Why click through a series of locations to find the file you want, when a snappy little shortcut will take you right to it? And on the flip side, why have shortcuts to folders you never use? These questions make the My Places bar the bar at the left of the Open and Save dialog boxes in Microsoft Office programs an area of contention for me. Microsoft’s default shortcuts for Windows XP/Office 2003 users are My Recent Documents, Desktop, My Documents, My Computer, and My Network Places. Do you use any or all of those?
Good news: You are by no means stuck with these idle default locations. You can hide them with a simple Windows Registry edit. And for complete customization, you can also add locations you actually do use (the My Places bar can store up to 256) and rearrange the order of all your shortcuts. Here we’re working in Office 2007 and Windows XP. The steps to edit the Registry are the same no matter which version of Office you’re using just be sure to navigate to the correct Office version in the directory tree. Read More»
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A good gift PC represents the bare minimum of what you should do to get your computer ready for a new home. Fortunately, that doesn’t take much time, effort, or money. It essentially involves removing your data files thoroughly and clearing out basic network settings.
You won’t have any access to files on a PC that leaves your possession, so if you haven’t already copied them off its hard drive, you’ll need to do so before you delete them. The My Documents folder is where most of your files live, but if you have multiple Windows users, there’s a My Documents folder for each one. If you use AOL, you probably have personal files in its Downloads folder. Quicken, QuickBooks, and TurboTax put their data files in unusual locations you should double-check: Quicken uses C:\Quickenw, C:\Program Files\Quickenw, or C:\Program Files\Intuit\Quicken. QuickBooks data files live in C:\Program Files\Intuit\Quickbooks. TurboTax usually stores its files in the TAX01 folder inside the default installation folder; search for files with a .tax extension to be sure. Read More»
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February 03, 2007 by
Jason The My Music folder is the place where Windows automatically saves all the audio clips you download from the Internet or save on your hard drive with Windows Media Player. The My Music folder, like My Pictures, is an automatic part of the My Documents folder.
To open the My Music folder from the Windows XP desktop, click the Start button and then click My Music (normally third from the top in the right-hand column in the Start pop-up menu). To open this folder from another folder, such as My Computer, click the Address bar drop-down button (on the right side) and then click My Documents at the top of the pop-up list (right below Desktop at the very top). You can then open My Music by double-clicking that folder icon (the one with the music note in it) in the My Documents window.
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February 03, 2007 by
Jason Windows’ folder views default to big, annoying icons. To get down to serious business, you need to view items in a list with detailed information.
To do this, open a folder by clicking on My Computer\C: drive, then on one of the folders, or click on Start, then My Documents. Under the View menu select Details, which reveals columns for name, creation date, size, and more. Hone your view with the directional triangles in each column to change the way items are sorted.
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