How to Change Case in Microsoft Word (e.g. UPPERCASE to lowercase)

Have you ever been typing away in Microsoft Word only to notice, when you took a breather, that all the text was capitalized because you inadvertently hit the Caps Lock key?

Well no problem, this can be quickly remedied. Just select the text and go to Format on the menu, select Change Case... and click on lowercase. This works on both Macs and PCs.

Here's an illustrated overview of that process:

1. Select the text.

2. Go to Format on the menu

3. Select Change Case...

4. Select lowercase in the Change Case window











Your text is now converted to all lower case.

There are five options in the Change Case window: Sentence case, lowercase, UPPERCASE, Title Case and tOGGLE cASE.

Examples of the five options:

• Sentence:.............
  
  
• lowercase:.............
  
  
• UPPERCASE:......
  
  
• Title Case:............
  
  
• tOGGLE cASE:....

Understanding Absolute Paths in Dreamweaver

Sooner or later you'll want to include hyperlinks (links) in your Dreamweaver webpages. Whenever you create a link to another page in your website you have to enter a path to that file or location. Images also have paths to their source. Dreamweaver manages these paths pretty well as long as the files are within your website folder.

Sometime you need to add links to web pages or files outside your website folder. This kind of hyperlink is called an absolute or full path. It is the full URL (Uniform Resource Locator, a pointer to a "resource" on the World Wide Web) to a web page. The path points to the exact location of the file on the internet. This type of file is always begins with the file transfer protocol (HTTP, FTP, File, and so on).

An absolute path is like a house address. For example: 3333 Sycamore Lane, Raffian, Ohio 44703 is a complete address.

The link to the Scripps TSR-EYE site (http://www.scripps.edu/services/tsr-eye/index.html) is an example of an absolute path. It contains the entire path to a file on the internet. If you use absolute links to other websites on your web page, be sure to check to see if they are still valid from time to time.

An absolute path or full URL can consist of up to five sections, listed below:

• Protocol - The first part of the URL is the protocol. It is http for web pages to indicate Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Sometimes you might want to link to a file on a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server (another method of communication over the Internet to move files to and from a server), using ftp instead of http as the protocol in the URL.

• Domain – The second part of the address is the domain. This is the name of the web server where the web page is located. The domain of the TSR-EYE link is www.scripps.edu. A colon and two forward slashes (://) separate the protocol and the domain.

• Port – An optional third part of a URL is the port. If the port is not specified, the default port for the protocol is used instead. The default port for a web server is port 80. When you enter http as the protocol, port 80 is implied and doesn’t usually need to be included.

• Path and filename – The fourth part of the address is the path and filename. The path includes all directories and the filename. In our TSR-EYE sample, the pathpath is /services/tsr-eye and the filename is: /index.html. Most web pages end in .htm or .html. Other common file endings are .cgi for Common Gateway Interface; asp for Active Server Pages; .jsp for JavaServer Pages; .aspx for ASP.NET files; .php for PHP pages; and .cfm for ColdFusion Markup language.

• Query string – The filenames might be followed by an optional fifth part of a URL – a query string. The query string is added to a URL to send data to a script for processing. The “?” tells the browser that the following part is a variable. Anything after the '?' in a URL is called the "Query string" A typical URL format containing a query string is as follows: http://server/path/program?query_string.
  
  The graphic below illustrates a URL with a Port listing and Query string.

The absolute paths to the YouTube videos are another example of query strings:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frvVJJv63gg (Link to a Dreamweaver tutorial about Defining a your Local Root/Site Folder)

You might see a URL that does not have a filename referenced at the end, such as http://www.scripps.edu/services/tsr-eye. No specific file is referenced in the URL, only the final directory is included ("/tsr-eye" in this case).This type of address works because the web server looks for a default page in the directory. Most web sites have a default page name that doesn’t need to be explicitly entered at the end of the URL. Usually the default page name is welcome.html, default.htm, default.html, index.htm or index.html. On some servers, any of these names will work.


Default pages in the root of a site are often referred to as home pages. To create a home page for a website, ask your webmaster or web hosting service for the default page name for your web server. If you don’t have a default page on your website and a visitor doesn’t enter a filename at the end of the URL, that person might see all the contents of your directories instead of a web page. Or the user might get an error message.


Most browsers don’t require that you enter the protocol into the browser’s address box to go to a web page. The browsers assume that you want to use the HTTP protocol to access a web page. However, if you are surfing to an FTP file, you have to enter ftp as the protocol at the beginning of the URL. Even though browsers assume HTTP, you still need to preface absolute links entered into Dreamweaver with http://.

