While you can use Word’s Printed Watermark dialog box to add a custom watermark to your document, Word also lets you create a watermark from any graphic object (SmartArt, charts, shapes, clip art, etc.) by simply copying the graphic into the Header window. Follow these steps to create a watermark from a copy of a picture taken from the Clip Art Gallery:

1. Click the Behind Text option.
2. Right-click the portion of the picture in the Header window and then select Send To Back.
3. Click Send Behind Text.
4. Click and drag the bottom-right picture handle to extend the cialis canadian pharmacy picture into the middle of the document beyond the header.

You can also format the picture to make it more transparent. For example, in Word 2007, follow these steps:

1. Double-click the Header to display the Header window.
2. Right-click the picture in the Header window and then select Format Picture.
3. Click the drop-down arrow of the Recolor button and click the first selection under Light variations. (Alternatively, you can choose Washout under Color Modes.)
4. Click Close.

Lots of mail in your Inbox doesn’t mean you’re popular. It means you’re unorganized. It might even get you into trouble. Messages in a cluttered Inbox tend to fall off the screen and into a black hole.

The truth is that most of us use our Inbox as a storage bin and that’s a bad idea. An Inbox full of mail is oppressive. Trying to manage all that mail is like cleaning your garage-it’s hard work that you avoid at all cost. The more you avoid it, the bigger the mess grows.

The hardest part is making all those decisions. Each E-mail requires your attention:

Now, you may have a broader list of possibilities, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have to make a decision for every message you receive. Managing E-mail is a three-layer line of defense:

• Delete the old.
• Divide (and conquer) what you must keep.
• Let Outlook manage incoming mail.

The first step is the hardest but you must get rid of all those old messages. Create a personal folder and name it Old Stuff or something just as appropriate. Then, sort the messages in your Inbox by the Receive column. Move everything that’s older than a month (or a week if you’re really drowning) to the Old Stuff folder.The next step is to find some commonality among the messages that are left. For instance, you might receive a lot of mail from family and friends or you might have several messages regarding ongoing projects. Create personal folders to accommodate these categories. It doesn’t matter if you get it exactly right the first time. Just start. Later, you can combine folders or add more.

Once you have all the folders you need, drag messages from the Inbox into their respective folders. Next, create rules to download subsequent messages directly into these folders-bypassing the Inbox altogether.
Congratulations, you’ve seriously reduced the messages in your Inbox. Even better, you’ve reduced the number of subsequent messages that will ever see your Inbox.

All that should be left in your Inbox at this point is miscellaneous items. Go ahead and deal with them now. The goal is to empty your Inbox. If you find something you can’t delete, find a folder for it.

Now, you can’t just forget about all those moved messages. Go through the folders and continue to delete as much as you can. Use flags to identify, in some meaningful way, what’s left. It might cialis c20 take you a few days to come up with just the right flag system.

Once all your mail is in a folder and flagged, settle on a routine for checking new mail. Everything in your Inbox should be deleted or moved to an appropriate folder. All new messages in personal folders should be deleted or flagged.

By combining flags and search folders you can easily manage the E-mail you must keep. For instance, you might have many folders for current projects, but using just one  search folder you can view all messages flagged for an immediate response. You don’t have to sort through every folder. Just view the appropriate search folder.

Keeping the Inbox empty will be easier, but don’t expect miracles. Adjust rules or add new ones as necessary. The idea is to let Outlook filter messages into folders, bypassing the Inbox completely.

It will still take some effort on your part to keep things manageable:

• Quickly pursue new E-mails in the Inbox by deleting them, or moving them and flagging them.
• Check new messages in personal folders and delete them or flag them.
• Use search folders to manage flagged messages.

Don’t forget about the Old Stuff folder. It might take you several days to get through all that old mail, but none of it’s going anywhere. Chances are you’ll delete most of it. When you find a message you need to keep, drag it to a folder, flag it, and use a search folder to manage it.

Thanks to Word’s mail merge fields, you can automate the process of producing different letters based on criteria you specify. This example shows how it works.

