SENIOR COMPUTER USERS GROUP

Issue 205, November, 2009 Sponsored by Fox Valley Technical College

Email Address: srnet@srnet-foxvalley.org

General Meeting: November 20

Joel Anger from Office Depot will be our speaker. He will discuss: “New Technology: HP--PC with a touch screen.” There will be some time for questions.

Local Computer User Interest groups

Resource Sharing by Jerome F. Sobiesczyk:

The Resource Sharing SIG held its first meeting at the D. J. Bordini Center located across from the Main FVTC Buildings. A strong attendance precipitated a number of questions and comments from the floor taking up the full hour of the SIG. The buildings location is located on the first floor and parking is only a short walk from the building. All questions are open for discussion, nothing too little or too small. If you have a problem, here’s the place for possible answers.

Internet: by Kermit McGinnis

A request was made for a facilitator and Kermit McGinnis and John Klemm agreed that they would share the task. Some general questions about different browsers were discussed. Kerm asked everyone to bring their favorite web site to share and discuss for the November meeting.

Scanner/Photo Users Group by Jerry Sobiesczyk

At the November meeting, we will be using Microsoft Word to create a Holiday card. If you are interested in creating a personalized card to present to your friend(s), this mini class is for you.

Genealogy Users Group by Mary Klein

In October we looked at a variety of search engines and the different
results they offer; and also, how, when & why to use genealogy mailing
lists.
Our November session will include recommended sites from presentations
at the Wisconsin State Genealogical Society’s fall seminar.

Regional meetings:

Waushara User Group by Alice Waypa

At the October 22 meeting, our presenter was Dr. Mark Vandecastle of Active Lifestyle Chiropractic in Wautoma, discussing health problems and solutions related to the computer. First and foremost, your posture is the most important thing at the computer. With good posture, sit in a good chair. A “good” chair is usually one that can be adjusted. Keep your back straight. Use your body the way it is meant to be used. To take the pressure off the knees, have them elevated to aid blood flow. Keep wrists up. When moving the mouse, use the whole arm not only the wrist. Keep the head straight. If not, there will be muscle tension in the neck. While typing, avoid looking at papers to the side. Twisting will strain the discs and cause swelling, which puts a lot of stress on the body. The extra stress affects the joints and muscles. Take 60-second breaks by standing up on your toes, and shrugging your shoulders. Close your eyes, relax. Another computer-related stress is eye strain, which can cause headaches. Headaches are the # 1 health problem in the US. Arrange your computer workstation so that you are about 20 inches from the monitor. If you wear eyeglasses (especially bifocals or trifocals), discuss your computer use with your eye care professional.

Users’ News:

Fox Cities Holiday Luncheon

Our annual Holiday Luncheon will again be held at the VFW, Thursday, December 10. The social hour will begin at 11:30 AM, with the luncheon at noon. Tickets are $13.00, and will be available at the November General meeting. We need to have a person count by Dec. 2 to help the cooks prepare enough food. Norm Pregler will handle the ticket sales.

Waushara Holiday Luncheon

The Waushara Users Group will combine its November and December meetings, and have a Holiday Potluck Luncheon. The date/time is Thursday, December 3, noon-2:00pm.

Tip of the Month

Discover the Word F8 Key by Susan Daffron

http://www.copyscape.com/

Have you ever had this experience? You need to highlight some text in Microsoft Word. So you click and drag and suddenly Word seems to lose its marbles and speed up the highlighting so much that you end up highlighting four pages of text, instead of the half page you intended.

(Been there; done that.)

However, there's an easy solution to this problem that many Word users don't know. You can use the F8 key to highlight text instead of the mouse. To highlight text, click or move the cursor so it is to the left of the first character of text you want to highlight. Now press the F8 function key at the top of the keyboard. (You don’t hold it down.) Now you can just use your arrow keys to extend the selection.

Once you are in this "extend selections" mode, you can do some tricky things to tell Word where you want the highlighting to end. For example, if you type a character such as "s" for example, (there is no box, just type the letter), the selection automatically finds the next instance of the letter "s" and extends the highlighting to that point. Similarly, you can use Word's Search feature to find particular text. So if you know that the word "canine" is on page 2 somewhere, you can press F8 to put Word into extend selection mode, then press Ctrl+F , a dialog box will appear, so enter canine into the Find What box and click Find Next. The text is highlighted up to that point.

After you have the text highlighted, you remain in extend mode until you do something to the selection, such as cutting, copying, or formatting it in some way. To get out of extend selection mode; you just press the Esc key, which is normally located in the upper left-hand corner of your keyboard.

With a little practice, you'll find the F8 key can save you a lot of time. It's great when you need some extra control either for selecting really small or really large amounts of text in a document. So go forth and highlight!

Volunteers Needed:

We really are in need of a recording secretary for the General Meeting. Please volunteer for writing a 50-100 word summary of each meeting. Thanks.

Quote for the Month:

The joy that you give to others

is the joy that comes back to you.

--E. B. White