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Solution to the missing “Up” button in Vista’s Windows Explorer

Angela — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 03:41:22 +0000

I started using Vista when it was RTM well over a year ago. Currently, I use XP Pro on my home desktop and Vista Ultimate 64bit on my laptop. All in all, I’ve had no issues. But one continued to bother me. When using Windows Explorer, the “Up” button was missing. On XP, I used this all the time. It was quite handy.

Most of the time you can just click the folder name in the address bar to go up one folder. But sometimes, like when you’re in folder on your desktop, you have to manually edit the location in the address bar. Kind of a pain.

I figured it was some setting that I had to modify rather than using the default, but never bothered to look for it. After some searching, I found two ways around this problem. I prefer the first.

1. It’s so simple. Use ALT + Up Arrow. Genius. This shortcut didn’t exist in previous versions of Windows.

2. Go to MavisApps and download the Mavis Up Button for Vista. ($4.95 with a 5 day trial.) I didn’t give this a try as option 1 is sufficient, but if you do, let me know how it turns out.

Cut and paste from Word to WordPress

Angela — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 02:32:30 +0000

If you cut and paste a section of text that includes links and other formatting from Microsoft Word to the WordPress WYSIWYG, you will end up with a nasty mess of code and will have problems getting the text to format to your site the way you want. When you cut HTML from Word, there’s a lot of extra code (which you won’t see unless you look for it) that overrides your CSS values. You could click on the “Code” tab in WordPress and manually remove the extra code, but that’s very time consuming and if you don’t know what you’re doing, you could delete something important.

Instead, do this:

While you’re in the WordPress post editor, hover your cursor over the buttons to see the labels. Click on the button labeled “Show/Hide Advanced Toolbar”. You can also press Alt+Shift+V (Firefox) or Alt+V (IE) to show the Advanced Toolbar. This will add some extra functionality, like buttons to undo and format your font, to your toolbar. You will then see a button labeled “Paste from Word”. When you click it, a small window will pop open and you can paste your text there and click “Insert”. This will insert the text into your post and remove the unnecessary formatting.

Please note that if you are copying an image, it may not show up and the code may not format properly for the image. Other non-image formatting should be fine.

Customize your quick access toolbar in Office 2007

Angela — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 21:57:51 +0000

Did you know you can add just about any command to to the quick access toolbar in Office 2007?

There are a few items I like to have at my disposal when working in Word and Excel. The Print Preview command is very nice and convenient, as well as the “Switch Window” command when working in Excel (when Alt-Tab won’t do). Here’s how you do it.

Click on the small down arrow to the right of the quick access toolbar. You’ll see a menu. You can easily add one of the most common items by choosing one from the list. If you don’t see the one you need, click “More Commands”.

Now you can select anything from the left box, click Add, and it will add it to the right box. The right box lists all the items in your quick access toolbar. If you still don’t see what you’re looking for, open the drop-down menu under “Choose commands from:”, and you can select “All Commands”. (Example)

You can also rearrange your quick access toolbar and place the shortcuts in the order you choose by selecting an item from the right window, and then clicking the up or down arrow (on the right) to move it.Once you’re done, click OK. That’s it!