

Event planners always pay special attention to the small details. If you come across a name or word containing an accent use the code below to insert the exact character you need.

Alt + 131 â
Alt + 132 ä
Alt + 133 à
Alt + 135 ç
Alt + 130 é
Alt + 138 è
Alt + 136 ê
Alt + 137 ë
Alt + 139 ï
Alt + 140 î
 

Google Alerts

Google offers a free service where they will send you an email when they index a webpage containing a key phrase that you specify.

For example, I have an alert set up for the phrase "online event registration". When that phrase is added to a webpage, blog or other resource Google indexes I receive an email.

It just takes a few seconds to set up and you can control how often you receive the alerts.

Try setting up an alert using your name, company name, the names of your competitors, your products and services etc.

Here is the link to get set up - http://www.google.com/alerts.

Close All and Save All

If you are like me and end up with several MS Word or Excel documents open at the same time, you can easily save them all or closed them all at the same time.

To do this, just hold down the shift key and click “file”. You will see new menu items called “Close All” and “Save All”.

An Email Safety Net

Have you ever sent an email and then gasped when you thought that it sent to the wrong person or that there were mistakes in the email?

With most email programs there’s simply no way to recall that email. However, there’s a good chance that you’ll never utter that gasp again if you address your emails last.

Because your email won’t send without an address in the To: line, if you click send a little too soon, your email won't go anywhere and you’ll have a second chance to catch any mistakes.

Firefox Shortcuts

Many people now use Firefox as their internet browser. If you are one of them, here is a list of keyboard shortcuts to try. A few of them work in Internet Explorer too.

1. Back = Alt + left arrow
2. Forward = Alt + right arrow
3. Close Window = Alt + F4
4. Add a Bookmark = Ctrl + D
5. Complete .com Address = Ctrl + Enter
6. Complete .net Address = Shift + Enter
7. Complete .org Address = Ctrl + Shift + Enter
8. Decrease Text Size = Ctrl + minus sign
9. Increase Text Size = Ctrl + plus sign
10. Restore Text Size = Ctrl + 0
11. Full Screen = F11
12. Help = F1
13. History = Ctrl + H
14. Homepage = Alt + Home key
15. New Window = Ctrl + N

Choosing Good Passwords

Choosing good passwords can be difficult, so here are some quick tips for creating passwords that are secure yet easy to remember.

Don't Use:

• Dictionary words including foreign languages.
• Any names.
• Your login name in any form.
• Any easily obtained information about you (driver’s license number, phone number, make of your car, name of your street, etc.)
• A password of all digits or of the same letter.
• A password shorter than 6 characters.

Do Use:

• A mixture of upper and lower case letters and numbers and punctuation.
• Pronounceable nonsense words (easier to remember than random characters)
• A different password for protecting your most sensitive material.
• A standard core with a suffix and prefix specific to the material being protected.
• The first letter of each word in a favorite song, poem or phrase.
• A password that is easy for you to remember so you don’t have to write it down.
• Two shorts words joined together with punctuation.
  

Password Protecting MS Word Files

Have you ever wanted to create secure MS Word files? If so, it requires only a few simple steps.

1. Select File from the top menu bar and click “Save” or “Save As”.
2. Click on the “Tools” drop down in the dialogue box that appears and select “Security Options”.
3. You can now create a “Password to Open” and a “Password to Modify”.
4. Confirm your passwords as prompted and now each time the document is opened a dialogue box will request the password.
5. Be sure to remember your passwords as they cannot be recovered.

Disable Error Reporting to Microsoft

Everyone has had a windows program lock up on them and if you are using Windows XP you have likely seen a message asking if you would like to send information about the problem to Microsoft.

This can get annoying, so follow the procedure below to stop being asked about this.

1. Open your control panel.
2. If you use category view click “Performance and Maintenance” then click “System”. If you are in classic view, double click the “System” icon.
3. Click the “Advanced” tab.
4. Click the error reporting button at the bottom of the window and select “Disable error reporting”.

Block Senders Short Cut in Outlook

If you use Outlook as your email application and like to add senders to your blocked senders list or don’t use the blocked senders list because it is too much trouble to add addresses, here is a short cut to make the process easy.

1. Right click your toolbar and select customize.
2. Choose the “Commands” tab.
3. From the left pane select “Actions”
4. Then from the right pane left click and drag “Add sender to blocked senders list” to any spot on an existing tool bar.

