Workers' Edge

There are many things I like about Windows Vista. The OS's approach to folder views isn't one of them.

XP had it right: To change your default view in Windows Explorer and folder windows in Vista's predecessor, you just open a folder, change it to the view you prefer (for me, its View > Details), and click Tools > Folder Options > View > Apply to All Folders > Yes > OK.

If only things were that simple in Vista. XP's successor (I use the term lightly) has five different types of folders. Changing the view in one type won't apply to the others. Also, because of Vista's content sniffing, a folder's view may change depending on what type of file you place in it. What does a guy have to do to get all Details view, all of the time?

It turns out, you can edit the Registry to deactivate this feature. You'll find step-by-step instructions on Kristan Kenney's Windows Now blog. Be sure to back up the Registry by creating a restore point before you begin.

I'm usually not averse to a little light Registry editing to get Windows to look or act the way I want it to look or act. But it bugs me that Vista won't let you set your default view for all folders without having to edit the Registry. So instead I opted for the long, tedious approach of changing the view one folder at a time until they all looked like I wanted them to.

Open Windows Explorer or any folder window (pressing the Windows key and E simultaneously is one way), click View (or press Alt-V), and choose your preferred folder view. Now click Organize > Folder and Search Options (or press Alt-T, O), choose the View tab, click Apply to Folders (make sure "Remember each folder's view settings" is checked in the Advanced Settings window), and click OK.

Change your folder view in Vista via the View tab in the Folder Options dialog box.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Back in Explorer, click each folder in the left pane in succession, and whenever a folder doesn't have the view you want, repeat the steps above. Even though there are officially only five types of folders in Vista, I found that I had to change the view settings of about eight different folders until they all opened in Details view by default.

Note that several of the shortcut folders aren't accessible; clicking them opens a scary warning. These folders, which include Documents and Settings, My Documents, and My Music, are there for backward compatibility with Windows XP and don't store any files.

Your preferred view won't be applied automatically to Open and Save As dialog boxes in Word, Paint, and other applications. These you'll also have to change manually via the Views dropdown menu. Even though Folder and Search Options is grayed out in these dialog boxes, Vista appears to remember your choice the next time you view that folder in the Open or Save As dialogs.

Change Vista's default Details categories
The problem with Vista's Details view is the lame categories that appear by default. I don't have much use for Ratings. And for better or worse, I don't do much tagging of my Word documents. Yet those are two of only four Details categories that are shown automatically in some folders.

Altering the lineup is a cinch: Right-click any existing category, check or uncheck the options as you wish, or click More to see a complete list of available options. Once you've made your selections, click OK. You can also change the order of the categories by dragging their headings left or right.

Change the categories shown in Vista's Details view by right-clicking a heading and making your selections.

(Credit: Microsoft)

There's no guarantee some Windows update or program installation won't reset all my folder views. In fact, I expect Vista to revert to its content-sniffing ways before long. Maybe by then Microsoft will have wised up and given us the ability to set a single view for all folders in Vista, no matter what. Well, I can dream, can't I?

I spend most of my workday Alt-Tabbing between my Gmail inbox and the Outlook account on my employer's Exchange Server. The problem is, when it comes to contacts, there isn't much overlap between the two: Only a handful of Gmail addresses are also in the Outlook contacts list, and vice-versa.

Rectifying the situation takes only a few minutes. Start by moving your Outlook contacts to Gmail. In Outlook 2003 and 2007, click File > Import and Export, select "Export to a file," click Next, choose either comma-separated value option, and click Next again. Browse to and select your Contacts folder, click Next again, choose the Browse button, pick a location for the file, give it a name with the .csv extension, click OK, and click Next once more. Verify the action and click Finish.

Verify the export action to move Outlook contacts to Gmail.

(Credit: Microsoft)

After the file-export finishes (it can take a while), open Gmail, click Contacts on the left, and choose Import at the top right. Click Browse and navigate to and select the file you just exported. You can create a new group for the contacts by choosing "Also add these imported contacts to" before you click Import. You'll be prompted to give the group a name.

Select the .csv file you exported from Outlook to import your contacts to Gmail.

(Credit: Google)

Once the file is imported, you'll see a summary indicating the number of contacts added, merged, or ignored because they were duplicates. Click OK to return to your list of contacts.

