Using Microsoft Word’s Research Pane

The Research Pane in Microsoft Word is designed to help you find information from research books or internet research sites. For example, the Research Pane has a dictionary, a thesaurus, a translation dictionary, an encyclopedia and other reference resources.

Although we’ll be showing you how use the Research Pane in Word 2007, it’s available in previous versions of Word as well.

To get started, just highlight a word and right click it. From the menu that appears, select “Look Up” as follows:
The Research Pane appears on the right side of the document. It uses the highlighted word and display results from the encyclopedia and thesaurus.

There are several options on this pane; you can limit the results to just one reference source or you can perform additional actions. For instance, a drop down menu appears when you select a synonym allowing you to quickly insert the word in your document. You can also quickly look up the word in the dictionary.

Another convenient feature is the translation module shown below:

The selected word will appear translated at the bottom. If you want, you can click the green arrow and translate the entire document from one language into another. Just change the “From” and “To” languages as needed.

If needed, you can add or remove research resources by clicking on the Research options link at the bottom of the pane. This allows you to add a dictionary, thesaurus or encyclopedia in another language. You can also add search or financial sites.

If the Research Pane doesn’t work on your computer, give us a call.

Do I Still Need To Defragment My Hard Drive?

The short answer is yes!

For those of you who have never heard of this, we’ll explain. Over time, the files on your PC’s hard drive become fragmented. This happens because the information that makes up a file is not stored in just one place.

It’s sort of like organizing the clothes in your closet. Everything is easier to find when it’s organized.

Since one portion of a file may be at the beginning of your drive and the remainder could be at the end, the time your PC takes to load the information takes longer. Since a slower PC wastes time, you want to defragment your drive.

It’s actually easy to do; just open My Computer, right click your “C” drive and select Properties. Click on the Tools tab and click on the Deframent Now button.

You should do this at least once a month for all of the PCs in your office to help keep them in top running shape.

If you want your PC housekeeping taken care of for you, give us a call at (949) 481-1232. This is just one of the chores our Sentinel Business Services plan handles while you sleep.

Expired or No Antivirus Software?

In the last few weeks, we’ve seen several instances where PCs and even servers have expired antivirus software or no antivirus software installed at all.

When we’ve asked the businesses why, they’ve told us that they thought it wasn’t necessary any more. They thought they just needed a firewall.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case—especially on a server. A firewall is just part of a complete security plan for your business.

Antivirus software is inexpensive now, usually much less than $50 per PC to keep things current and up to date. When faced with the risk of compromising the privacy of your client’s information or lengthy down time to clean up a security breach, why gamble?

“Phishing” Still A Big Problem

A while back, we wrote about “phishing”. It’s a carefully crafted email message or website designed to steal personal information.

One of our clients just had a close call with a phishing attempt. The email message claimed that the business domain (“dot-com”) name was about to expire and needed to be renewed. Actually, that was not the case.

Thankfully, our client asked us to check their domain name account as they could not find their sign on credentials. When we reviewed their account, we realized a renewal was not needed and the email message was a fraudulent attempt to gain the log on information.

Phishing attempts always use odd looking web addresses that belong to the fraudsters. Legitimate companies use their own web address in all of their correspondence.

So, how can you tell what’s OK? Actually, it’s easy. Hold your mouse over the link and if you see an odd web address, don’t click the link. Go to the company’s site directly and save yourself a lot of trouble.

I’d Like My PowerPoint To Go, Please!

Do you use Microsoft PowerPoint? For those who don’t, it’s a software program that’s used to create graphic presentations. It’s included in most versions of Microsoft Office and it’s widely used from corporate boardrooms to our local schools.

For those of you who prepare and deliver PowerPoint presentations regularly, you either have to lug your equipment with you or rely on a computer and projector provided for you at the presentation site.

Relying on someone else’s computer can prove to be a problem for many reasons. To avoid these issues, Microsoft created a process to let you take your presentation “to go” so it will work seamlessly on any PC —even without PowerPoint!

Although we’ll be using PowerPoint 2007 to demonstrate, this can be done in older versions as well.

To get started, start up PowerPoint and open the presentation you’re working on.

Next, click on the Office button to open the menus and then click on “Publish”.

Then, select “Package For CD” as shown in the following screen shot:

The “Package for CD” dialog box will appear as follows:

Instead of copying the presentation to a CD or DVD disk, let’s copy it to a flash drive (also known as a “thumb” drive) as it’s faster and easier. If it’s not inserted into your USB port, please do it now.

Click on the “Copy to Folder” button and the following dialog box will appear:

Click on the Browse button and select the drive letter that corresponds to your flash drive. After choosing the correct destination, press OK and that’s it! Your presentation will be in a folder named “PresentationCD” on the flash drive.

The great part in all this is that this doesn’t just copy your presentation. It also packs a PowerPoint player for you to use when you don’t have the PowerPoint program installed on the PC you’re using.

To use it, just take your flash drive and insert it into any PC. You’ll see a prompt come up. Select “Open folder to view files”.

Next, double click on the “Presentation CD folder and then double click on the file named “play.bat”. Your presentation will start up in full screen mode without any fuss.

Trying to get something accomplished in PowerPoint and hit a snag? Give our office a call at (949) 481-1232 and we’ll help sort it out for you.

Telecommuting Workers May Pose A Security Risk

A recent study by Ernst & Young reported telecommuters may risk confidential data when working outside of the office.

The problems stem from a lack of awareness about the security risks. For instance, 75% of the companies in the study permitted their employees to print documents with confidential data. Only 25% required the printed documents to be stored in a safe and secured manner.

One third of the companies provided shredders and another third only asked that the documents be shredded. 17% had no disposal requirement for paper records.

Accessing company data using employee owned computers also poses a risk as data can be easily copied and stored without sufficient security.

Depending on the type of business you conduct, you may be risking the privacy of your clients’ data when telecommuters access data away from the office.

To be safe, an explicit policy governing the use of data outside the office should be the starting point for your company. Please call us at (949) 481-1232 for additional assistance and guidance for your company.

Domain Registration Scams — Be Careful!

Have you ever received a renewal for your domain name from an unknown company? Your domain name is the “dot-com” name that’s used for your company’s website.

An ongoing scam used by unscrupulous companies is to send a renewal form for a domain name they’ve never registered. This misleading form is actually an authorization to transfer the domain to the new company.

In the instances we’ve seen, these companies are outside the United States and charge exorbitantly high fees to transfer and register the name.

For most businesses, there’s little reason to move your domain name from one registrar to another. We recommend using a reputable company that’s been doing business for several years and we also recommend not using the company that hosts or designs your web site.

Why? If you ever want to change web hosting or web design companies, it makes moves more complicated. Also, we’ve seen numerous instances where web hosts or designers inappropriately list themselves as the owner of your domain name, which can make changes more difficult, if not impossible.

So, keep tabs on this simple detail as it can save you time and money.