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Sometimes, depending on the manufacturer and on the particular layout, your keyboard can be a great source of frustration. For TechRepublic reader Frank Reeves, the Caps Lock key is the one that drives him crazy. After seeing the TechRepublic How do I… about how to disable the Insert key in Word, he asked for information on how to similarly disable the Caps Lock key.

There are several ways to accomplish this task. One way is to discover the scan code for the Caps Lock key and for the key you want to map it to and then edit the Windows registry. The folks at Annoyances.org explain this method. However, their explanation is more complicated than it needs to be, and there are easier and safer ways to accomplish the same thing.

Third-party keyboard layout and mapping tools are available that will allow you to change the behavior of the Caps Lock key, but many of these really boil down to a .reg file, which edits the Windows registry for you. In general, these .reg files are fine and come from people and organizations just trying to help make your life easier, but it still involves a stranger editing your Windows registry files. That makes me uncomfortable.

The best way to remap the Caps Lock key or any key on your keyboard is with a free utility from Microsoft called remapkey.exe. This little utility is available in the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools. It is one of many utilities included in the kit and works with Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Vista. This TechRepublic How do I… shows you how to use the remapkey.exe utility to remap the Caps Lock key.

Remapping

Once you download and run the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools file, you will have a long laundry list of utilities located in a single directory. I used the default location (Figure A):

Figure A

Tools

When you start the remapkey utility, it presents a screen displaying two keyboards, as shown in Figure B.

Figure B

Remapkey utility

The top keyboard is the standard base keyboard layout. To remap the Caps Lock key, in the top keyboard, click on the key you would like the Caps Lock to be remapped to, drag it to the bottom keyboard, and drop it on the Caps Lock key there. In my example, I am remapping the Caps Lock key to the left Shift key. (Note the red key in Figure C.)

Figure C

Caps Lock is now left Shift.

When you are satisfied with your remapping choices, click the Save And Exit icon to implement the change (Figure D). A reboot of the operating system will be required for the change to take effect.

Figure D

Save your settings and exit.

As you can see in Figure E, the remapkey utility is writing to the Windows registry, just like the methods mentioned earlier were going to do, but this gives you more control over that delicate editing process.

Figure E

Remapkey writes to the Windows registry.

Note: For Windows Vista, you will have to run the remapkey utility in administrator mode.

Last fall, my nine-year-old granddaughter asked if I had PowerPoint and then proceeded to create a presentation for Social Studies, mostly on her own. I hovered and made suggestions, but she really didn’t need my help. She added a few pictures and a recording of Kentucky’s state song, “My Old Kentucky Home.” She got an A!

The thing is, everybody knows how to use PowerPoint these days, and that can be problematic for the professional. It’s like an amusement park — the more rides you ride, the more thrilling a ride has to be to get your attention. In other words, you now have to work harder than ever to impress your audience. The ordinary just won’t do anymore.

That’s where rich media can make a difference. Rich media is anything other than text: pictures, graphics, video, audio, animated clips, and so on. A little creative power can go a long way. Remember the old saying about a picture’s worth a thousand words? Well, I won’t bore you further with a lot of extraneous verbalization when I can prove what I’m saying with just two slides.

There’s nothing wrong with the above slide, but it’s ordinary and unfortunately rather typical of the average presentation. Your audience won’t remember it. Why should they; there’s nothing memorable about it.

On the other hand, they’ll remember the slide below. Not only will they remember it, they’ll want to know who the child is and where you took the picture. Most important, the slide will implant a pleasant association with you. Now that, they’ll remember.

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Word offers special bookmarks that let you automate the process of addressing your envelopes.  Mary Ann Richardson explains this handy feature.

When you need to send the same letter to two or three people, retyping the inside address for each recipient is much easier than using mail merge. But without mail merge, you may think that you need to retype both the return address and the delivery address before printing the envelopes. Fortunately, Word has two special bookmarks you can use to address the envelopes without retyping. Follow these steps:

Figure A

1. Select the delivery address.
2. Go cialis dosage options to Insert | Bookmark.
3. Type EnvelopeAddress in the Bookmark name text box (Figure B) and click Add.

Figure B

1. In Word 2003, go to Tools | Letters And Mailings and click on Envelopes & Labels. In Word 2007, click Mailings and then click Envelopes in the Create Group.
2. Click Print to print the envelope.

Now you can go back to your letter, select the delivery address, and replace it with the delivery address for the next addressee. The new delivery address will automatically appear in the Envelope dialog box — no retyping required.

Your customers will appreciate it if you send them a shipping notification.  See how a  little command button magic allows you to automate the process in your Access forms.

For better customer service, you decide you’d like to send an e-mail message informing customers when their orders have been shipped. However, you don’t want to have your shipping personnel spend time composing those messages. Good news: They don’t have to! You’ve already created a form that your staff uses to enter the Ship Date after an item has been shipped. Just add a Command button, like the one in Figure A, to send a shipping confirmation to the customer’s e-mail address automatically.

Figure A

cialis dosage information align=”justify”>To create the button, follow these steps:

1. Press Alt + Q.

Figure B

Now, when the user enters the ship date and clicks the Send Shipping Confirmation button, Access will compose the e-mail shown in Figure C.

Figure C

The user can review the e-mail and click the Send button. Access will then send the e-mail to the address in the ShipEmail field for that order.

Working day to day, you’ve probably built quite a list of AutoCorrect entries. They help you work more efficiently and for the most part, your list is probably unique to you. Not only are the entries unique to you, that list is unique to your local system. That means if you work on another system or get a new computer, you have to rebuild your list — well, not exactly.

The good news is that you can back up your AutoCorrect entries and take them with you. Run a search using Windows Find File feature for files with the ACL extension — *.acl. Copy those files to a floppy, CD, or even a USB flash drive. Then, copy those files to the appropriate location cialis dosage daily on the new system. I recommend that you rename the existing .acl files rather than just overwriting them. That way, you can revert to the existing .acl files if necessary. This is particularly important if you’re temporarily using someone else’s system. You don’t want to overwrite their entries with yours.