Gmail shows a summary of the contacts imported from Outlook.

(Credit: Google)

Now turn the process around by moving your Gmail contacts to Outlook. On the Gmail Contacts page, click Export in the top right, choose to export just your contacts or your contacts and Gmail's suggested contacts, select "Outlook's CSV format (for importing into Outlook or other applications)," and click the Export button.

The file is named "contacts.csv" automatically. Select the Save File button (it's chosen by default) and click OK. The list will be saved in your Downloads folder (or whichever folder you've picked as your default). Open Outlook, click File > Import and Export > Import from another program or file > Next.

Choose the appropriate comma-separated-value option and click Next again. Click the Browse button, navigate to and select the .csv file you just created, pick one of the options regarding duplicate entries (the default is "Allow duplicates to be created"), and click Next again. Choose the destination folder (probably Contacts under Personal Folders for your account), verify the action, and click Finish.

Any addresses with unrecognizable names will be listed first with only the e-mail address, but other contacts will appear alphabetically by last name.

I recently finished working on a project that generated a dozen separate reports published together in a single booklet. Each report was from three to eight pages long, and most of them included at least one table or chart.

When we were done, several of my co-workers commented on how nicely the reports were laid out. All I had done was create a Word template with a simple two-column layout for long text sections.

To create this template, open a new document, type a dummy document title on the first line, choose a font type and size (I used 12-point bold lucida sans, for example), and center the line by choosing the appropriate icon in the formatting section of Word 2003's standard toolbar and under the Home tab on Word 2007's ribbon.

On the next line, enter dummy text to represent the document summary. The quick way to do so is to type =rand(p,s) (where "p" is the number of paragraphs and "s" is the number of sentences) and press Enter. Don't go nuts, though. This is supposed to be a "summary."

Choose a font type and size for the summary, which will appear in a single column. Now press Enter to move the cursor to a new line. In Word 2003, click Insert > Break > Continuous > OK. In Word 2007, click the Page Layout tab, choose Breaks in the Page Setup section, and click Continuous in the drop-down menu.

Add a continuous section break to your two-column Word template via the Page Layout tab.

(Credit: Microsoft)

In Word 2003, click Format > Columns and choose the two-column icon under Presets. In Word 2007, click the Page Layout tab on the ribbon and click Columns > Two. (Note that this important step was inadvertently excluded from the original version of the tip; my apologies.)

Paste in more dummy text by typing =rand(p,s) (where "p" is the number of paragraphs and "s" is the number of sentences) and pressing Enter. Format the font size and type, or stick with the document defaults.

Finally, save the file as a template: In Word 2003, click File > Save As, give the template a name such as "Two-column layout," choose a location for the file (more on this below), select Document Template (*.dot) in the Save as Type drop-down menu, and click Save.

In Word 2007, click the Office button, choose Save As > Word Template (or choose one of the other "Template" options on the "Save as type" drop-down menu), and click Save.

To have your new template listed under My Templates in Word's New dialog, save the template to this folder in Vista:
C:\Users\your logon ID\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates

Sometimes you just can't win. That's the way it is with the Windows Firewall. The one in XP can't monitor connections from your PC to the outside world--which is how botnets, Trojans, and other malware operate. The firewall in Vista can block outbound connections, but this feature is off by default, and it's practically impossible to create filters to block selective outbound links.

On the one hand, Microsoft claims that you don't need outbound filtering if you use the Windows Defender anti-spyware app to keep the snoops off your PC in the first place. On the other, it sells the $50-per-year Windows Live OneCare service that does let you filter outbound connections selectively. Go figure.

If you make the safe assumption that outbound monitoring is a requirement of your software firewall, your only option is to replace the firewall built into Windows. Several free firewalls offer outbound filtering, but using a third-party firewall can slow your PC's performance, especially as the firewall learns what to allow and block without having to prompt you.

Quite often a problem connecting to the Internet or your ISP's e-mail server can be traced to a conflict with a third-party firewall. Disable the firewall, and the connection returns. Adding the destination to the firewall's allowed list usually takes care of the problem, but that doesn't lessen the aggravation level much.