Now when you want to block a sender just have the email selected and then click the new button.

If you accidentally block someone, you can unblock them by going to “Actions” then “Junk Email” and then select “Junk Email Options”. From here you will see your blocked senders list and be able to edit it.

Finding your place in a MS Word document.

If you are working on a long document in MS Word and you are on page ten and then have to make a change on page two, it can be time consuming to have to scroll to page two and then scroll back to page ten and find the spot where you let off.

To save time, after you make a change on a different page, press SHIFT + F5 and you will automatically be taken back to where you left off. If you press SHIFT + F5 again, you will be taken back to the previous change location.

This shortcut also works when you are re-opening a saved document to continue your work. The cursor will always appear at the top of the document when you first open it, but to quickly get back to where you left off, just press the SHIFT + F5 key combination.

Two features using the wheel on your mouse.

If your mouse has a scroll wheel, there are a couple of features you may not know about when using the wheel in conjunction with the shift or control keys in your browser.

Scroll + Shift

Holding down the shift key and rotating the wheel on your mouse will move you forwards and backwards through the web pages you have visited in a similar way to clicking the forward and back buttons in your browser.

Scroll + CTRL

Holding down the control key and rotating the wheel on your mouse will change the size of the text on the webpage. This will also work in Outlook.

Dragging between Excel worksheets.

If you have tried dragging data between worksheets in Excel, you have probably noticed that as you get close to the tab of the worksheet you are dragging to, the current worksheet starts scrolling.

To prevent the scrolling, hold down the ALT key and you will be able to select the tab of any worksheet in the list.

Emphasize text in MS Word.


If you are looking for a new way to make text stand out in MS Word there are a couple of ways you can do it.

First you can use an alternate underline style. To find these, click the “Format” menu and choose “Font”. From here you can select from several different styles in the “underline style” drop down box.

While you are on this page, you can also select shadow, outline, subscript, etc. by using the check boxes in the effects area.

If you want to get really fancy, choose the text effect tabs at the top of the window and you can make text flash, blink and sparkle. Although probably not something you would use in day to day communication, the situation may arise.

Getting Event Participants To Use Your Online Form.

There are many benefits to online registration, but all are lost if your event participants do not use your online form.

To help you get the most out of your investment, we have come up with several tips on how to get your event participants to register online.

Educate your event participants:

Your event participants may be used to faxing and phoning-in registrations, or they may think it’s too complicated, or just wary of providing information over the internet. Whichever it is, you should let them know why you are using online registration. Outline the benefits for them and for you. At a minimum they need to know that your online payment option is secure, that the form is easy to use and will make the process of registration easier and more efficient for all involved, and lastly, that you have a solid privacy policy about the use of information you collect on your registrants.

Make online registration the preferred or only option:

If you can get away with it, having online registration as the only option would be ideal because it saves you from having to do any manual data entry. If that’s too great a leap, you should still make it clear in all your promotional materials and on your event website, that online registration is the preferred method as it will make things much easier for both you and your event participants.

Simplify the online form:

Make sure your online form is clear, concise and easy for everyone to use no matter what their computer skills level. Keep text and graphics to a minimum and use colours and fonts that are easy to read.

Make it obvious:

Make the link to the online registration form prominent in all your promotional materials and on your event website. If you send an invitation or print an ad, make sure your event participants’ eyes are drawn to information telling them where to register online. On your event website, give large, prominent, obvious clues e.g. “Click here to register online” in big letters or have a big “Register” button. If you must provide phone and fax registration numbers, make them less prominent.

Provide incentives:

Bribery is a great way to get people to do something. We all have a price. Offer incentives to event participants who use your online registration system. Offer discounts or random draw prizes, for example, available exclusively to online registrants.

For more ideas and advice about getting people to use online registration, please feel free to contact us.

Screens Shots

There may be a time when you need to capture exactly what is being displayed on your screen such as when your computer is giving you errors and the tech support people don’t believe that it is happening or you don’t want to try to explain what you are seeing.

If you simply press the “Print Screen” key you will save an image of your screen to your clipboard. Then, if you open a new word processing or graphics document and select “Paste”, you will see an image of your screen appear. From here you can save the file and then send it off in an email. If you only need to capture the active window, hold down the “Alt” key while pressing “Print Screen”.

Other times you might want to use this technique is when you are sitting in on a webinar or other online presentation. Do screen captures rather than frantically writing notes.

