PC Magazine - 2009 04.pdf - Libertad Zero - Blog

SOluTIONS
Tips
Useful tidbits from PCMag editorial staff, Labs analysts, and readers
MICROSOFT OFFICE
Restore a Disappearing Toolbar in
Word for Mac
Recently my oft-used formatting toolbar in
Word 2008 for Mac went missing. One day
it simply disappeared, despite the fact that
the Formatting box under View | Toolbars
remained selected—how to get it back was
a frustrating mystery. I trolled every menu
option in Word, looking for the box that I
could check to recover it. At last I noticed
a small, nondescript oval button in the top
right-hand corner of my document window:
Clicking on it made my toolbar magically
reappear. Turns out that this little
bubble expands and retracts Word’s toolbars.
In fact it appears all over Apple’s OS
X, in Finder, browser, and other programs’
windows, and it does the same thing in all
of them. Who knew? Thanks, Apple, for
making this option so puzzling!—Wendy
Sheehan Donnell
Align Images in Microsoft Word
It’s easy enough to get an image into Word
2007—just copy it to the clipboard and
paste it in, or choose Insert | Picture. But
once the image is in there, you may find it a
balky old thing. You can’t move it around,
and you can’t put text alongside it; it’s
an albatross! The key to unlocking your
pasted image lies in the Text Wrapping setting.
By default, it’s set to In Line with Text,
which might be handy if your image is an
arcane rune not found in any font—then
it would flow with the text and stay in just
the right place. Most of the time, though,
you’ll want to choose a different setting.
Right-click the image, choose Text Wrapping
from the context menu, and choose
Square or Tight (or any of the other wrapping
options). Now your pasted image is
48 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION APRIL 2009
no longer locked in place. You can move
it wherever you want, and you can decide
how the text should behave around it.
You’ll find other helpful options in the Picture
ribbon that appears when you select
an image.—Neil J. Rubenking
Set New Time Increments in
Outlook’s Calendar
Outlook’s calendar divides days into hours,
which are in turn broken up into half-hours,
with appointments starting and ending on
the hour or half-hour. You’re allowed to
type odd times in (down to the minute), but
for people whose classes, appointments,
or other calendar items regularly start and
end at 15 or 45 minutes past the hour, scheduling
can become tedious. Having fielded
questions from such folk, I scoured Outlook’s
calendar options, to no avail.
The answer was out there, however,
lurking in a context menu—thanks, Microsoft,
for putting a random option nowhere
near the Options dialog. Here’s how to make
Outlook respect your schedule: Right-click
somewhere in your calendar (somewhere
within a day, not in the left-hand pane) and
choose Other Settings.... Then, next to Time
Scale, choose another time increment—say,
15 minutes. In addition to seeing your hours
divided into four segments instead of the
default two, your scheduling drop-down
will display times in 15-minute increments.
You can’t type in a custom increment, but
being able to choose 5-, 6- (6-minute increments?
Seriously?), 10-, 15-, 30-, or 60-minute
increments is a start.—Sarah Pike
NETWORKING
Improve Power-Line Performance
If you are getting less-than-stellar performance
with your power-line network, it’s
MISSING TOOLBAR?
If your toolbar in Word
2008 for the Mac goes
missing, click on the
gray oval box in the
right-hand corner.
probably because your adapters are connected
across two circuit breakers. For
best results, make sure the power-line
adapters are on the same circuit. Note that
networking performance can also degrade
if your electric circuit is overloaded, so
try not to use the hair dryer, refrigerator,
and air conditioner all on the same one.
—Mario Morejon
Turn Your Cell Phone into a Modem
Wishing you could get on the Internet
from your laptop without having to find
a Wi-Fi hot spot? Don’t want to pay $60
per month for a cellular broadband connection?
You can probably use your current
cell phone as a modem for your
laptop—and at a significant savings compared
with implementing a separate PC
card, ExpressCard, or USB solution. Head
over to Smart Device Central’s Modem
Tethering Guide for information on setting
up this kind of connection: There are
instructions for each carrier using a PC
laptop, and one specifically for Mac laptop
users.—Jamie Lendino
CAMERAS
Calibrate Your Monitor
Ever wonder why some of your friends’
pictures look better than yours? Well,
maybe it’s not your camera; it could be
your monitor. Calibration tools and software
can help you optimize your monitor’s
contrast and brightness settings so
that your pictures can come out looking
detailed and accurate. Expensive tools like
the Spyder3 can adjust your monitor for
you automatically. And software calibration
tools like DisplayMate can help you
fine-tune your monitor’s picture to your
eye. A quick Google search will turn up