When you need to send two or more different letters to your clients based on a value in a field in the client database, you don’t need to compile two separate mailing lists. Using the If… Then…Else rule with the INCLUDETEXT field, you can process both letters at once. For example, say you have saved two documents, one containing the body of the letter for clients located in Missouri and a second containing the body of the letter for clients located in Illinois. To create one mailing that will send the appropriate letter to each client, follow these steps:

1. Click below the greeting, where you want to insert the body of your letter.

1. Click the drop-down arrow of the Insert Word Field button in the Mail Merge toolbar. (In Word 2007, click Rules in the Write & Insert Fields group of the Mailings tab.)

1. Click If…Then…Else.

1. Click the Field Name box drop-down arrow and select State (Figure A).

Figure A

1. Click in the Comparison box and select Equal To.

1. Click in the Compare To box and type MO.

1. Click in the Insert This Text box and type This is the text for MO.

1. In the Otherwise Insert This Text box, type This is the text for IL.

1. Click OK.

1. Right-click the field in the document and select Toggle Field Codes to display all the field codes (Figure B).

Figure B

1. Select the following text inside the quotes: This is the text for MO. (Do not select the quotes.)

1. Go to Insert | Field. (In Word 2007, click Quick Parts in the Text Group of the Insert tab.)

1. Click Field.

1. Under Field Names, select IncludeText (Figure C).

Figure C

1. Click in the Filename Or URL box and type the full pathname for the file containing the body of the letter for Missouri clients.

1. Click OK.

1. Right-click the field and select Toggle Field Codes.

1. Select the following text inside the quotes: This is the text for IL. (Again, do not select the quotes.)

1. Repeat steps 13 through 15.

1. Click in the Filename Or URL box and type the full pathname for the file containing the body of the letter for the Illinois clients.

1. Click OK.

When you right-click the field and toggle the field codes, your rule should look like the one in Figure D, substituting your filenames for each of the letters. When you run the mail merge, Word will print the letter that pertains to the value of the State field in each client record. (If you prefer to enter the field codes entirely from the keyboard, be sure to use Ctrl + F9 to enter the cialis c10 brackets.)

Figure D

Note that you can use the If …Then… Else rule with INCLUDETEXT to print out different letters for any number of values in the field. Simply create a different If…Then…Else rule for each value, with INCLUDETEXT as the first variable and blank (nothing between the quotes) for the second variable.

Photographing homes and buildings takes a special craft, but it’s something that can be easily acquired. Here are a few simple ways you can make your architectural photos stand out from the crowd!

1.) The structure should tell a story without any artificial lighting, etc. Try to photograph it just the way it is. If the house is a little on the dark side, don’t use too much light to show how bright it is. Similarly, if it’s too bright, don’t shut out the windows and portray something it's not.

2.) Wait for the right time of day. Avoid rainy or cloudy days when there isn’t enough natural light to boost your picture. Sun rays coming from the windows and doors are something you cannot do without in inclement weather. Much of the home’s character is lost without the sun.

3.) Shoot, shoot and shoot some more! Don’t worry about the number of pictures you take. Try to play around with different exposures, shutter speeds and angles. The more you shoot, the more cialis buying chances you'll have for better quality photos.

4.) Use 12-24mm ultra wide angle lenses for maximum effect. Using wide apertures and long shutter speeds will provide warmth and give your shots some character. Add a touch of flash (1/64th) to combat color shift and to add highlights to the scene. Try to keep your ISO at 400 or 640, because anything faster will be too grainy and anything slower will shift the colors a little too much.

5.) Stand back. Hold the camera to your eye and back up until you have the widest shot you can get. You can then set up your tripod and compose your shot.

6.) Always shoot below eye-level to give the building an imposing persona and an overwhelming presence.

7.) Always keep your sensor clean!

8.) When you do your light measurements, metering the dark part of the scene and exposing it will overexpose the remainder of the scene, but not underexpose it.

9.) Be passionate. Only then will you gain enough experience to define your style of architectural photography.

10.) With RAW images, you can nicely pull back detail from an overexposed image within a stop or two, but in an underexposed image, you cannot increase the exposure without introducing noise. It's better to overexpose with digital than underexpose.

11.) Lastly, while some photographers advocate the expensive Expo Disc for maintaining white balance, there’s a cheaper alternative: a white coffee filter. It does the same thing, but it doesn’t cost nearly as much. Just place it over the lens and take your pictures. Your camera needs to be set on manual and you can then adjust your white balance settings. Have fun and good luck!

