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Come on out and support some local events in June

maureen — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:40:53 +0000

MicroKnowledge is supporting two great events coming up in June and I hope you’ll join us.

On Saturday, June 1 we’ll be participating in the Freihofer’s Community Walk in support of Circles of Mercy. The MicroKnowledge team would love it if you could join us for the walk to support this amazing organization. The walk begins at noon. Visit Freihofer’s Community Walk for more information. Walkers can register online using the Community Walk Form. Be sure to use Organization Code 202 for Circles of Mercy. Hope to see you there!

On Tuesday, June 4 we’ll be at the Capital District Women’s Employment and Resource Center’s First Impressions Second Chances event at The Crossing of Colonie. The occasion benefits the Women of WERC. Visit WERC’s Events for more information. To register online, visit the First Impressions Second Chances Events Registration. In addition, when registering, you can purchase $5 raffle tickets for chances to win fabulous tech prizes, a mystery gift, or one of 10 gift bags worth more than $300 each! Hope to see you there!

Author: Kathleen Pingelski kpingelski@microknowledge.com

Remember, if you are a MicroKnowledge customer and have a software question to ask, feel free to contact us at any time by using our Support link at the top of the site. Your question might be featured in our next blog entry!

Is your computer safe?

maureen — Thu, 09 May 2013 15:17:23 +0000

Last month I wrote about the top # of things to do. So, it’s no surprise that I found a Top # article to inspire this month’s blog: 5 Essential Tips to Keep Your PC Safe.

Viruses can certainly affect computer speed and processing. Is your computer safe from viruses and other dangers lurking on the Internet? Unless you have an IT department to maintain your computer, the responsibility of security protection is yours. So what do you do? Where do you start?

First, let’s start with a definition of terms:

Virus – a program that can integrate into the files of a computer and compromise the computer’s operation. Some viruses spread via the web, email or over a shared network.
Spam – an unsolicited message sent to a large group of people. Spam can be a symptom of a virus and is also known as “electronic junk mail.”
Malware – is malicious software used affect computer operation, gather sensitive information, or gain access to private information. Viruses and spyware are malware.

Now that you know the basic terminology, here are a few tips:

Virus protection – Make sure you have great virus protection. I use McAfee; AVG is good as well (and it’s free!).
Strong passwords – All passwords should be comprised of a combination of letters and numbers and should vary between upper and lower case. This makes it difficult for spyware to invade your computer and secure your password. Remember, this is a computer program that can process far more quickly than we can. Keep computer programs guessing!
Think before you click – You can’t get a virus/malware/spyware by opening or reading an email. The triggers for virus/malware/spyware are replying to the email, clicking on links and opening attachments. If you don’t know where the email came from, then delete it. If you know the person and the links look weird, delete the email. These types of triggers can be tricky. The intent is to get you to execute a program. Don’t fall for it!
Backup – Viruses are sneaky, even people who are extremely careful may end up with one. A good backup gives you the opportunity to start fresh and not stress! Windows has a built in backup utility to help you create points in time at which you can restore your computer. Get to know how to use this feature.

Read through the article that inspired this blog in order to locate links to other articles relating to firewall and backups as well.

What is your favorite Top # article?

Author: Lisa Ryan lryan@microknowledge.com

Working with Meeting Workspaces in SharePoint

eleonora — Sat, 04 May 2013 23:40:48 +0000

If you have meetings that run often or have a lot of meetings that require documents, using the meeting workspace feature of SharePoint is an efficient solution. A meeting workspace is a location where participants go to review meeting items without cluttering an Inbox. SharePoint meeting workspaces can be setup as a general meeting place or for a specific meeting.

Setting Up a General Meeting Workspace

Click Site Actions drop down. Choose Create a new site. Click Basic Meeting Workspace.
Type a Title for the meeting workspace. Create a general title or specific title.
Type the URL name. The URL becomes the connection to get to the workspace. Meeting participants link directly to the meeting workspace through SharePoint or by using a browser.
To further describe the meeting workspace or change permissions, click More Options. If permissions are not changed, meeting participants have the same rights from the main site in SharePoint.
Click Create. Meeting workspace displays. Review and adjust:

Objectives – define clear objectives and intentions for the meeting.
Attendees – list of attendees who have been invited and confirmation of attendance.
Agenda – Break down meeting components into time frame and the facilitator of each item. Assists in keeping everyone on task.
Document Library – store meeting documents so everyone has access. The library is a place to update and review communication. It also eliminates email traffic and multiple copies.

