You can do IT in later life
August 2006
You can do IT is a regular feature
of laterlife.com aimed at trying to help
laterlife visitors make the most of Information
Technology on or off the web.
Jackie Sherman who runs the
You can do IT Question & Answer
section is an IT trainer and author. Jackie has spent
her career in education and specialises in teaching
IT to adults. Her courses for adults include such
topics as MS Office, the Internet, e-mail and basic
web page authoring.
Jackie
has also written several books - you can find more details about these by
clicking here. Jackie has
also been running a course specifically for over
50s.
Via laterlife.com Jackie aims to
particularly help those new to IT and the web to build
up knowledge and confidence, so no question is too
basic. At the same time she will cover Q&As for the
more experienced user.
So if you would like to ask a question of Jackie, or if you have discovered something which may be of interest to others in making the most of the web, then she would love to hear about that too. Why not email her jackie@laterlife.com
Some niggly problems that are easy to sort out.
Q:
Something is wrong with my keyboard as typing the @ symbol
displays quote marks instead. How can I get back to normal?
A: It sounds as if your keyboard layout has been set to
the wrong language. To change back to UK English, go to the
Control Panel and select Regional and Language Options.
Make sure the boxes on the Regional Options tab show
English (United Kingdom) before clicking OK.

Q:
My taskbar
is behaving very oddly and often disappears altogether. Is there
a way to sort this out?
A: The Taskbar can be set to "auto-hide" which means that
it is out of the way until you hover over it with the mouse. If
you don't want this to happen, right-click on the Taskbar and
select Properties to open the menu of options. In Windows
XP, for example, you will can choose a setting that will always
keep the Taskbar on top of other windows as well as take off any
auto-hide option.

Q:
When trying to print out web pages, I often find the last
few characters on the right-hand side are truncated. Can I
change the settings to make sure I print all the words?
A: Whenever you print, it is a good idea to check first
in Print Preview – the option available from the File
menu. If you see truncated words, click the Page Setup
button and change the Orientation from Portrait to
Landscape. You should then have more than enough page widthto
show all the text.

Q: When typing e-mail messages,
I sometimes find my words are
being replaced when I try to make changes. What has happened,
and how can I put it right?
A: When this happens, it means you have gone into
Overtype mode, instead of Insert mode. The most likely cause is
hitting the Insert key (usually near the Delete and Home keys)
by mistake. Just press the key again and you will be back to
normal.
View previous editions of YoucandoIT
for more useful Questions and Answers
For a wealth of books on the web and IT generally,
visit Amazon
and under the books section select Computers and
Internet.
Don't forget to visit the general
laterlife features section called laterlife
interest
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