Two tips using your control key.

Quick Text Sizing

If you have ever found yourself struggling to read small text on your screen, here is a tip to easily adjust the size of the text on your screen.

If you hold down the Control key while you move the wheel on your mouse you should see the size of the text change. In Internet Explorer, it will change the text size setting that is found under the “view” menu and in other Microsoft programs it will control the zoom feature. Since you are only changing the size that the text appears on your screen and not the font size, you don’t have to worry about altering your formatting with this function.

Multiple Selections

When you need to select multiple files, folders or email messages from a list or window but not others, hold down the control key while you left click the icons to select them. If you continue holding the control key down, you will be able to select any of the other icons without the others becoming unselected. Clicking a selected icon a second time will unselect it.

Sorting in Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel is a very powerful program that you can use to work with your registration data. You can easily sort your data on any of the fields (last name, date, etc.) with a few simple clicks, but you can mix up your data just as easily.

Before you attempt any sorting, you must select all of the data on the sheet. You can do this by holding down the “Ctrl” key and pressing the “a” key, or by holding down the left mouse button and dragging the pointer over the data.

If you miss this step and proceed to sort, only the column that you select will be sorted while the rest of the data stays in its original position.

To sort once the data is selected, go to “data” and select “sort”. In the window that opens you will be able to set the sort options.

If you accidentally sort without selecting all of the data and realize it right away, you can undo it by with a “Ctrl + z” or by selecting “undo” from the edit menu. If you don’t realize it right away, you may still have a chance to recover by repeating the undo command several times to get back to the pre-sorted state. If this doesn't work you will have to revert back to the original file and start over.

Keyboard Shortcuts.

With carpal tunnel syndrome being a serious issue these days, keyboard shortcuts can really cut down on mouse work. Here are two simple keyboard shortcuts that you can use countless times each day if you spend most of it in front of a computer.

ALT + TAB

Many people have several programs open at the same time and are always switching between them. A really quick way to do this is to hold down the “ALT” key while pressing the “TAB” key. Each time you press “TAB” you will select the next program or window you have open. The sequence starts at the most recently used window, so if you are going back and forth between two windows you don’t have to scroll through all the open ones to get where you want to go.

CTRL + ENTER

When you want to access a website ending in .com, you can save typing the “www.” and the “.com” in the address bar of your browser by holding down the CTRL and pressing ENTER (in Internet Explorer only). For example, if you wanted to get to “www.eply.com”, just type “eply” in the address bar and then press CTRL + ENTER to fill in the rest.

Signature Fields For More Than Just Signatures.

Most people have a signature set up in their email software to include their name, phone number, title, etc. so they don’t have to key this information into every email they send.

Most email software will allow you to set up more than one signature, so you can use the extra ones to insert any frequently used text with just a few clicks or key strokes. For example, if you often find yourself entering your mailing address or descriptions of your products or services, set this text up as a second or third signature and never have to enter it into an email again.

A shortcut to start new email messages

Shortcuts are usually set up as convenient ways to launch programs or access websites, but they can also be used to start an automatically addressed email.

Here is what you need to do if you are using windows XP (the procedure is very similar in other versions of windows).

1. Right click on your desktop and select “new” and then click “shortcut”.
2. In the window that appears type “mailto:” and then an email address you frequently send messages to. An example is “mailto:info@eply.com”.
3. Click “next” to name your short cut and then click “OK” to finish.

Now when you double click the shortcut, a new email message will be opened with the email address automatically entered.

To make activating this or any other shortcut even easier, you can set up a shortcut key.

For example, if you set “CTRL + ATL + A” as your short cut key, pressing this key combination will open the new email message.

To set this up, right click the shortcut you created and select “Properties”.

Click in the “Shortcut Key” field and press the key combination you want to use and then click “OK”.

Using a combination of the CTRL and ALT keys will help to make sure your shortcut keys don’t conflict with other functions since most people rarely use these key combinations.

How to disable the “are you sure” dialog box when deleting items.

You may find it annoying always having to click “yes” to the “are you sure you want to delete this item” dialog box when sending something to the recycle bin in windows.

Here is how you can disable this feature:

1. Right-click the Recycle Bin.
2. Click Properties.
3. From the Global tab uncheck the Display delete confirmation dialog box.
4. Click OK.

Remember, if you accidentally delete something you can easily recover it from the recycle bin if it hasn’t been emptied.