Recall Email in Outlook

Have you ever sent email out in anger only to regret it later? Or maybe you made a mistake, like listing the wrong date or venue for a seminar announcement. Well you may have a chance to recall the email if you work quickly. An email can be recalled only if both you and the email recipient(s) are using Outlook and have Exchange accounts.

Here is an entertaining video on how to do that as well as how to set up a rule that will delay your email messages: What To Do If You Send A Kamikaze Email.

Check my March 19 blog for the detailed process of creating a rule that will delay all your email. Your email will stay in your Outbox folder for the length of the delay time specified by that rule and is easily retrieved before being sent.

Create a Distribution List in Outlook 2003

This week's blog covers the steps to create a distribution list in Outlook. Distribution lists are an efficient way to handle group mailings. It can be any kind of group - research or study group or recreational groups for sports or socializing. And you can have as many distribution lists as you want in your Outlook contacts.

To start, open Outlook (2003).

1. On the File menu, point to New, and then click Distribution List.

2. In the Distribution List window, type a name in the Name box. For this demonstration, I used Tennis Club.
3. Click Select Members.

4. In the Show Names from the list, click the address book that contains the email addresses you want in your distribution list.

5. In the Type name or select from list box, type a name you want to include. In the list below, select the name, and then click Members. Do this for each person you want to add to the distribution list, and then click OK.

If you want to add a longer description of the distribution list, click the Notes tab, and then type the text.

6. Then click the Save and Close button and your distribution list is saved in your Contacts folder by the name you gave it.

7. When you want to use the distribution list with a new email, click on the To... button and select contacts, find your distribution list name (Tennis Club) and select it.

If you want to check the members of the Tennis Club, click on the + sign in front of the name of the distribution list to expand the list.

Once you have expanded your distribution list, Outlook replaces the list with its members and does not allow you to collapse it again.

The Quick Selection Tool in Photoshop CS3

The traditional way of making selections in Photoshop involved using a tool such as the Magnetic Lasso to trace the perimeter of the area that you intended to select. Then Adobe introduced the Magic Wand tool, which allows you to make selections by clicking on specific areas within an image that you’d like to select—the Magic Wand then makes an educated guess at the selection based on pixel color. Photoshop CS3’s new Quick Selection tool is the next step in Photoshop selections—it makes the entire process of selecting specific parts of an image easier, faster, and more accurate.

Advantages of the Quick Selection Tool

Though you can still use the Magnetic Lasso and /or the Magic Wand to make selections in Photoshop CS3, you’ll probably want to use the Quick Selection tool instead, since it offers so many advantages over its predecessors:

• Ease: The Quick Selection tool does most of the work of making a selection for you. You don’t need to trace the area manually, as you do with the Magnetic Lasso, or click once and hope that the tool guesses the selection that you’d like to make, as you do with the Magic Wand. Instead you simply paint within the area that you’d like to select.
  

• Accuracy: The Quick Selection tool guesses the areas that you intend to select much more accurately than the Magic Wand tool does. The tool’s accuracy makes the process of making even complicated selections much more efficient.

• Convenience: With other selection tools, after you’ve made your selection, you need to use other features to fine-tune it. If you then decide to change the selection, you need to step back through your History to redo the selection. The Quick Selection lets you fine-tune your selection from within the tool itself, before finalizing the selection.
  
  
• Preview: Photoshop users typically make selections with the intention of using the selected pixels in another image (or layer), as a Quick Mask, or as a Layer Mask. The Quick Selection tool facilitates this process by letting you preview how your selection will appear against various colored backgrounds, as a Quick Mask, or as a Layer Mask before you actually make the selection.
  

How to Access the Quick Selection Tool

The Quick Selection tool is located in Photoshop’s Tools palette, in the same button that houses the Magic Wand tool.

1. Click on the Magic Wand tool’s icon in the Tools palette and move your cursor to the right.
   
   
2. A submenu will appear to the right in which you can select the Quick Selection tool.
   
   

The Quick Selection Toolbar

When you select the Quick Selection tool in the Photoshop Tools palette, the Quick Selection toolbar will appear just under the main Photoshop toolbar at the top of your screen. The Quick Selection toolbar contains several options and features unique to the Quick Selection tool.

