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I don’t know how many times I’ve heard someone say that they opened a Word document included as an attachment within an email, edited the document, and clicked Save. When they re-opened the document within the email, their changes were not saved. Let’s just say that the number of times I’ve heard this is countless.

I added one more to that countless number when my mother called the other night in a panic. She had worked on editing a Windows Mail attachment for two hours, saved it, and now her changes were gone. So off I went to see what she had done this time.

I discovered that she received an email with a Word attachment. She opened the document from within the email and proceeded to edit it. When she was finished, instead of doing a Save As, she simply clicked Save. Her assumption was that her changes would be saved and she could just forward the email back to the recipient. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

What many people don’t realize is that when you open an attachment, such as a Word document, within Windows Mail, it is opened as a temporary file in the temp folder. Once you are done editing the document, even though you click Save, the document reverts back to the original version as soon as you close it. You must save the attachment to your computer if you want to save your changes!

Of course, someone sending a file in Word .doc format could be kind and tell the recipient that such saves won’t work, or send it in a completely different format (such as .rtf or .txt) to preempt this problem. In response to this post, Gnomie Stan wrote to bring up some very good points (republished here in hopes that others may learn from them):

Actually, you should never email a word doc.

You should never open a word document emailed to you.

Do not keep any Word docs that have been emailed to you in your email client.

Word is not a program meant to sent documents over the Web.

If you must send a doc from Word, send it as an .rtf (rich text file).

Microsoft Word files are a security hazard. Unlike standard data formats, Word files can contain programming code which can be executed by your computer automatically when a document is opened. Microsoft’s motivation for including this “feature” in Word was to allow word processing macros to be saved along with the document. However, it was not long before malicious people began exploiting this design flaw by writing Word macro code to surreptitiously delete random files or otherwise damage one’s computer. As a result, Word files are now notorious as the vector for dozens of computer viruses. When you receive a Word attachment by email, do you really want to take the risk of welcoming a proverbial Trojan horse into your system?

In cases where the document makes use of special formatting and you expect the recipient to edit it, you may wish to send an .rtf file instead of a Word file. .rtf was developed as a standard data interchange format for word processors, and most popular word processors can read and write such files. .rtf may not preserve physical formatting exactly, but unlike with HTML, it at least tries to specify physical presentation rather than leaving it entirely up to the recipient’s application.

See: Avoid E-Mail Attachments, Especially Microsoft Word

Thanks, Stan!

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Even many of the bookworms among us would confess that videos — especially in the age of the Internet, serve a pretty broad number of purposes. Videos can be used to instruct others, clarify points, document daily life, entertain, convey information with nuances lost in the written word, solve crimes, plan art museum heists, keep a clandestine eye on your belongings when you’re away, and the list goes on. Online streaming services like YouTube and Ustream have taken off like gangbusters over the past few years, and their popularity shows no sign of stopping. Since we don’t (yet) have holodecks or truly 3D, interactive television, videos are the next best thing to being there. The quality of video has improved vastly since Thomas Edison’s day, but its ability to delight the child in all of us has never diminished.

And as most of us are consumers of video, there are those who must create that video. And those people who frequently work with videos may have noticed that the Windows 7 Start menu does not include a link to the Videos folder. The Start menu only includes links to the Pictures and Music folders. Not very convenient if you create, save or watch a lot of videos.

If you use the Start menu to access these folders, you can add a link to your Videos folder using the steps described below.

Right click on the Start menu button and click Properties. Verify that the Start Menu tab is active. Click the Customize button. Under the Video section, select either the Display as a link or Display as a menu option. Click OK to close the Customize Start Menu dialog box. Click OK.

The biggest irony of all? There’s no video to accompany this post. Somehow, you’ll manage. We have faith in you, Gnomie! Carry on.

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One of the great features of the Windows 7 taskbar is that when you hold your mouse over any of the application icons on the taskbar, Windows 7 shows thumbnail previews of all open Windows. One thing you will notice when you hover over a taskbar icon, there is a slight delay before the thumbnails appear. A simple tweak within the registry though can speed it up.

1. Click Start and type regedit in the search field. Press Enter to open the Registry Editor.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ControlPanel\Mouse
3. In the details pane, double click MouseHoverTime.
4. The default value is 400 milliseconds. Type in a smaller value such as 100.
5. Click OK and close the Registry Editor.
6. Restart your computer.