And there's another risk entailed in using a third-party firewall, as some people who use ZoneAlarm found out last month when a Windows patch caused them to lose their Internet link.

Most Windows users will simply bite the bullet and run a third-party firewall, but I can't think of any other product that requires some second product to use safely. (Okay, maybe an outboard motor, but that's about it.) Relying on the Windows Firewall is like buying a car without seatbelts or with airbags that inflate only halfway.

I could tell you how to reset Vista's firewall to block outbound connections (press the Windows key, type wf.msc, press Enter, click Windows Firewall Properties, and change each profile's "Outbound connections" setting to Block), but there's no guarantee this will protect you, and doing so may cause some applications not to work properly.

Change the "Outbound connections" settings in the Vista firewall to Block.

(Credit: Microsoft)

After reading through Microsoft's TechNet article on the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security (the version in Vista and Windows Server 2008), I figure the only profile I need to block outbound connections from is the Public Profile, which is the one Windows defaults to when you're not on a Windows domain or private network. (You designate a network as private in the dialog box that Windows pops up the first time you try to connect to it.)

I may pay a price, one way or another, for sticking with the firewall built into Vista, but I just can't bring myself to download software to provide a security measure that should be built into the OS. (Don't get me started on antivirus and spam blockers.)

When I mentioned in a post last week that I forward select messages from my office Microsoft Exchange account to Gmail, several people claimed that this puts the company's data at risk.

I failed to point out that the information in the messages was not at all sensitive: no invoices, strategic plans, credit-card numbers, customer records, etc.

But what if I had needed to access private information from this account on a system other than Outlook? Assuming that no company can be trusted, how could I use Gmail without worrying about security?

One part of the problem was addressed when Gmail began supporting HTTPS connections. Well, Google claims that Gmail has always supported HTTPS, but you had to add the "s" to the URL prefix manually to access the encrypted version of the service, and log in at "https://mail.google.com," not "https://www.gmail.com." (Note that Google Calendar also supports HTTPS.)

Now Gmail lets you encrypt all your connections to the service via a simple settings change. To secure your e-mail transmissions, click Settings in the top-right corner of the main Gmail page, scroll down to "Browser connection" at the bottom of the window, select "Always use https," and click Save Changes. The next time you open your Gmail in-box, the transmissions will be encrypted.

Make all your Gmail connections encrypted by choosing "Always use https" in Gmail's Settings dialog.

(Credit: Google)

The Gmail Help Center states that encrypting connections may slow down your page loads, but this is a small price to pay to secure your e-mail link, especially when you're computing in the great outdoors, whether using your own laptop or a public PC.

But does this truly secure your data? There are several Firefox add-ons that encrypt messages and attachments sent and received via Gmail. One of these is Gmail S/MIME by Richard Jones and Sean Leonard. Gina Trapani's Better Gmail includes encryption among many other useful Gmail enhancements.

Even these measures won't be sufficient to convince some people to trust Gmail specifically or Google generally. Nearly all of my remote connections to the office servers are made over a VPN link. When in doubt--even a little bit of doubt--encrypt.

I use Apple's Safari browser on my iPhone but don't have much use for it on my Windows PCs. I do run iTunes and QuickTime on the Windows systems, so every time there's an update for one of those apps, I'm prompted to download Safari.

A quick tweak of the Apple Software Update utility makes the Safari prompts history.

Open the Apple Software Update application via its shortcut on the Start menu. To set the updater to stop nagging you about Safari, check the browser's option in the main window, and click Tools > Ignore Selected Updates. Then click Quit.

Set the Apple Software Update utility to ignore the Safari browser.

(Credit: Apple)

Alternatively, you can change how frequently the program checks for updates or stop it from checking automatically. Click Edit > Preferences and choose Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Never. When you're done, click OK and Quit.

Change how frequently Apple Software Update checks for updates, or set it not to check at all.

(Credit: Apple)

Now you'll get the Apple updates you need on your schedule without having to uncheck options for programs you don't want.

A couple of weeks ago, the IT guy at my office added my company Exchange Server e-mail account to my notebook computer's copy of Microsoft Outlook 2007. The first time I tried to open Outlook after I left the office, the program crashed because it was unable to connect to the server.