How to bypass the recycle bin when deleting.

In some cases you may want to bypass the recycle bin and permanently delete a file. To do this select the item you want to delete by clicking it with the left mouse button. Then hold down the “shift” key and press “delete”.

You may have never used the Windows key (normally located between the CTRL and ALT keys) but there are several time saving short cuts available.

Win key + M will Minimize all windows.
Win key + Shift + M will reverse Minimize all windows.
Win key + D will switch between minimizing all open programs and showing them all.
Win key + R will open the Run Program box.
Win key + F will open the Start menu's Find window.
Win key + E will quickly launch Explorer.
Win key + Pause/Break will open the System Properties window.
Win key + Tab will cycle through items on the taskbar.

For people who like to use arrow keys to move around in word processing documents, here is a tip that will speed things up.

If you hold down the “CTRL” key while using the left and right arrow keys to move your cursor, it will move one word at a time instead of one space at a time. “CTRL” and the up and down keys will move it between paragraph breaks.

If you hold down the shift key at the same time it will also select the text as you go.

If you work with long documents in Microsoft Word, you know that it can be easy to lose your place when editing the document.

If this happens, hold down the shift key and press F5 to get the cursor to jump back to the last place you made a change.  If you press this combination again, you will be taken back to the next previous change.

Adding special characters such as symbols for cents, registered, copyright and degrees is easier than you might think.

Each of these characters has a key sequence associated with it such as the ones below (hold down the Alt key while entering the digits).

Alt + 0162 = ¢
Alt + 0174 = ®
Alt + 0169 = ©
Alt + 0176 = °

If you use certain symbols frequently it is handy to remember the key sequence.  For the whole range of symbols find the character map in Windows by clicking "start", "all programs", "accessories" and then select "character map".  If the character map isn't installed on your computer, just search the internet for "character map" and you will find several online versions.

Using the Microsoft Office Clipboard

Most people know about cutting and pasting in Windows, but if you are an MS Office user there is an even more powerful feature that you can use.

The MS Office clipboard allows you to copy and store up to twenty-four different items at the same time.  When you are ready to paste an item, you can click it from a list or paste all of the items at once.

To start the clipboard, open an office program and go to the “edit” menu and select “office clipboard” or hold down the CTRL key and quickly press “C” twice.

Once the clipboard window opens, try copying something and you will see it appear on the clipboard.  To paste it back just click the item on the clipboard.

Repeating Steps in Excel

If you find yourself repeating steps in Excel that require several clicks or keystrokes such as formatting cells or inserting rows, here is a tip that can save you some time.

To repeat the last action you did, press the key combination of “ctrl” + “y”.  For example, if you just inserted a row and want to insert another one, position the cursor where you want the row added and press “ctrl” + “y”.

Keyboard Shortcuts in Excel

Here are several keyboard short cuts you can use to increase productivity in Excel.

Simply select the cells you want to format and then press the given key combination.

Ctrl + Shift + ~ will apply the General Number format.
Ctrl + Shift + $ will apply the Currency format.
Ctrl + Shift + % will apply the Percentage format.
Ctrl + Shift + ! will apply the Number format, with 2 decimal places.
Ctrl + Shift + & will apply the Outline Border.
Ctrl + Shift + _ will remove the Outline Border.
Ctrl + B will apply or remove Bold.
Ctrl + I will apply or remove Italic.
Ctrl + U will apply or remove Underline.

Keyboard Shortcuts in Outlook

Here are several keyboard short cuts for MS Outlook.

Ctrl + Shift + I - go to the Inbox
Ctrl + Shift + O - go to the Outbox
Enter - open the selected message
Ctrl + N - start a new email message
Ctrl + R - reply to the current message
Ctrl + F - forward the current message
Ctrl + Enter - send the current message

Hiding Excel Spreadsheets.

If you are ever working on an Excel spreadsheet and you want to hide the data when someone comes into your office or if you have several spreadsheets open at the same time and want to clean up the clutter there is an easy way to do this that doesn’t involve opening and closing the files.

Simply go to the Window menu and click “hide” to remove the spreadsheet from view. When you want to see it again, go back to the Window menu and click “unhide” and then select the file you want to restore.

If you close Excel before unhiding your files, you will be asked if you want to save the hidden files before closing. If you choose to save a file while it is hidden the next time you open the file you will have to unhide it before you can see the data.