Share the URL with meeting participants once the meeting workspace is setup. Meeting participants can visit the meeting workspace regularly to review or add updates.Note:
Click on the Meeting Workspace link on the Calendar appointment in SharePoint when setting up a meeting workspace for a particular meeting. Meeting attendees now have access to the meeting using the URL or through the appointment.

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Customizing the Status Bar in Word 2010

eleonora — Sat, 04 May 2013 23:38:32 +0000

The Word 2010 Status Bar provides shortcuts to quite a few commonly used features. These shortcuts allow you to either monitor various features of the Word document or offer single click access to common tools.

Right click on the Status Bar.

Customize Status Bar menu displays. Items with a checkmark are currently displayed on the Status Bar or are being monitored.
To add an item to the Status Bar or to monitor, click the item. A checkmark displays in the Customize Status Bar menu.
To remove an item from the Status Bar, click the checked item. The checkmark is removed.

Download a Free PDF version of this tip.

Acrobat Reader is required to view the PDF version. Use the link below to download the FREE Acrobat Reader from the Adobe website.

If you cannot download the Adobe Reader or would like an alternative version of the PDF, please feel free to contact us via phone (518-786-1181) or email (support@microknowledge.com)

Top # of things to do…

maureen — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:09:25 +0000

The Internet is a wealth of information, too much sometimes, so I am grateful when I see articles that say “Top (insert number here) reasons to do (insert task here).” These articles are often easy to read and incredibly useful in helping me understand where I need to focus my research. So with that in mind, I thought I would share a few that I have found helpful.

Is your computer a bit sluggish? Read PC Magazine’s article on 12 easy PC tasks you should be doing (but aren’t). There are some really good tips here to assist you with your quest for speed. As a side, I received this article via email with a “Thought of you, no offense” as the opening statement. I didn’t take offense because when I read it, I was certainly on the right track. With one quick read, you could be as well.

Does networking scare you to death? Forbes posted an article on 5 New Ways to Network (That You Won’t Dread). Networking can be daunting, so with only 5 easy steps you can become a pro. Now networking seems easy, right?

Want to visit technology inventions from the past? If so, peruse the article on The 50 Best Tech Products of All Time. Technology changes so often these days that it might be good for you to see where we came from and where we are now. If nothing else, I had a bit of a giggle in some cases. Tetris anyone?

Looking for the perfect cloud-based email solution? Read About.com’s article on Top 15 Free Email Services. I have used Gmail and Outlook.com with great success.

What’s your favorite Top of article?

Author: Lisa Ryan lryan@microknowledge.com

How to Share Your Outlook Contacts Subfolder

maureen — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 01:09:13 +0000

Outlook makes sharing your main Contacts folder pretty simple, yet sometimes you don’t want to share all of your contacts. Instead, you could share a contacts subfolder.

Logically dividing your contacts into folders is a natural organizational technique, but Microsoft made it relatively difficult to share any of these subfolders with colleagues.

In order for colleagues to view your contacts subfolder, they need to add your Mailbox to their Outlook account. One complexity in this scenario is that you need to add permissions to three folder levels: your Mailbox, Contacts folder, and the Subfolder itself.

If you envision your Contacts subfolder like the figure above, a colleague cannot see the Contacts Subfolder unless they can see your Mailbox and Contacts.

Fortunately, there is a special permission called Folder Visible, which allows a colleague to see your Mailbox and Contacts without being able to view or edit any of the other content besides your Contacts subfolder.

The following steps are written for users of Outlook 2010 with an Exchange Server; however, the concepts apply to prior versions of Outlook as well.

Set Permissions on Your Mailbox

From the Mail tab, right click on your Mailbox name, which appears above your Inbox.
Click Folder Permissions from the shortcut menu.
Click the Add button to configure permissions for a specific user.
In the Permissions area check at least Folder visible as an assigned permission.
Click OK.

Set Permissions on Your Contacts folder

From the Contacts tab, right click on your Contacts folder and choose Share, then Folder Permissions.
Click the Add button to configure permissions for a specific user.
In the Permissions area, check at least Folder Visible as an assigned permission.

Set Permissions on Your Contacts Subfolder

From the Contacts tab, right click on your Contacts subfolder and choose Share, then Folder Permissions.
Click the Add button to configure permissions for a specific user.
In the Permissions area, check the boxes next to the desired permissions to give to your colleague.