Q:
Do you know of any alternative programs I can use instead of iTunes? I'm just ready for something a little bit different. Thanks for your help!

A:
That's a great question and it's one I tend to get on a pretty regular basis. I know a lot of you use iTunes, but maybe you're like the person who asked today's question and you're just ready for something new. There's nothing wrong with that! In this day and age, digital music is becoming a necessity and there's no shame in wanting it to be just right for yourself. I know you're not the only one who feels that way. I even get frustrated with iTunes every now and then. It just happens!

Now, before I go any further, I want to make sure everyone knows that if you use a Mac computer, you probably won't need to finish reading this tip. iTunes works perfectly with Macs, along with your iPod. The iTunes store is very easy to use with a Mac computer as well. On the other hand, things may be a little different for all you Windows users out there. I've heard a lot of stories from people who say iTunes is a little difficult to use on a Windows computer and it can bog down your memory quite a bit too. I mean, it makes sense. Since there isn't a Windows version of iTunes, you're just using a Mac application on a Windows PC and that doesn't always work out so well.

Along with the problems I mentioned above, there have also been some complaints about excessive resource usage, unnecessary programs running in the background and there are several compatibility issues with Windows Vista. If you try to use iTunes with Vista, your computer may end up crashing or at least freezing up. Plus, there's the whole DRM issue when it comes to "protected" music. If you download a protected song from the iTunes store on your Windows PC, you may run into some trouble when trying to transfer it to your iPod or MP3 player. Yuck!

With all of that said, it's no surprise that you want some alternative options to iTunes. Below is a list of music players that come with multi-platform compatibility and tools that will help you manage your digital music, as well as, keep it organized all at the same time. Let's check them out, shall we?!

1.) Foobar 2000 – This one is a digital music management program and it works with Windows 2000, XP and Vista. It is also compatible with several music platforms, including WAV, Ogg Valis, WavPack, AIFF, AU and many more. It also comes with full unicode and replay options, as well as, several other customizable features. You can check Foobar 2000 out for yourself right here.

2.) Songbird – This one is built off of the Firefox browser platform and it works with several media players, including the iPod. Songbird comes with many different add ons, with more added to the list everyday. It's an open source program, so it's very easy to work with. Check it out here.

3.) YamiPod – This particular player is a little different in that you don't have to install it on your computer. You can just copy it to your iPod's hard drive and use it from there. With YamiPod, you can manage your songs from any computer that runs Mac OS X, Windows or Linux. Just click on this link to check it out for yourself.

4.) Winamp – You may recognize the name on this one, because we here at WorldStart have talked about Winamp before. It has been around for quite a long time, but it is still one of the most popular music players out there today. It's a full featured music manager and it comes with complete iPod support. Also, if you have QuickTime installed on your computer along with Winamp, you are able to play protected songs. Cool, huh?! Take a look at it for yourself right here.

5.) Amarok – This one only works for Linux and Unix users, but it is a great iTunes alternative. It works with a wide variety of media players, including iPods, Zen players, Nomad players, USB players and more. It also comes with features like album covers, Wikipedia integration, awesome visual effects, lyrics support and so on. All of that just makes it ten times better. Check Amarok out today right here.

6.) Banshee – Banshee only works with Linux, so if you're a Linux user, I know you're just going to fall in love with it. It's a free download and it allows you to do just about anything with your music. You can import your music, organize it, play it back, share it and even rip it to a CD. So, if you want to manage your music with no limitations, Banshee is for you. Check it out here.

7.) Cog – Like iTunes, this is another music player that works perfectly with Macs. But, if you feel like you're being limited with iTunes, you cialis buy online may want to give Cog a look see. It takes care of all those problems and it allows you to actively manage your music. It is supported by several music platforms, including Ogg vorbis, MP3, FLAC, WavPack, Musepack and many more. It also comes with features like gapless playback, auto updating, Growl support, hot keys and seeking. It's definitely worth checking out, which you can do right here.

So, whether you're very unhappy with iTunes or you just want to try something different for awhile, the above seven players are worthy choices. There are so many alternatives to iTunes, you're bound to find one that fits perfectly with your operating system and your musical life. Give them a try today!