Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
June 3, 2007

Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter
http://www.terryscomputertips.com
A computer tips newsletter for users of PC's.

Volume 2, Number 51 — Sunday, June 3, 2007

Part 1  | Part 2  | Part 3 | Part 4

IN THIS WEEK'S ON-LINE ISSUE:
   1.   Removing Carriage Returns (Line Breaks, Form Feeds) from Documents
   2.   Updates Last Week
   3.   Biometric Security - Fingerprint Readers
   4.   Biopassword Security
   5.   HowTo: Always Show Full Menus in Word, Excel, Powerpoint & FrontPage
   6.   My Computer Security Software Recommendations
   7.   Web Find: New Vista-related Web Site & Newsletter
   8.   Recommend my Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter to Your Friends

Welcome to the on-line edition of my Terry's Computer Tips newsletter.

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1.  Removing Carriage Returns (Line Breaks, Form Feeds) from Documents

I answered a question this week about Notepad++, a really nice — and free — text editor that's designed for programmers of any type (but is much better than the regular Notepad for everyone).

The question was "How can I remove formfeeds using Notepad++?"

Of course, you can always go to each one and then hit the Delete key or the Backspace key and remove them one by one. But, the goal was to do it more efficiently.

So, the answer was:

Steps:
1) Using your mouse, highlight a formfeed/carriage return by starting at the end of one line and highlighting to the beginning of the next line.
2) Control-C to copy
3) Control-H to open the Replace dialog box
4) Click in the Find What box
5) Control-V to paste the formfeed/carriage return
6) don't put anything in the Replace With textbox
7) Click on the Replace All button.


That gets them all.

However, that got me thinking about doing the same thing in other editors like Notepad, Wordpad, Microsoft Word and OpenOffice Writer.

With Notepad, the plain text editor that comes as part of Windows, you're out of luck — you can't do this. The "Replace" dialog box does not work with non-printing characters. The only possible option is to take them out one by one.

With Wordpad, the simple word processor that is also included in Windows (as C:\Windows\wordpad.exe or C:\Windows\write.exe), you're similarly also out of luck.

At least Microsoft Word and OpenOffice Writer are consistent here — the Replace dialog box doesn't work for any of them.

Microsoft Word has a better solution than OpenOffice for this function. Word has an Advanced button on its Replace dialog box that looks like the following images. The image on the left is the dialog box and the top of the Special (characters) list. The image on the right is the full Special list.

(click on the image for a larger version)

(click on the image for a larger version)

This is one thing that, for some reason, OpenOffice Writer has addressed in a very strange way... Perhaps the best way to describe it is by quoting the help file, where I found the following procedure:

Removing Line Breaks Use the AutoFormat feature to remove line breaks that occur within sentences. Unwanted line breaks can occur when you copy text from another source and paste it into a text document.

This AutoFormat feature only works on text that is formatted with the "Default" paragraph style.

1.Choose Tools - AutoCorrect.
2.On the Options tab, ensure that Combine single line paragraphs if length greater than 50% is selected. To change the minimum percentage for the line length, double-click the option in the list, and then enter a new percentage.
3.Click OK.
4.Select the text containing the line breaks that you want to remove.
5.In the Apply Style box on the Formatting bar, choose Default.
6.Choose Format - AutoFormat - Apply.

It actually worked! I assumed that my default installation of OpenOffice 2.2 was set up properly (for this procedure), so I started at the 4th step. It worked just fine. But, this was a very unusual, non-intuitive process.

Winner, among Notepad, Wordpad, Word and Writer: Microsoft Word.

Overall winner: Notepad++

 

2.  Updates Last Week

Microsoft (operating systems, email, web browser, office suites):
Microsoft releases almost all updates once per month, on the second Tuesday. There were no updates last week.

Firefox (web browser, http://www.mozilla.com, free):
Versions 2.0.0.4 was released on May 30, 2007. The changes includes security fixes and more enhancements and fixes for Windows Vista support.

Firefox is free!

Opera (web browser, http://www.opera.com, free):
Version 9.20 was released on April 11th. This release of a recommended security upgrade, in addition to having several new features.

Netscape (web browser, http://browser.netscape.com, free):
Version 8.1.3 was released during he week of April 1. Quoting the web site:
  What's new in this version? Security fixes

SeaMonkey (web browser, email, HTML editor, newsreader; http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey; free): Version 1.1.2 was released on May 30, 2007. This was primarily a security update and the SeaMonkey team urges users to update promptly.

Eudora (email, http://www.eudora.com):
No update last week. Version 7.1.0.9 was released October 11, 2006. Eudora is now free, with no ads and no "paid mode" option.

If you are still running "Sponsored Mode" in a version before 7.1.0.9, it's probably too late now for an easy update. Sponsored mode in the earlier versions expired on March 31st — and reverted to the less-functional "Lite" mode. Fortunately, Eudora is very nicely designed. You can install a new version in a new directory and then copy the data files from the old version to the new.

Mozilla Thunderbird (email, http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird, free):
Thunderbird version 2.0.0.0 was released during the week of April 15th. Quoting the web site: "Mozilla’s Thunderbird 2 email application is more powerful than ever. It’s now even easier to organize, secure and customize your mail."

OpenOffice (office suite — spreadsheet, word processor, presentations, graphics, web design; http://www.openoffice.org; free):
Version 2.2 was released on March 29th.

From the OpenOffice.org web site:

OpenOffice.org 2.2 is an important new release and all should download it, as it resolves security issues and includes significant enhancements. These are both general and specific. A full list of the new features and fixes is given in our release notes, but among them:

• Enhanced text display throughout
• Better support for Pivot Tables in Calc
• Several key improvements in Base
• A more robust Mac version for X11
• ... And many more

Part 1  | Part 2  | Part 3 | Part 4

Volume 2, Number 51 — Sunday, June 3, 2007

Copyright © 2007 Terry A. Stockdale.  All rights reserved.