Back To Basics

We've talked about advanced tips, shortcuts, workarounds and fixes here for almost two years. But every so often it's good to get back to basics. Here are a few basic Windows-related skills that will always come in handy, I promise!

Copy and Paste
You can copy some text from somewhere and paste it somewhere else.

- Place your mouse cursor at the beginning of the text you want to copy
- Hold down your left mouse button
- Drag the cursor to the end of the text you want to copy
- Release the mouse button
- Click the right mouse button
- Select "Copy"
- Move your cursor to where you want the text to go
- Click the right mouse button
- Select "Paste"

"Why on earth would I need to do that?" you ask. Well, if you find a website you like and you want to tell a friend, you can place your cursor in the address bar of the browser, highlight the address, copy it, and paste it into an email.

Or maybe you're editing your church or service club newsletter, and you want to add an item that someone gave you without having to retype the whole thing. Open up your newsletter, open up that email or document, copy from there, paste to the newsletter. Quite the time saver.

Like so many things in Windows, there is more than one way to copy and paste. An alternate way to select text to be copied is to place your cursor at the beginning of it and then use the Arrow and End keys to highlight it. And if you have a large area to copy, you can use Page Down as well.

Also, instead of using the "right-click" context menus, you can use Ctrl+C to "Copy" and Ctrl+V to "Paste." If you want to give this a try, you can do it safely here: http://www.webmasternow.com/copyandpaste.html. If you want more keyboard shortcuts, check here: http://rlis.com/columns/column48.htm.

Change the size of your Windows
When you open Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, or any other application, does it fill your whole screen? It doesn't have to. You can have several programs open at the same time and you can see at least part of more than one of them. (This makes copying and pasting from a browser to email a lot easier!)

You're looking at this page in your browser. Look at the upper right hand corner, you'll see a button with a red X, a button with either a square with a darker line on top or two interlocking squares, and a line on the bottom of another button. You probably already know what the Red X does ---- don't try it now! (That will close the window.)

The left-hand button, with the small line at the bottom of it, minimizes the browser to the task bar at the bottom of your screen. Clicking there will restore the window to its current size and position.

The button in the middle will change the size of the window. If you see a square in that middle button, clicking on it will make the window fill the whole screen. That's called maximizing the window. If you see two interlocking squares, clicking on the button will make the window for your program smaller. Once you've done that, you can adjust the size even more by using the other corners of your program.

- Place your cursor on one of the window's corners (the lower right one is usually handiest)
- Move it carefully until you see the cursor turn into a double-headed arrow
- Hold down the left mouse button and drag the corner. Watch the window resize!

This will work with any Windows program, not just the browser. When you get that window the size you want, you can move it to another part of the screen.

- Place your cursor on the top part of the window
- Hold down the left mouse button
- Drag the window to an area of the screen where you want it

Now you can open other applications, size the windows the way you want them, and easily copy and paste between them. Give it a try!

Thank you everyone for your questions, comments and suggestions. Please keep the email coming! Remember, you can stop by the column archives at any time by clicking on the link below. We're open 24/7.

I hope you all had a great long weekend. See you next week!

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.