23 June 2005
Simple step keeps hard drive from filling up with spam
Question: Every day I delete spam. Today it was 66, a record. Yesterday Outlook Express wanted to compress the files. Is this stuff filling up my hard drive? How can I get rid of it and stop the incoming without changing my Internet service provider? _ Bob Stump @camtel.net
Answer: I wish I could just tap out a paragraph or two and tell the world how to eliminate spam, Mr. S., but that's a question that people far more adept than Mr. Computer Answer Person have failed to solve for years now.
As you note, though, in addition to becoming an obnoxious time sink, spam also clutters up hard-drive real estate even if one has anti-spam shields in place and set all the way up to Kill all Klingons.
The junk, as you note, gets saved into the default Deleted Items folder, or in a special folder designated for spam that folks set up using various rules to identify and quarantine unwanted messages.
These folders are needed because there are times when even the best spam filters can attack messages that one really needs.
However, it is possible to remove these deleted messages permanently by the simple process of going to the Deleted Items folder and either delete one by one or tap Control + A to select all messages at once and then Control + X to kill them for good.
It's not a bad idea to do this every time the software pops up with an offer to compress the entire contents of the e-mail in an archive file.
___
Q: We have just upgraded our home computers to Windows XP and Office 2003. When we insert pictures into a Word document, the Format Picture option does not seem to work. The pictures are inserted, but they are either at the left or right margins.
When we change to absolute positioning and click OK, the changes are ignored. Interestingly, I was able to do the Microsoft online tutorial on graphics in Word, but I could not get the position to work on a new document.
Any ideas on a missing setting? Are you aware of any problems in this area? We have installed all the required updates to Office 2003 as of May 15. _ Elaine Olson @comcast.net
A: There are a couple of points to review here, Ms. O., but otherwise your settings can be fixed simply by forcing Word to rebuild the default settings file it uses each time it is booted up.
Do that anyway so we're both on the same page as I suggest a fix. So right-click on Start and then click the magnifying glass icon for Search. Now type normal.dot in the search terms box and click OK. When this file appears in the panel on the right of the search display, give it a right-click and select rename from the pop-up menu that appears. Change it to something like xnormal.dot so you can restore it in case you have changed other settings that you still need.
Now to ensure that you're doing it all correctly, open your document and select the Print Layout setting in the View item on the toolbar. This assures that your document will appear on the screen just like it will look when printed.
Now put the cursor near where you want to insert the picture and then click on the Insert menu and then select Picture and From File. Use the browser box this summons to find the picture file you need to center in the document.
Click Insert in the file browser and the image will appear at the cursor location with text above and below it. Now right-click on the image and select the Format Picture option that appears in the list of choices. This brings up a tabbed menu where you need to select Layout.
This brings up a display with icons showing various ways the picture can be placed on the page, including centered or on the left or right margins.
Be sure to select the icon for square rather than the default that puts it on the left-hand side of the page. Now check the alignment buttons below these icons and make certain that yours is set to Other instead of left, right or center. Now click Advanced and select "Move with text."
With this done you can click on the inserted image and drag it wherever you want, and the text will flow around it or alongside it. Now save the document and then close it. It will come up where you want it when the file gets opened again.
Answer: I wish I could just tap out a paragraph or two and tell the world how to eliminate spam, Mr. S., but that's a question that people far more adept than Mr. Computer Answer Person have failed to solve for years now.
As you note, though, in addition to becoming an obnoxious time sink, spam also clutters up hard-drive real estate even if one has anti-spam shields in place and set all the way up to Kill all Klingons.
The junk, as you note, gets saved into the default Deleted Items folder, or in a special folder designated for spam that folks set up using various rules to identify and quarantine unwanted messages.
These folders are needed because there are times when even the best spam filters can attack messages that one really needs.
However, it is possible to remove these deleted messages permanently by the simple process of going to the Deleted Items folder and either delete one by one or tap Control + A to select all messages at once and then Control + X to kill them for good.
It's not a bad idea to do this every time the software pops up with an offer to compress the entire contents of the e-mail in an archive file.
___
Q: We have just upgraded our home computers to Windows XP and Office 2003. When we insert pictures into a Word document, the Format Picture option does not seem to work. The pictures are inserted, but they are either at the left or right margins.
When we change to absolute positioning and click OK, the changes are ignored. Interestingly, I was able to do the Microsoft online tutorial on graphics in Word, but I could not get the position to work on a new document.
Any ideas on a missing setting? Are you aware of any problems in this area? We have installed all the required updates to Office 2003 as of May 15. _ Elaine Olson @comcast.net
A: There are a couple of points to review here, Ms. O., but otherwise your settings can be fixed simply by forcing Word to rebuild the default settings file it uses each time it is booted up.
Do that anyway so we're both on the same page as I suggest a fix. So right-click on Start and then click the magnifying glass icon for Search. Now type normal.dot in the search terms box and click OK. When this file appears in the panel on the right of the search display, give it a right-click and select rename from the pop-up menu that appears. Change it to something like xnormal.dot so you can restore it in case you have changed other settings that you still need.
Now to ensure that you're doing it all correctly, open your document and select the Print Layout setting in the View item on the toolbar. This assures that your document will appear on the screen just like it will look when printed.
Now put the cursor near where you want to insert the picture and then click on the Insert menu and then select Picture and From File. Use the browser box this summons to find the picture file you need to center in the document.
Click Insert in the file browser and the image will appear at the cursor location with text above and below it. Now right-click on the image and select the Format Picture option that appears in the list of choices. This brings up a tabbed menu where you need to select Layout.
This brings up a display with icons showing various ways the picture can be placed on the page, including centered or on the left or right margins.
Be sure to select the icon for square rather than the default that puts it on the left-hand side of the page. Now check the alignment buttons below these icons and make certain that yours is set to Other instead of left, right or center. Now click Advanced and select "Move with text."
With this done you can click on the inserted image and drag it wherever you want, and the text will flow around it or alongside it. Now save the document and then close it. It will come up where you want it when the file gets opened again.
# posted by vdodon @ 06:57 
