Crabby Office Lady

Even the most tech-savvy of us has days where computer problems and frustrations threaten to sabotage productivity. Today's column is a grab bag of little tips and hints hard-won.

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Some of these little solutions might seem really obvious. Even so, there's nothing wrong with a little refresher, as I found out the hard way.

Outlook: Searching my calendar

The search function in Outlook's calendar is great. Here's an example: I had a follow-up appointment today with my financial advisor. The first time we met, I put the directions to his office into the initial appointment. However, today I couldn't remember when the last appointment was, and I also wasn't organized enough to remember to add those directions into his contact information. So, I went into my calendar, typed financial into the search box, and every appointment containing the word "financial" (in the subject or body of the appointment) popped up. I was able to find the directions again by opening the initial appointment found in the search results list.

Here's the rub: When I went into my Calendar, I was in the Day/Week/Month view, but searching had automatically switched to the All Appointments view. After I performed the search, I couldn't seem to get back to the view that I had before; you know, the one with the work week and all the details. It was easy enough to get it back; I just didn't know the trick:

• In Outlook 2007: On the View menu, point to Current View, and then click the view you want.
• In Outlook 2003 and 2002: On the View menu, point to Arrange By, and then point to Current View and make your choice.

•  Note   This is a good time to fiddle around with the various views you can choose from; you may discover a whole new view that speaks to you...

Just a handy thing to know when you can't get back to where you started from.

PowerPoint: I want to embed a larger sound file

I had come across this problem before (a few years back, as a matter of fact), but I was unable to access the folder in my brain that had the solution (a baby came into my life since that time, hence the memory issue), and so I had to go find the answer again. PowerPoint was really cramping my style.

See, I wanted to add a 45-megabyte (MB) music file to a PowerPoint slide show of our family vacation to torture the rest of my family with, and I wanted to make sure that the file would be embedded in the presentation (rather than linked to it). As you may know, embedding (rather than linking) a file you're adding into a presentation (such as a music file or a video) is the easiest way to make sure that there isn't any problem accessing that music or video if you end up transferring the presentation to a CD and playing it on another computer.

 Note   For more information about embedding versus linking music files, read Embedded and linked sound files in a presentation. The majority of the information, while written specifically for PowerPoint 2007, also applies to 2003 and 2002. What differs are the procedures that detail how to do certain things.

Now, the default setting for automatically linking sound files is 100 kilobytes (KB), but I finally remembered that you can change it to 50,000 KB (50 MB). This means you can now EMBED your file; it becomes PART of your file.

Change default size for linking files in PowerPoint 2007

1. Click the Microsoft Office Button , and then click PowerPoint Options.
2. On the left, click Advanced, and scroll down to the Save heading.
3. Change the Link sounds with file size greater than ____ Kb to whatever you wish (although no larger than 50,000 KB).

Change default size for linking files 2003 (and 2002).

Change the default setting for linking files in PowerPoint 2003 and 2002

1. On the Tools menu, click Options.
2. On the General tab, increase the Link sounds with file size greater than ___ Kb setting to a size just larger than your largest sound file, up to 50,000 KB (50 MB).
3. Click OK.

Now, remember that this will substantially increase the overall size of your presentation, so be aware that it might take some time to open it. As Olde Grammy Crabby always used to say, "Patience is a sign of maturity."

Excel: My up and down arrow keys aren't working

I had this little problem the other day and it was driving me nuts. I wanted to move from cell to cell using my arrow keys. Is that asking too much?

Sometimes nothing happened, and sometimes when I pressed the up arrow, my cursor moved down, and when I pressed the left arrow, my cursor moved up. It was enough to make a northern-hemisphere person such as I believe she was living south of the equator (or north or the equator, for you Aussies and others in the southern hemisphere).

The solution? I pressed the SCRL LK (sometimes called SCROLL LOCK or SCROLL LK) button once and *boom* everything was right with the world again and my arrows hit their mark...which made me wonder about all those other obscure keys that appear on various keyboards. So I did a little research and came up with a lot of conflicting information from what I like to call the Great Oracle of Misinformation called the Internet. So, my suggestion to you is to keep and read the manual that came with your particular keyboard. My keyboard has keys with names like SYSRQ, BREAK, and NUM LK.

In the meantime, here are some links I found on the Microsoft Support site that may address some of the more obscure issues with those wacky-named keyboard buttons. It's my sincere hope that one of the links provided will ease your troubled keyboard-button-fretted mind.

• SCROLL LOCK support
• Support for keyboard function keys
• NUM LOCK support

And speaking of Num Lock...

Windows: NUM LOCK is numbing my workflow

Not long ago, I booted up my laptop, typed my network password and...nothing happened. I tried again. Nothing. I made sure the CAPS LOCK button wasn't pressed. It wasn't. I couldn't believe it, and I couldn't get into my computer without completely reinstalling Windows (which as you know, is not the most enjoyable way to spend a summer afternoon).

To make a long, sad story short and happy, the NUM LOCK button was interfering with my password. I'm not sure if this happens with all computers — desktops, laptops, Tablet PCs — but it sure wreaked havoc with me and my laptop. So, if you know that you're entering the correct password and it still isn't letting you in, check your NUM LOCK and give it a good talking to.

"There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise." — Gore Vidal

About the author

Annik Stahl, the Crabby Office Lady columnist, takes all of your complaints, compliments, and knee-jerk reactions to heart. Therefore, she graciously asks that you let her know whether this column was useful to you — or not — by entering your feedback using the Was this information helpful? tool below. And remember: If you don't vote, you can't complain.

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