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How To Make Good Use of Notepad
Save, Save and Keep Saving...!
On this page, starting not very far away from First Open The Package Containing Your New
Laptop...we will take you step by step, holding your hand all the way, through
many things you may need, or want, to know to become conversant, nay comfortable even, with this wonder of modern technology.
You will be able to move at your own speed, stick with the first set of operations and keep going over them until you are familiar with them,
for as long as it takes, and only move on when you are ready. You will always be able to go back a step, or several, if you find yourself starting to feel as though you are running faster than your feet are able...we
will also point you in the direction of useful sources of information and
tuition. The question is, what would you like to be able to do with your
computer? Seriously, though, we will look at standard Windows programs, while
we wait for you to tell us what you want to know about.
Personally, I'm very fond of Windows Notepad. It permits
you,
for instance, to copy the text from letters in your e-mail inbox, down at the
Internet café and take them home to your lap-top
using the least memory possible. Do bear in mind, though, that Notebook is text-only, so if you want to take pictures or other web elements from the Internet, you will need to
save them directly onto your floppy disk(s).
I will quickly explain how that is
done, in passing:
Left click the mouse once on File (in the top left hand corner of
the screen where the opened file (letter, website page or whatever) with the
image you want displayed is. On the Menu which drops down from File, left
click on Save As Web Page and when the little screen appears, you will
normally see My Documents (which appears by default and is where you will want
to put things if you are using your own computer to store the file) in the slot
at the top.
Left click on the little button just to the right of the slot and you will find
it now shows My Computer. On the list of available choices in the window of the
little screen, double left click on 3½ Floppy [A:] and, when that
is in the little slot at the top, clear the little slot directly underneath the
little screen (by left clicking in the slot and deleting the word Untitled)
and put the name you want to give that file in the slot.
Now left
click on the Save button, just to the right of the name slot
and the computer will put a copy of what is on the screen into a file on your
floppy disk. It doesn't take many goes to get used to doing that! Why not fill
in the file name first and then change the location? By all means do, but
there's always a danger that you may forget to change the location, press save
and leave your letter in the My Documents folder of the Internet office...
Since saving as a Web page is so easy, why not just use it to save all the letters
from your inbox? Well might you ask.
Indeed you can do that, but bear in mind that the computer doesn't know that you
only want the letter and not all the surrounding advertising banners and
paraphernalia of your e-mail provider and will, therefore save the whole lot for
you, with every letter.
You can see that it won't be long before your disk
(and,
in turn your computer) will be full! If all you've got is a couple of letters
to collect, all well and good. If you've been away a while and come back to a
full inbox, this will take a few disks to collect and later, on your computer,
you will end up having to get rid of all the memory-gobbling clutter at some
point. This is where Notepad comes in very handy...allowing you to save only the
relevant portion of the document - the text - and to store a great deal of it on
a floppy...
On the desktop screen, left click on Start: this brings up the Start Menu.
On the Start Menu, run the mouse to Programs, then across to Accessories, then left click on
Notepad: this brings up an open Notepad file.
On Notepad, left click on Edit: this brings down the Edit menu.
On the Edit menu, left click on Word Wrap: this formats the page so that the text you write will remain visible on the
page. If you don't Word Wrap, the text will disappear from right to left in a continuous
line.
Now you can write whatever you want to, in simple text, no frills no nothing.
Any time you need a memo, someone gives you a piece of information while you are
sitting at the computer or you want to write something down quickly and use it
in another application later, Notepad is there for you.
One thing I
use Notepad for, frequently, is to make quick copies of letters in my e-mail
inbox, so that I can use a 'floppy' to hold dozens of letters and clear the
inbox regularly. To copy the letter, which must be opened so that the text is
visible, hold the left clicker down whilst running the mouse down the text, to highlight
it, and then click Edit (top
second left of screen) and then Copy on the Edit menu.
Now click on the open
Notepad and then click on Edit, followed by Paste on the Edit Menu. Lo and
behold, the text appears on the Notepad and you can either use one Notepad per
letter or put several average-sized letters into one Notepad, hitting the enter
key a couple of times to form a gap between last and next, or typing NEXT above the spot where you plan to put the next
letter.
You can fit a lot of text
onto a floppy disc that way and, if you are storing stuff inside your home
computer or laptop, it's very economical on memory. I use Notepads to prepare
letters to be pasted into the text part of the Compose box in my Internet
account when I visit the Internet cafe, too - you just dump all the different
Notepads on a disc and take it to the Internet Cafe , insert the disc in their
machine and then open each Notepad and use the same process to put stuff into
letters you plan to send, as you used to get it out of letters you received, but
going in the other direction.
When you have finished adding text to a Notepad, you will want to label and save
it:
On Notepad, left click on File!: this brings down the File menu.
On the File menu, left click on Store: this brings up a 'card' which is titled
Save As. Now you must select:
On the top: Save In: choose where to put the file, e.g. Desktop, by left clicks
on the button to the right of the little slot and scroll to the Desktop or
whatever.
Below: File name: choose a name for what you have written and type it in.
Save As Type: unless you want a known alternative, leave this as text.
Now left click on Save at the bottom right hand side of the Save As 'card'.
Assuming you have given the file a name which is not already in use on another
file, the 'card' will disappear and now you can close the file by a left click
on the X in the top right hand corner of the Notepad file, or you can left click
on File! which brings down the File menu and left click on Leave.
If you have named the file with a name already used, a sign will come up, when
you left click on Save, telling you that a file already exists with that name
and will ask you if you want to replace the existing file with this new one. If
that is your intention, left click on 'yes' and the old file will cease to exist. If you used the same name by
accident, and wish to retain the existing
file, click on 'No' and you will be able to change the name to one you
haven't used before.
As you work on your computer, get into the habit, early
on, of
pausing to save everything you have just done to the memory on your hard drive.
If there is a sudden power-outage or you accidentally turn off the program you
are using, you will still have anything previously saved on your hard drive.
Anything since the last time you saved will be lost... Just left click on
File, in the top left hand corner of the screen (or Window) you are working
on and, when the Menu drops down, left click on Save.
The little
hourglass symbol, unless you have changed it for an alternative cursor symbol, (the book which comes with Windows 95 or 98 explains how to do
it, if you're interested) will show you that you need to give the computer a moment to save
the data and then, when the cursor goes back to its usual working shape, you can
proceed, knowing that all is well.
We were very fortunate to have the services of a data recovery
service without which this magazine would have been lost in the oblivion of a
dead hard drive. We'll be telling you all about it on the Hard and Fast page in the next issue. In the
meantime, learn from our very expensive mistake and make sure you back up any
important material on an external drive or onto discs of one sort or another... I
knew that before but it cost me US$ 1arm + 1 leg ( which, in the world of data
recovery, means I got off very lightly!) to take the lesson to heart...
Notepad will allow you to save a huge amount of text on a single floppy disk.
In the next liptap lotteracy lesson we'll take a look at another
Windows offering.
If you've mastered an aspect of laptop literacy and would like
to send us your explanation, we'll be glad to have your help..
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