Q&A Tip
USE THAT SURPLUS HARD DISK CAPACITY
FOR EXTRA BACKUPS
SO you’ve just upgraded your network PC
and you’re wondering “What an earth can I do with all this hard disk space?"
"My last one was only half full and this one is 10 times bigger!” Well,
here’s a suggestion. Use a workstation with plenty of hard disk space to make
an extra monthly backup of all your databases. Here’s how…
On the workstation, create a
first-level subfolder which you can name QABACKUP or MONTHBAK. Under it, create
a folder for the year 2001. Under that, create a folder for each month. Name
them 01Jan, 02Feb, and so forth. This way they’ll be listed in their correct
order. (Once you’ve done one year, and before storing any data, copy it to a
2002 folder ready for next year. Now, once a month, on no particular day, copy
the whole of your Q&A database directory (or even the entire main Q&A
directory with all its subdirectories if you like, if it’s the parent of the
data directory) to the requisite month’s folder on the workstation. You can do
this by dragging using Windows Explorer or My Computer. The
easiest way is to drag/copy the entire folder to the month folder on the C:
drive, so that it becomes a folder within, say, 2001\02Feb. You’ll need to
ensure that nobody has any of the databases open when you do this.
TAKE CARE if the backup folder is on the same drive as your main data -
dragging in this case would MOVE the files:- not what you would want.
In this case hold down the Ctrl Key as you drag in order to effect a copy
operation.
What do you do with these backup folders
then? Well, nothing, hopefully. This is just another “belt & braces”
backup. It doesn’t replace the normal—usually daily—backup. It has the
advantage of giving you a readily-accessible earlier copy of all your data going
back a month at a time. You never know—one of these files might be a
life-saver some time in the future. Worried about disk space? Don’t be. Even
if all your databases, including backups and archived and obsolete databases,
add up to 100MB, that’s only 1.2 GB a year, one small corner of a modern hard
disk.
Figure 1.
The Folder tree on the local drive, ready to receive a
monthly backup of all your Q&A files.
Alec
Mulvey
Windows Tip
PRINT ONLY PART OF A WEB PAGE
(Posted December 2001)
It often happens that you want to print some information from a web page, but
not >ALL< the information on that page.
To do so, it's easy! Do NOT click on the "print" button -
instead, first select want you want to print, then click on "File /
Print" from the main menu. At the print dialog box, ensure you select
the "Selection" item under "Page Range"..
.. then, when you click on "Print" you will only print what
you want.
Previous Tips
Move
a Paragraph OR Table Row <EASILY> in Word !
One of my favourite Word tricks is to re-order table rows.
Say you have a row in a Word table and you want it to be higher up the
table. Simple.
Just click somewhere in that row - you don't need to even select the row
- and then press…
Alt + Shift + Up Arrow
The row moves up one!
Repeat the keystrokes until it's where you want it. Move down by
using the down arrow key instead.
The same technique works on paragraphs too.
Again, no need to select the paragraph, just click somewhere within it.
Having said that, it can be handy to move up a paragraph, or several
paragraphs, with the following empty paragraph.
In this case, just select them first in the left margin and move them as
one.
Print a DOS Screen in Windows 95/98
By Alec Mulvey
Applies to: Q&A (DOS)
Sometimes you don't want to print a report or print spec or even press F2 / F10 to print one of Q&A's printable specs (eg Program Spec or Restrict Spec). You just want to print what you can see, or maybe a non-printable spec such as the internal Lookup Table.
Back in the "good o'l days" of DOS you would press Print Screen on your keyboard. Now, under Windows, this does not work. Instead, your DOS screen is put on the Windows clipboard. However, you can still get the same print screen functionality. Instead, press..
SHIFT + Print Screen
You may need to press Continue or Form Feed on your printer to eject the page.
Note however that this does not work under Windows NT.
Go to last cursor position in Word
Have you ever been editing a long Word document, then gone to a different part
of the document, made a change, and then found it took ages to find where you've
just come from? Well, there's an easy way of avoiding this problem.
Word
stores the last 5 cursor positions. You go to the previous cursor position
by
pressing SHIFT F5. You can repeat this up to 4 further times, taking
you back
to previous edits, and then you are returned to the original position.
This goes further. Word actually stores the position of the cursor when
you
save the document. So, if you press Shift F5 when you open any document,
the
cursor is put where it was when you last saved it. You can set up an
AutoOpen
macro which does just that, if you like, so that you automatically go to the
last cursor position on opening the document - just like in Q&A !
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