1. Select the Quick Selection tool.

2. Specify one of the selection options in the options bar: New, Add to, Subtract from. New is the default option if nothing is selected. After making the initial selection, the option changes automatically to Add to.

3. To change the Quick Selection tool brush tip size, click the Brush menu in the options bar and type in a pixel size or move the Diameter slider. Use the Size pop-up menu options to make the brush tip size sensitive to pen pressure or a stylus wheel.

When creating a selection, press the right bracket (]) to increase the Quick Selection tool brush tip size; press the left bracket ([) to decrease the brush tip size.

4. Choose Quick Selection options
Sample All Layers Creates a selection based on all layers instead of just the currently selected layer.
Auto-Enhance reduces roughness and blockiness in the selection boundary. Auto-Enhance automatically flows the selection further towards image edges and applies some of the edge refinement you can apply manually set in the Refine Edge dialog box with the Smooth, Contrast and Radius options.

5. Paint inside the part of the image you want to select. The selection grows as you paint. As you paint near the edges of a shape, the selection area extends to follow the contours of the shape edge.

Painting with the Quick Selection tool to extend the selection.

If you stop dragging and then click or drag in a nearby area, the selection will grow to include the new area.

• To subtract from a selection, click the Subtract from option in the options bar, then drag over the existing selection.
• To temporarily switch between add and subtract modes, hold down the Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac) key.
• To change the tool cursor, choose Edit > Preferences > Cursors > Painting Cursors (Windows) or Photoshop > Preferences > Cursors > Painting Cursors (Mac OS). Normal Brush Tip displays the standard Quick Selection cursor with a plus or minus sign to show the selection mode.

6. (Optional) Click Refine Edge to further adjust the selection boundary of view the selection against different backgrounds or as a mask.

Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh]

This week's software tip is about Zotero, an extension for the browser Firefox. Many thanks to Christoph Weber of TSRI's Research Computing department who discovered and shared it with me. Zotero is a free, easy-to-use yet robust research tool that helps you gather, organize, and analyze sources (citations, full texts, web pages, images, and other objects), and lets you share the results of your research in a variety of ways.

Zotero includes some of the best features of older reference manager software (like EndNote), has the ability to store author, title, and publication fields and to export that information as formatted references. Plus it’s compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.

Since this very cool extension lives in your Firefox browser, it can transmit information to, and receive information from other web services and applications; and it can communicate with software running on your computer such as Microsoft Word. Zotero can even be used offline. And I did mention it’s FREE.

Here’s where to download Zotero:
http://www.zotero.org/

A good way to get acquainted with Zotero is by watching the ztour video found on the Zotero home page. The program is pretty intuitive, but if you need a little guidance, there is a user friendly Quick Start Guide pdf that can be downloaded. And there are screencast tutorials on the support page demonstrating many of the basic functions of Zotero.

Zotero is a production of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. It is funded by the United States Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Look for it to grow over the next year from an already helpful browser extension into a full-fledged tool for digital research and collaboration.

Delay Sending a Message in Outlook

Have you ever sent off an email only to realize you forgot to add something, or that you shouldn't have sent it period? A way of preventing email errors is to create a rule that delays your email by 2 or 3 minutes, just enough time for you to realize that you've made a mistake. However, you need to have a Microsoft Exchange account for this rule to work.

If you have a Microsoft Exchange account, you can delay delivery of an individual message, or you can delay the delivery of all messages using Rules by having them held in the Outbox for a specified time after clicking Send. Here's how you do it:

Delay delivery of an individual message

1. In the message, click Options.
2. Under Delivery options, select the Do Not deliver before check box, and then click the delivery date and time you want.
   

Delay delivery of all messages (watch the video)

1. On the Tools menu, click Rules and Alerts, and then click New Rule.
2. Select Start from a blank rule.
3. In the Step 1: Select when messages should be checked box, click Check messages after sending, and the click Next.
4. In the Step1: Select condition(s) list, select any options you want, and then click Next. If you do not select any check boxes, a confirmation dialog box appears. Clicking Yes applies this rule to all messages you send.
5. In the Step 1: Select action(s) list, select defer delivery by a number of minutes. Delivery can be delayed up to two hours.
6. In the Step 2: Edit the rule description (click on an underlined value) box, click the underlined phrase a number of and enter the number of minutes you want messages held before sending.
7. Click OK, and then click Next.
8. Select any exceptions, and then click Next.
9. In the Step 1: Specify a name for this rule box, type a name for the rule.
10. Click Finish.