Add Your Mailbox to Your Colleague’s Account

These steps need to be performed on each computer looking to view your shared contacts subfolder.

In Outlook, click on the File tab, the Account Settings button, then Account Settings.
Highlight your Exchange account, then click Change. The Change Account dialog appears.
Click the More Settings button. The Microsoft Exchange dialog appears.
Click the Advanced tab, then the Add button.
Type in your name in the Add Mailbox dialog, then click OK. Your name should now appear under Open these additional mailboxes. Click OK.
Click Cancel in the Change Account dialog box; you do not need to click Next.
Click Close on the Account Settings dialog box.
Click on the Contacts tab to view your shared subfolder. It will be marked with an icon with blue arrows.

Note that your Contacts folder will also appear in the list; however, with only folder visible permissions the content is not viewable.

Author: Ryan Donelan rdonelan@microknowledge.com

Events for a Cause Coming Up in May

maureen — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 02:20:53 +0000

We are happy to share information about two local charity events on the horizon that we are supporting. The first event is Sip Into Summer – the signature fundraiser for the American Cancer Society HopeClub. It’s a cocktail networking event for young professionals in NY’s Capital Region. This year MicroKnowledge donated a course, which will be auctioned off at this affair. In the six years of the event, Sip Into Summer has raised approximately $70,000 for the HopeClub. Event details are as follows:

Sip Into Summer

American Cancer Society HopeClub

Friday, May 3, 2013 at the Hilton Garden Inn, Troy NY

6 – 10pm

Carrie Hillenbrandt of BBL will be the Honorary Chair for Sip Into Summer 2013! Entertainment will be provided by Gravity. Visit Sip Into Summer Event for more information about the event and to purchase tickets.

MicroKnowledge is also supporting the Capital Region Go Red For Women Luncheon. Women have come together at this event each year in the fight against heart disease in women. Take your seat at the table with dedicated women and men just like you. Hear their survivor stories and learn how heart disease affects a family and how you can help stop heart disease in our lifetime. Share the American Heart Association’s mission to fight the number one killer of women. The MicroKnowledge team has attended this event for several years and we hope to see you there. Event details are as follows:

Capital Region Go Red For Women Luncheon

American Heart Association

Thursday, May 23, 2013 at the Albany Marriott, Albany NY

10:00am – 1:30pm

Visit Albany – Go Red For Women Luncheon for more information about the event and to purchase tickets.

Author: Kathleen Pingelski kpingelski@microknowledge.com

Re-use a Customized Multilevel List in Word

maureen — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 01:44:10 +0000

This is what I want. I want a round, black bullet all the way on the left side of my margin. I want my text next to it to be bold. I want my second level bullet to be hollow round, and .5 inch from the margin. I do not want this text bold. Then I want 3 points of space between each bullet. And I want to do this repeatedly by clicking one button.

Is this too much to ask? No, it’s not. And it’s possible with any version of Word. Below, I’ll show you the steps to take in Word 2007/2010 to apply and save a multilevel list of your own creation. The key is using Styles.

Now, if you’re already a Styles user, you get the idea: Styles allow you to easily reuse common formatting. It’s the way to go to apply your formatting with one click, as opposed to manual formatting. But even if you’ve used Styles before, dealing with bulleted lists can be a bit trickier, and that’s because you need to define more than one Style.

You need 1) a List Style for the type of bullets and indentation at each level and 2) a Linked Style for the character and paragraph formatting at each level (or more than one Linked Style if your formatting will change at a new level).

So, let’s take care of the Linked Style first. Basically, this defines what the text looks like at each bullet level. For my first bullet I want my text bold, and I want the spacing between the next bullet, the paragraph spacing, to be 3pt after. Here are the generic steps to define the Linked Style.

1) Apply the character and/or paragraph formatting to a line of normal, non-bulleted text.

2) Highlight the text.

3) Click Home tab on Ribbon. Click More button in Styles group to expand the Styles gallery.

4) Choose Save Selection as a New Quick Style. A dialog box appears.

5) Type a Name for your Style. Click OK.

6) You should see your new Style in the Styles gallery.

7) Now repeat steps 1-6 for each text formatting style you’d like to see in your multilevel list.

This is my document after I created 2 styles: Bold bullet text and Normal bullet text.

