Sometimes you get lucky and solve problems. Sometimes you can plan to avoid them. Fix that upside-down screen, pin your often-used folders to the Start Menu, and avoid an Office catastrophe.
Help! My screen is upside down.
I don’t know how it happened, and I was standing right there. One of my customers has a “convertible” laptop. You prop it up like an A-Frame roof and use it for presentations. It’s a touch screen, too.
It probably also has a function key or a key combination to make it turn upside down, or to make it go into Tablet Mode.
Whatever.
My customer picked up the laptop to move it to another area of her office. The next thing we knew, the screen was upside down.
I couldn’t find the Function key or guess the key combination to fix this, and monkeying around with tablet mode didn’t do the trick either. Not even my go-to procedure of rebooting the computer helped.
Eventually I got lucky and found the setting that turned everything right side up. If this happens to you:
- Click on Start | Settings | Display
- In the Orientation setting, choose Landscape
When I got there, I found it was Landscape (flipped).
Pin a folder to your Start Menu
I guess I read back in March when Windows 10 Creators Update (version 1703) rolled out that you could pin a folder to the Start Menu.
I didn’t think much about it until the other day when I was doing some task that involved right-clicking on a folder.
I noticed a choice called Pin to Start, and pinned the folder called “Columns” to my Start Menu. Holy smokes, I had no idea how useful this would be! I constantly need to access this folder. This makes life much easier.
To pin a folder to your Start Menu:
- Open File Explorer and navigate to the folder you want to pin
- Right-click on the folder
- Click on Pin to Start
Now, when you click on your Start Menu, the folder will be all the way at the bottom of the right side of the Start Menu, where the other tiles are. From there you can click and drag it anyplace in the tiles you want.
I have a group near the top called Production, and I dragged it up there. Another nice Two-click Trick!
Time to bid Office 2007, especially Outlook 2007, a fond farewell
Extended support for Microsoft Office 2007 ended Oct. 10.
There are no more updates of any kind, including security updates. Outlook 2007, depending on the type of account you have set up, may soon fail to collect or send your mail.
You should replace Office 2007, either with MS Office 2016 or Office 365, or with a free alternative. Here’s a complete list of the Office products that reached the end of support.
Read more about modern versions of Microsoft Office here. And here is a list of free (and (free-ish) alternatives to Microsoft Office.
If you are using Outlook, and you want to continue to use Outlook, there are no free alternatives for you. You’re stuck using a version of Office that includes Microsoft Outlook.
If you’re going to abandon Outlook, there are plenty of email programs out there, both free and pay-for, that will work. You just won’t be able to import your previous email messages from Outlook.
I would like to know what email programs you’re using and if you like what you’re using. Sent email to [email protected] and we’ll discuss this in upcoming columns.
This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.