Tech Tips 31/98


A Selection of Technical Tips to help you get more FUN from your PC



MS Excel (95)

Relatively Easy!

When you enter a formula in an Excel worksheet, you generally use the relative reference form. The formula   =sum (a1:a10)
is a relative reference formula. If you copy this formula and move it to a new location, the formula will change to reflect its new location. However, there are times when you might need a formula that uses absolute referencing. One way to handle this is to convert an existing formula to absolute.You don't even have to remember how to enter an absolute formula. All you have to do is double-click the cell that contains the formula and then use the mouse to highlight the formula. Then press F4 and then Enter. Now you have a formula with absolute referencing.

While a formula is selected, you can use F4 to switch among all the referencing forms. If you'd like to give this a try, type in a formula, select it as described above, and then press F4 and watch the changes.

 



Navigator & Explorer

Living With Two Web Browsers

What a pain!

If you're switching browsers, you'll want to take your plug-ins and e-mail information with you. It's not easy being caught between fierce competitors like Microsoft and Netscape, but some tricks and tools can help smooth the conversion.

Now that Navigator and Internet Explorer are both free, many Web surfers will be tempted to use them interchangeably. However, it can be more of a problem than you might think because IE and Navigator have always handled bookmarks differently. Navigator saves bookmarks in a single HTML file, while IE essentially creates separate Windows 95 shortcuts.

Netscape users who want to switch to IE 4.0 have it easiest. During the installation process, IE 4.0 automatically imports any Navigator bookmarks on a PC (earlier versions of IE don't do this). Once translated and placed in a folder called Imported Bookmarks, the Navigator bookmarks are available in IE along with other favorites. Netscape is considering adding the ability to automatically import Internet Explorer favorites to Navigator 5.0.

Aside from automatic conversion during installation, Navigator bookmarks can't be directly imported into IE or vice versa. But there are indirect ways. If you have both browsers installed on your system, you can open the Netscape bookmark file in IE 3.x or 4.x. To do this, select File*Open*Browse; choose the hard drive where your application files are stored; and navigate through the following folders: Program Files, Netscape, User, and Your Name. You'll find the Netscape bookmark file  (in HTML format) in the Defaults folder. IE displays this file as a page, with all the bookmarks available as active links. Clicking on any link opens the site in IE, at which point you can save it as a favorite.

Unfortunately, IE favorites aren't in HTML, so you can't switch them to Navigator this way. Your best bet is to use one of several freeware and shareware utilities to convert favorites into bookmarks. One of the most popular is NavEx, a freeware conversion tool . Or you can try Bookmark Converter 2.0, a shareware utility. These utilities also work in reverse - converting bookmarks into favorites.
 
 



MS Money

Money 98 Monster Files

Many of the financial archive files you can create with Money 98 become very large - so large, in fact, that archiving them onto a single 1.4MB floppy may be impossible. An update to Money allows you to create a backup archive that spans multiple        floppies. Once installed, the Multi-Disk Backup utility lets you access the Multidisk Backup and Restore command from Money 98's Tools menu.

You can find the update at  http://support.microsoft.com/download/support/mslfiles/mdbr1.exe


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