Welcome! Notes from the Editor

I want to take this space to welcome all the new subscribers to our newsletter. This is the section that I normally use for "bragging rights" about my family and other personal topics. I want you to know that there is a human being behind this newsletter. I also give you an introduction to the tips or tutorials that will be in this issue. There has been quite an increase in our subscriber base recently, so I wanted to let you know what you have gotten yourself into!

Well, winter is starting to make its move on Northwest Arkansas, the temperatures are starting to drop. We haven't had any snow, but rain has been rather frequent. Won't be long now!

My "Email Primer" was listed on the Freeware World Team website November 12^th and the results are coming in. After just one day of listing, the Primer got 19 hits and 11 downloads and they are still coming. Not a bad conversion rate. If you have a freeware software program or eBook, I would recommend that you get yourself listed on that site. The address is: http://www.all4you.dk/FreewareWorld/links.php

In this issue, I will be discussing that little file that some of you may be finding on your desktop. You know the one, the filename is "~" and the file is rather small. Very mysterious! I will also be giving a tutorial on how to convert a Word document into a PowerPointâ presentation. (I will just give an over view, there will be a tutorial with screenshots on my website in a few days.)

Before I get on with the show, I would like to ask a special request. I don't do this often, but I would like to ask for your prayers and well wishes for my wife's younger brother, John. Mary and I got the news a few weeks ago that he had been diagnosed with cancer. John is about forty, with a wife and two young sons. All the information is not in yet, but our thoughts and prayers are with him and his young family during this difficult time. Thanks in advance for your support for us…and them. Many of you have been subscribers for a long time and have treated us like family. I want you to know that Mary and I appreciate you all.

I had hoped to have a guest contributor for this subject, but was unable to reach him in time, so I will cover this on myself. I am going to just touch on the subject briefly…for more complete information, please hop over to my friend's site at PC Hell: http://www.pchell.com . Mark Hasting has a lot of fantastic information on his site, you will spend hours there!

So here is the short version. You may find a strange file appearing on your desktop from time to time. This is actually a back up of your Outlook Express address book This happens if you are using versions 5.5 or 6 of Internet Explorer and Outlook Express and have installed the April 2003 Cumulative Patch for Outlook Express. The patch was designed to close a security vulnerability, but unfortunately had a bug in the program.

When you make a change to your OE addressbook, Windowsâ will make a backup for it. Usually the backup is named with your username and the file extension ".wa~". For instance, if your addressbook is normally called "stevemaurer.wab", then the back up would be "stevemaurer.wa~". However, after the patch is installed, the filename is just named "~", without the quotes, and is placed in the folder that you started Outlook Express from. If you have a desktop icon and you start OE from there, as most folks do, the backup file will be located there, on your desktop.

The file is not a virus, it is not spyware or ad-ware, so your virus scanner or other scanning programs won't pick it up as malicious. It can be deleted safely, but your backup will be gone.

For more complete information on this problem, go to Mark Hasting's site at: http://www.pchell.com/support/tildefile.shtml

Article copyright August 2003 by
Steve Maurer, Steve Maurer Publications
Fayetteville, Arkansas

You have worked on your sales presentation or lesson plan and have written a world-class paper in Microsoftü Word. You want to be able to present your findings to a large audience using PowerPointâ . So what will be the easiest way to accomplish this? Will you need to rewrite you information, word for word, changing your document into a bulleted presentation? The answer is "No", there is an easier way. Please note that I am writing this from the Office 97 perspective. Other version will have similar tools for this conversion.

First, take a look at your Word document. How did you create your headings and subheadings? Did you just make the heading text larger and maybe used bold formatting? If you did, then you will need to make some changes to the original document. If you have the formatting toolbar showing, you will see a box with the word "Normal" in it. This is the style formatting box. Click on the arrow beside it and a drop down menu will appear, showing different formatting options. Select (highlight) the text you typed for a first level heading, then click on the arrow beside the formatting style box. Choose "Heading 1". Your text will be formatted and tagged as a top level heading.

If you have subheading under the main, top level heading, highlight them and choose the appropriate heading style. For instance, a "Heading 2" will format the text differently and tag it as a level 2 subheading (or subtopic). Word uses these heading tags to do some interesting things. For instance, the heading tags are used to create updateable tables of content (but that's another lesson).

What do the headings become in PowerPointâ ?

This is the really fun part. After you have made all your heading changes in your Word document, you are ready to convert it to PowerPointâ . From the menu bar, choose "File", go down to "Send to", then click on "Microsoft PowerPoint". PowerPointâ will open up and your document will be converted into a presentation.

Text marked as "Heading 1" will become the slide titles. Text marked as "Heading 2" will become the first level bullets. Items marked "Heading 3" will become second level bullets, and so on. The body text of your document will not show up in PowerPointâ , but then a PowerPointâ is not usually designed to contain all the information. PowerPointâ presentations give the basic outline of the presentation, the speaker will be supplying the details.

Check it out in Outline View

After PowerPointâ has converted your document into presentation form you will still need to tweak it in most cases. If you have a lot of subtopics or subpoints (Heading 2, Heading 3, etc.), you may find that too much information is crammed on one slide. You may need to add duplicate slides and adjust the text amount on each one. Outline View will allow you to insert these slides easily and then you will be able to edit them quickly. For more information on how this entire procedure is done, check out the tutorial on my website. Visit "The Classroom" at http://steve.maurer.net/tutorials/tutorials_list.htm !

Article copyright August 2003 by
Steve Maurer, Steve Maurer Publications
Fayetteville, Arkansas

Read my review of Barbara Brabec's great, two volume set "Homemade Money - Starting Right!" and "Homemade Money - Bringing in the Bucks!".  On sale now at Amazon. My reviews can be found at http://steve.maurer.net/bookstore_index.htm 

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