Tips, Tricks, and Techy Tidbits

A list in Excel is a “chunk of data”. Usually the data has headings across the top of the chunk. A list should contain no empty rows or columns, it can contain empty cells (because sometimes you don’t have the data necessary to fill in the cell.)

Examples of lists - mailing list; list of sales people including their territory and sales figures for several years; Top 100 Businesses in your area including # of employees, sales, name of CEO.

Although we often think of Excel as a tool for performing calculations, some lists may contain only text (such as a name and address list.) The value of creating and maintaining this type of list in Excel vs. Word is the many tools available to sort, filter, subtotal, extract, merge, and otherwise evaluate and manipulate the list data. Read the rest of this entry »

The Best Computer Tips and Software Deals on the Internet! Visit WorldStart’s home page and peruse their archived computer tips, newsletters, and software store. I receive their MS Office and Computer Tips newsletters and enjoy the variety of information and how well it’s presented.

Just to prove what a geek I am … I’m not a legal professional, although I do work with them. But I truly enjoy perusing Genie Tyburski’s The Virtual Chase.

The Virtual Chase
Teaching Legal Professionals How to Do Research.

The Virtual Chase is a service of the law firm Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, LLP. Genie Tyburski is Web Manager of The Virtual Chase. She writes for Law Office Computing, and speaks about Internet research issues at library and continuing legal education programs.

Download Trace! Document Security Freeware for Microsoft Office, from Workshare. You can run Trace! against any Microsoft Office document on your computer, company network, or oninternal or external websites. Trace! analyzes your document’s security risk rating. Workshare provides a Quick Reference Guide and Trace! Release Notes in PDF.

A resize handle exists for tables. This is handy when you want to make a table bigger, width- and or height-wise.

Hover the mouse pointer near the lower right corner of the table. A small square appears, and you’ll notice the mouse pointer changes to a diagonal pointer with an arrow at each end.

Press and drag, you can make the table wider/narrower; taller/shorter; or change size in both directions.

I came across this great illustration of an adult learning curve at Jim Eidelman’s Learning Curve Tips. Check it out. Read the rest of this entry »

CNET news.com reported on May 30 that researchers at eEye Digital Security discovered a vulnerability in Symantec's Client Security 3.1 and AntiVirus Corporate Edition 10.1 software; the Norton line of consumer antivirus products remained unaffected. From eEye's website: "Description: A remotely exploitable vulnerability exists within the Symantec Antivirus program. This flaw does not require any end user interaction for exploitation and can compromise affected systems, allowing for the execution of malicious code with SYSTEM level access."

On May 31 CIO Today reported that the vulnerability had been patched.

Symantec has released Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) signatures via LiveUpdate for Symantec Client Security, to provide protection against the vulnerability.

I received a phone call today from a client who is concerned about redaction in PDFs. He wanted to know what tools were available to reliably redact PDFs, and if there were certain processes he and his staff should be aware of. I pointed him to:

• Planet PDF - PDF security: Redaction and third party tools
• Adobe Acrobat - Redaction of Confidential Information in a Document
• PDF for Lawyers - PDF Redaction — some Q&A
• NSA - Redacting With Confidence: How to Safely Publish Sanitized Reports Converted from Word to PDF

Fundamentally, don’t think that just because you can’t see digital information, it isn’t there. It will be discovered and used by someone else.

Do you mute your cell and land line phone when you need to focus and gain some quality time for substantial work? Do you close your office door, tell your assistant you’d like not to be interrupted?

What about your e-mail? E-mail can be a considerable interruption if you let it. Do you truly need a new e-mail alert popping up or sounding off during those precious times of concentration? No you don’t, and you can turn off those alerts and never look back!

If you use Outlook 2003, here’s how … Read the rest of this entry »

You can ask Outlook to start up the way you want - displaying your Calendar, or For Followup folder, or … you name it. Follow these steps to make it so:

1. From Outlook’s Tools menu, choose Options.
2. Click the Other tab.
3. Click the Advanced Options button.
4. From Startup in this folder, click the Browse button.
5. Navigate to desired folder, in example below we chose Calendar.
6. Click OK, OK, OK. The next time you open Outlook it will open as you chose here!

The turn on the non-printing characters lecture is soon to be posted, I can feel it in my bones.

Until then - let me remind you - click the Show/Hide button to toggle the non-printing characters in your Word document. Read the rest of this entry »

Get your viewers here:

Word 2003 viewer - replaces Word 97 and all previous viewers - you can open, view, print and copy all MS and Mac Word files, and files saved in many other formats.

Excel 2003 - replaces Excel 97 viewer - you can open, view, print, copy Excel 2003, 2002, 2000, and 97 workbooks.

PowerPoint 2003 - replaces PowerPoint 97 - MS says this lets you view presentations created in PowerPoint 97 and on up. No mention of copying or printing.

We’ll be posting soon about some of the intricacies and myths of WordPerfect to Word.

Rick Borstein of Adobe Systems, Inc. explains the use of the Typewriter tool in Adobe Acrobat 7 in April 2006 Law Practice Today article. The tool allows you to fill out forms not containing form fields for your input. He explains how to get the tool, how to use it, and how to enable the tool for users of the free Adobe Acrobat 7 Reader.

More Adobe Acrobat links:

Acrobat for Legal Professionals - Rick’s blog

Adobe Acrobat Solutions for Legal Professionals - information, white papers, case studies

Greetings!

Welcome to Tips, Tricks, and Techy Tidbits - a collection of software shortcuts and tips; links to various tech, tech-law, and law blogs; and whatever else interests me enough to pass on. The Pages links to the right take you to my business, ABC Consulting.

In early 2005 I left my role as Help Desk and Software Trainer at Cincinnati, Ohio’s oldest law firm and struck out on the solo consulting path. I am a software instructor, a “PC productivity coach”, and a big fan of being smart about how we work.

I represent the human side of technology.

Read the rest of this entry »

In Litigating with Adobe Acrobat: Part 1,  Joe Kashi describes some of the ways Adobe Acrobat has helped his litigation practice grow.  He describes Adobe Acrobat as " … a transformational technology …"  Read more at Law Practice Today, and stay tuned for Joe's Part II.