Speed Up The Display Of Taskbar Thumbnails In Windows 7 is a post from: Windows Fanatics

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One of the great features of the Windows 7 taskbar is that when you hold your mouse over any of the application icons on the taskbar, Windows 7 shows thumbnail previews of all open Windows. One thing you will notice when you hover over a taskbar icon, there is a slight delay before the thumbnails appear. A simple tweak within the registry though can speed it up.

1. Click Start and type regedit in the search field. Press Enter to open the Registry Editor.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ControlPanel\Mouse
3. In the details pane, double click MouseHoverTime.
4. The default value is 400 milliseconds. Type in a smaller value such as 100.
5. Click OK and close the Registry Editor.
6. Restart your computer.

Speed Up The Display Of Taskbar Thumbnails In Windows 7 is a post from: Windows Fanatics

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Autoruns for Windows.

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This is just plain funny.  Enjoy!  Happy Hump Day!

‘Windows 7 Was My Idea, But to Be Fair, I Don’t Know What I’m Talking

About’ – windows 7 – Gizmodo.

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PC Support Tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, Operating system, Windows, Windows 7

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Zeta Producer is a Windows-based desktop content management system (CMS).  Zeta Producer is installed locally on your PC and will cooperate well with any Internet hosting provider that offers FTP-compatibility (which practically providers do).  Zeta Producer is used, amongst other reasons, to manage small to medium sized company and product websites, help organizations use it to maintain their online representation and enable private users to create homepages about their hobbies, family or with pictures of their last holiday trip.  Zeta Producer is a website content management system based upon Microsoft Windows.

The free Windows client allows you to automatically send multiple files or folders ZIP-compressed with the Zeta Up loader service.  This is as easy as creating a new folder in Windows Explorer.  We provide English and a German version of Zeta Producer Desktop 8 that runs on Windows XP and above.  So if you want your website to be published automatically every night, simply create a Scheduled Task in Windows and specify the Zeta Producer together with the appropriate command line arguments (which are described in detail in the user manual).

This product is aimed at bigger non-commercial websites, company websites in the small-to-medium business segment, as well as websites for clubs and institutions.  Professional and Enterprise -suitable for larger company websites as well as intranets, this product contains workflows, user management and an extendable plug-in functionality.  With zeta producer users can easily manage their website with nothing more but basic windows-knowledge.  Zeta Producer enables you to publish your very own Internet website within a few minutes.

Zeta Producer is used, amongst other reasons, to manage small to medium sized company and product websites, help organizations use it to maintain their online representation and enable private users to create homepages about their hobbies, family or with pictures of their last holiday trip.  You manage the content of your website independently from its design.  A lot of modern features like interactively designable forms, guest books, RSS integration, a search function for your website, a sitemap, support for weblogs and many more are integrated in Zeta Producer Desktop 8.  Even better: you can change the design/layout of your website at any time during your website’s life-cycle.  So if you think it’s time to change the design after your website after a year, a new website is only three clicks away.

Zeta Producer is available both as a free version and as a version for $136.00 (nonrecurring).  Zeta producer is a website content management system based upon Microsoft Windows®.  Zeta Producer is installed locally on your PC and will cooperate well with any internet hosting provider that offers FTP-compatibility (which practically providers do).

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Speccy is a simple system analyzer that displays detailed information about the configuration and technical features of your computer. Speccy is a – currently in beta software – by popular developer piriform that is known for software programs like ccleaner, recuva or defraggler. Speccy is an advanced system information tool for your pc. Speccy is available as a beta for most microsoft operating systems including the latest windows 7. Speccy is a free download, windows only. Speccy is designed to scan and display a computers specifications. Since, speccy is also available as a portable utility, system mechanics should find it a handy tool to carry around for diagnostic purposes. This app is in public beta, but for a beta, speccy is well built and complete. Speccy is a useful tool for people who want to know their system hardware and for those who want to brag about their hardware capabilities to others. One useful feature of speccy is saving a snapshot of your system information and loading previous snapshots into speccy. I recommend speccy as a system information application, please be aware that speccy is in beta and this is not a final version release.

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PC Support Tags: Application software, Hardware, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, Operating system, Windows