(rant) why microsoft is not easy to use

[Ann Parsons]

Hi Tylor,

<smile>  that's a pretty good rant, my friend.  If you keep this up,
you may just surpass some of the best ranters on the net.  Let me see
if I can help you just a little bit here.

>>>>> "Tyler" == Tyler Spivey <tspivey8 at telus.net> writes:

    Tyler> oh, can someone please tell me how to get word (crap) to
    Tyler> open (with c-o) in a certain directory?  this is sort of
    Tyler> important for my science class, but i could always bang at
    Tyler> the help which ... <rants more> 

I Tylor, I am not sure what you mean here, but let me see if I can
help.  You want to open or to save docs in something other than My
Documents or My Office or whatever, right?  Let's take the saving
issue first because if you can't save the thing where you want it, you
won't be able to retrieve it.  When you hit ctrl-s in a new doc it
opens the save-as dialogue box.  You are sitting on the edit field
where you type in the file name.  Instead of typing in just the file
name, type in the path to that file name.  Now you have to realize
that Windows is *not* going to create any directory that isn't already
there, so if you need help to create directories from My Computer let
me know privately and we'll go backward in the learning curve to pick
up that bit.   So type in the whole path plus the filename, e.g. c:\my
documents\Science papers\oxygen1.doc  

Once you've saved the file where you want it, then opening MSWord and
that file shouldn't be a problem.  The thing is you can't tell Word to
open itself in the directory where you want it to be, all you can =do
is tell it which file in which directory you want.  So, if you're in
something else, popen a window and get into MSWord.  The quickest way
is to use windows-D and open the desktop and hit the shortcut from
there if you have one.   Then, hit ctrl-o to open your file menu.  You
will be placed in the edit field.  It looks the same as the one for
the save-as dialogue.  So, type in the whole path:  c:\my
documents\science papers\oxygen1.doc

That should bring up the file you want.  Here's a cute little tip for
you.  If you go into the file menu of MSWord, the last four files you
worked on will be listed there.  Just press enter on the one you
want.  

    Tyler>  what about jfw and
    Tyler> ie? i went to a teacher's page, under ie and edbrowse, and
    Tyler> jaws said (under ie) something like a long url.  edbrowse
    Tyler> said the alt text. arg.  i pop into dos so often to copy
    Tyler> that science document (in .txt of course), or mkdir
    Tyler> something - explorer is ... dull. you have to actually
    Tyler> press a lot of keys to resize the columns.  which, b the
    Tyler> way, jaws says "blank", and that is a pain.  ms doesn't
    Tyler> have any sort of api to explorer as far as i know, so we're
    Tyler> stuck with truncated file names until we resize the
    Tyler> columns.  and i hate multi-column lists, because you
    Tyler> constantly gotta arrow around to get at 'm.  same with word
    Tyler> - it lands you on the first file, skipping folders. that
    Tyler> should be configurable, not a forced default.  

I'm not sure what some of this is about, Tyler, but you can get
Windows to show you files with their paths if you want.  Open My
Computer and get into C.  Then, go to the view menue and arrow down
till you get to options.  In there you will come to the files and
folders options.  Explore that and see what happens.

Ann P.


-- 
			Ann K. Parsons  
email:  akp at eznet.net 			ICQ Number:  33006854
WEB SITE:  http://home.eznet.net/~akp
"All that is gold does not glitter.  Not all those who wander are lost."  JRRT