Useful computer tricks...

[GHO57]

@Knowed_Out

If you want to save a pic off a web page but is blocked with some kind of copyright guard, or is part of a flash window, you can use a couple of alternate methods.

This works in Foxfire. Don’t know if it works in IE.

1. R-click on a white part of the page
2. Click View Page Info.
3. Click the Media tab.
4. It will show a whole list of the images on that page, and clicking on a list item shows the image on the space below. Hunt for the one you want then click Save As.

I just use the Save Imagesaddon… well, at least on those sites that the Show Just Image 2 script doesn’t clean up properly. But sure… what you said ought to work too.

[Intergalactic_Gladiator]

This one I use all the time: click Alt, Space, M and use the arrow kes to move the program around on the desktop. It’s especially useful for when Windows decides to throw your spreadsheet in some area that is not on the screen.

[Harmonious_Discord]

For a large area of text to be copied:

Left click at the beginning of the text.
Go to the end of what you want to copy.
Shift + left click the end of the text to copy.
All the text between the two clicks is selected.

[jjimm]

Can someone please tell me how to stop the clipboard from pasting formatting.

I C&P between applications all the time, and I have (nearly) NEVER EVER EVER had the need to preserve formatting between applications. I constantly hop between apps via Notepad. Why does Windows DO this?! Who at MS ever thought this was good default behaviour?

Anyway, though I can “paste special” sometimes, and I’ve been looking into particular macros for MS Office apps though I can’t make them work, it would be awesome to have the default C&P behaviour just paste the text of what’s been copied (and maybe have a “copy formatting” additional key combination, just in case I need it). Anyone know if there’s a mod to do this?

[RalfCoder]

I’ve amazed people with the alt-tab function in windoze. It toggles between the open sessions you have going.

I’ve also taught my users to use the ctrl-printscreen function to send me error messages. I ask them to save the image in MS Paint or something similar first, and trim the image down to just the relevant application and message. Otherwise I get them reading the entire message over the phone. “It says, 'Tee ess ess oh three seven seven dash oh three four dash space space… uh, I think it’s really three spaces… access denied - operator not authorized to use dataset”

[Munch]

@RealityChuck

1. In Excel, pressing F4 will repeat the previous command.

That works in Word as well. It’s extremely useful when formatting a document, and you need specific headers to have a specific formatting.

2. In Word, if you highlight text and press SHIFT/F3, it will toggle through to change the capitalization from all lower case to Capitalized to ALL CAPS.

Nice! (Though that’s going to be a little tough to remember…)

[lieu]

Is there a key combination that takes you back to one (or more) of your previous cntl+c captures? In other words if I cntl+c a url, then cntl+c a quote and then want to go back and cntl+v the url, is there a way to do that?

[Zeldar]

Just this week I had occasion to use some tricks I had all but forgotten.

There was a clip on YouTube that I wanted to get a segment of as a still picture.

At just the right instant I hit “Print Screen” (in that cluster of keys with Insert, Delete, Page Up, Page Down, Home, End, etc.).

Then I opened Irfan View (which has become my go-to graphics handler) and did a Paste of the screen’s picture into the Irfan View workspace.

Then I used the cursor to surround the portion I wanted to keep and then the Edit –> Crop feature to cut it out of the screen shot.

Then I saved the little picture as a new file.

I don’t doubt there are easier ways to do this sort of thing, but at least this one works.

(I’m mainly using this post as a way to keep up with this thread, which is some neat info! Thanks for it )

[needscoffee]

@Harmonious_Discord

For a large area of text to be copied:

Left click at the beginning of the text.
Go to the end of what you want to copy.
Shift + left click the end of the text to copy.
All the text between the two clicks is selected.

Brilliant!

[RealityChuck]

@Harmonious_Discord

For a large area of text to be copied:

Left click at the beginning of the text.
Go to the end of what you want to copy.
Shift + left click the end of the text to copy.
All the text between the two clicks is selected.

I can do it one click (in Word):

1. Move the cursor to the left margin of the page.
2. Do a CTRL/Click.

Second method (works in most software): Press CTRL/A

[ZipperJJ]

@jjimm

Can someone please tell me how to stop the clipboard from pasting formatting.

I C&P between applications all the time, and I have (nearly) NEVER EVER EVER had the need to preserve formatting between applications. I constantly hop between apps via Notepad. Why does Windows DO this?! Who at MS ever thought this was good default behaviour?