Now that your Linked Styles are created, you need to create your List Style. This describes what your bullets look like and how they are indented. This is also where you link your bullet level to the particular Linked Style created earlier. You do this to tell Word how you want the text formatted at each bullet level. Here are the generic steps to create a List Style and link your bullet level to a style.

1) On the Home tab, in the Paragraph group, click the Multilevel List button.

2) Select Define New List Style.

3) In the Define New List Style dialog, type a name for your List Style in the Name field.

4) Click on the Format button. Choose Numbering. The Modify Multilevel list dialog appears.

5) Click the More button to expand the dialog box to show all your options.

6) Under the label Click level to modify choose the bullet level to customize.

7) Choose the Style for text from the Link Level to style drop down.

8) Configure other options such as the number style and indenting.

9) Choose a new level from the left and repeat steps 6 through 8 for each level to customize.

10) Click OK twice to close your dialog boxes when finished.

Now that you created your List Style, you are ready to re-use your bulleted list in just one click. You can choose the List style again from the Multilevel List button on the Home tab to apply your customized bulleted list.

But there is still one more step. In order to use your new styles in new documents you create, you need to save your Styles to the Normal template, or save the current document as a template.

Here are the steps to save your Styles to the Normal template:

1) Right click on your style in the Styles gallery on the Home tab.

2) Choose Modify from the shortcut menu.

3) Choose the option New Documents based on this Template. Click OK.

Now you’ll be able to use that bulleted list whenever you want!

Author: Ryan Donelan rdonelan@microknowledge.com

A Look into the Future

maureen — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 15:52:42 +0000

Don’t you wish you had a crystal ball and real insight into the future? Or could predict what the future will hold, where you will be using technology and what that technology look like? Will we really have cool slap-on watches that can double as our phone based on the rumored iWatch? Or will we all be wearing glasses that are really augmented-reality glasses such as the anticipated Google Glass? Possibly. Google is slated to release its Star Trek like goggles later this year and the iWatch is coming, if not this year then certainly next year. Only time will tell. We can’t look into the future, but we can prepare for it. Knowledge can help you prepare.

This year will bring more of the same: Now it really is true and you can’t avoid it. What do I mean? Let’s take a look at technologies that will change your future.

Social Media. Social Media is here. What are you doing to leverage your organization using any number of the social media tools at your disposal? If you deal with the public, learn to use social media the right way and it can be your best marketing tool. Ignore it, and you may lose your social media savvy customers.

The Cloud. I know. The term is still daunting and makes you feel as though there is some big, weird, scary thing out there in space, but face it, you can save a lot of money hosting email, websites, collaboration tools, etc. in a web-based tool. For a small organization, that savings can be invaluable. You have the best of the best taking care of your technology. Not a bad deal for hosting services that cost as little as dollars a month. Security may still be a factor, but explore your options. There is probably something out there for you.

Once you feel comfortable with the security of the cloud, what about using the cloud for your disaster recovery? Space is so inexpensive that paying for a physical piece of hardware seems pointless when you can “rent” space for only dollars a month and have daily backup and virus protection.

Mobility. More mobile devices than PCs have been purchased for businesses in the past two years. What do you rely on more? Your phone or your computer? The trend is here. We want our information now, in a small, fast device so we can continue to work while waiting in the doctor’s office or supermarket. In addition to mobility, we want to use the items we purchase at work so we only have to carry one or two devices around. More companies are allowing for the adoption of BYOD (bring your own device) into the workplace.

Does all of this sound familiar? All of these items were topics of past blogs. All of them are real and getting better each and every time we talk about them. They are here folks! What are you waiting for?

Consider rereading the past blogs I’ve written on these business changing technology trends.

Still want more? Read articles from:

Author: Lisa Ryan lryan@microknowledge.com

Windows 8 – Shutting Down Your PC with One Click

eleonora — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 14:28:22 +0000

Windows 8 places the Shutdown button in the settings menu making shutting down your PC a multi-step process. View the steps below to add a button to the Windows 8 Desktop to shut down your PC with just one click.

Right click on the Desktop. Click New. Select Shortcut.
Type “shutdown /s /t 0” (with no quotes and it is a zero not an “O”).
Name the shortcut Shutdown. Click finish.
Locate the new shortcut on the Desktop. Right click new shortcut. Select Properties.
Click Change icon.
Select an icon of choice. Click OK.
Right click new shortcut. Select Pin to Start. Pin the icon wherever it is convenient on the Start Screen. Shortcut is created.
Click new shortcut button to instantly shutdown the computer.

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