Anyway, though I can “paste special” sometimes, and I’ve been looking into particular macros for MS Office apps though I can’t make them work, it would be awesome to have the default C&P behaviour just paste the text of what’s been copied (and maybe have a “copy formatting” additional key combination, just in case I need it). Anyone know if there’s a mod to do this?

PureText. Own it. Love it.

[Mahaloth]

@Chronos

Control-S doesn’t appear to do anything in an OSX terminal.

Shoot! I was looking forward to that.

Is there a “lock” key or combo for OS X? I have to use this kind of thing to bother people.

[descamisado]

If you ever find yourself having to teach someone something on the computer in Word (or practice stuff yourself) and you need some quick, intelligible text, try typing “=rand(#,#),” then hit enter.

The random text that will appear will be “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” The numbers you substitute for the two pound signs in parentheses will represent, respectively, the number of paragraphs and the number of sentences per paragraph that you want.

[Munch]

@RealityChuck

I can do it one click (in Word):

1. Move the cursor to the left margin of the page.
2. Do a CTRL/Click.

Huh? That seems to select a seemingly-random length of text. Where am I supposed to CTRL+Click?

Second method (works in most software): Press CTRL/A

That selects all text in the document. If I want to select pages 12-25 of an 83 page document, I do what Harmonius Discord said.

[Munch]

@descamisado

If you ever find yourself having to teach someone something on the computer in Word (or practice stuff yourself) and you need some quick, intelligible text, try typing “=rand(#,#),” then hit enter.

For clarity:

Type “=rand(#,#)” without the quote marks (or the extraneous comma as above), then hit enter.

[scr4]

@Harmonious_Discord

For a large area of text to be copied:

Left click at the beginning of the text.
Go to the end of what you want to copy.
Shift + left click the end of the text to copy.
All the text between the two clicks is selected.

This method (Click to mark the beginning, shift-click to mark the end) also works on most lists in most Windows applications. Like selecting multiple files in Windows Explorer, multiple tracks in iTunes, multiple photos in Picasa, etc.

A similar method works for the keyboard too: move the cursor to the beginning of the section, then press and hold the Shift key while you use the arrow keys to go to the end of the section.

[RealityChuck]

@Munch

@RealityChuck

I can do it one click (in Word):

1. Move the cursor to the left margin of the page.
2. Do a CTRL/Click.

Huh? That seems to select a seemingly-random length of text. Where am I supposed to CTRL+Click?

It should select all text. Move the cursor to the left so it changes into an arrow. If you CTRL-Click, it selects all text.

If you just click, it selects the nearest line. Once you have selected that line, then CTRL-Click it will select another line near the cursor. This lets you select noncontiguous lines.

[Munch]

@RealityChuck

This lets you select noncontiguous lines.

Ah - that’s what was left out from the original instructions. To select several pages, that would take about 30 clicks per page.

[scr4]

If you have a file showing in Windows Explorer, and you want to copy-and-paste the name of the file onto somewhere else, select the file and press F2. This is the Rename command, but it also highlights the current filename. Do a Ctrl-C to copy that name, and Esc to get out of the rename command. (And don’t type anything else until you hit Esc, you would end up actually renaming the file.)

I know, this is silly and useless for most people, but I find I use this a lot.

[tdn]

@Harmonious_Discord

For a large area of text to be copied:

Left click at the beginning of the text.
Go to the end of what you want to copy.
Shift + left click the end of the text to copy.
All the text between the two clicks is selected.

I knew about this for a long time, but sometimes I either can’t do it that way or don’t feel like it. Sometimes I like to click and drag through the text.

But that can go really slowly. If I drag beyond the text, outside of the client area, it’s still slow. But if I then move the mouse cursor back and forth, it totally speeds it up. This happens on every machine I’ve tried it on, in every application.

But if I want to select everything really quickly, CTRL+HOME, CTRL+SHIFT+END. Or right click, Select All.

Here’s a neat trick to recover a corrupted Word document, especially one that crashes within seconds of opening it. (I don’t know how much of a problem this is these days, but when I did phone support for Word 2.0 and 6.0, this was a common call.)

1. Create a new document.
2. Type in some garbage text.
3. Record a new macro with some random name.
4. CTRL+HOME
5. CTRL+SHIFT+END
6. SHIFT+Left arrow
7. CTRL+C
8. Open a new document
9. CTRL+V
10. Stop the macro from recording.
11. Rename the macro to “autoexec.” (Without the period.)
12. Open your corrupted document.
13. Enjoy.

You may lose some formatting, but at least you’ll have your text in a new document.