I couldn't even open Outlook long enough to delete the new account. This wasn't a big problem for me for a bunch of reasons. For one, I didn't really need to access my company e-mail account from the version of Outlook on my notebook because I automatically forward messages from the most important senders (my boss, for example) to my Gmail account, which I use as my primary repository.

I also have the mail from my personal ISP account forwarded to my Gmail account.

And last but not least, I knew it would take only a couple of minutes to delete the troublesome account and get Outlook to reopen, though downloading all my old e-mail from the server would take quite a bit longer than that .

There's one big caveat to this technique: you need to be ready to say "adios" to your outlook.pst file, which is the file that holds your Outlook e-mail and settings.

I don't mind resetting my mail profile because I have Outlook set to keep messages on my ISP's server until I choose to delete them. So after I delete my Outlook account, a new one will be created automatically the next time I open the program. Once I re-enter my ISP's server settings, my old mail is downloaded again.

To change this setting, click Tools > Account Settings, choose your account, click Change > More Settings > Advanced, and check "Leave a copy of messages on the server." Then click OK > Next > Finish > Close.

Set Outlook to leave a copy of your incoming messages on the server via this setting.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Of course, this won't help much, if you're unable to open Outlook at all, which was the predicament I faced. You could make a copy of your outlook.pst file and restore it after you delete the problematic account, but restoring the outlook.pst file may simply cause the glitch to resurface.

The How-To Outlook site offers step-by-step instructions for backing up and restoring your Outlook data. Once you get Outlook going again, you can automate the Outlook backup-and-restore process by using Microsoft's free Outlook Personal Folders Backup utility.

The easiest part of the process is deleting the buggy profile. In XP, open the Control Panel's Mail applet by clicking Start > Control Panel (or Start > Settings > Control Panel) and choosing User Accounts > Mail (in Category View) or double-clicking Mail (in Classic View). In Vista, press the Windows key, type mail, scroll to Mail (not Windows Mail), and press Enter.

In the Mail Setup dialog box, click Show Profiles, choose the account (it may be the only one listed), and click Remove > Yes > OK.

Delete a troublesome Outlook profile to have the program re-create one from scratch the next time you open it.

(Credit: Microsoft)

When you restart Outlook, you'll be prompted to set up an account as if it were the first time the program ever loaded on your system. Sometimes square one is the best place to be.

I keep waiting for the day I can view my Google Calendar entries while I'm offline--without having to export the entries to Outlook or another standalone calendar program. Until that day, here are five ways to get make better use of Google's free calendar service.

Lock out unwanted viewers
To make sure your calendar entries are private, click the down arrow next to the calendar under My Calendars on the left side of the screen. Choose "Share this calendar" to open that tab in your settings. Uncheck "Make this calendar public," and be sure there are no names but your own listed under "Share with specific people." When you're done, click Save to return to your calendar.

Uncheck "Make this calendar public" in Google Calendar's "Share this calendar" settings.

(Credit: Google)

You can also check the privacy of an individual calendar entry by clicking it and choosing "edit event details" in the pop-up window. Make sure that either Default or Private is selected on the left side of the window under Options, and click Save.

Make sure that others can't view a calendar event by choosing either Default or Private in the event details dialog.

(Credit: Google)

Lock in your favorite calendar view
Seeing only one day's worth or even one week's worth of events at a time doesn't give me the scheduling information I need at a glance. That's why I prefer Google Calendar's monthly view, which I made my default by clicking Settings > General, choosing "month" on the drop-down menu next to "Default view," and clicking Save.

Place a weather forecast in your calendar
One of my favorite iGoogle gadgets is the one that puts a four-day weather forecast on my home page. Now I get a mini-version of that forecast in my Google Calendar. To add a weather report to your calendar entries, click Settings > General, add your city and state or ZIP code in the text box next to Location, choose either Celsius or Fahrenheit next to "Show weather based on my location," and click Save.

Navigate your calendar via keyboard shortcuts
Make fast work of your calendar tasks by skipping the mouse and using Google Calendar's keyboard shortcuts instead. Among my favorites are C to create an event, M to change the view to monthly (see above to reset your default calendar view), W to change to the weekly view, D to see only that day's entries, and Q to open the Quick Add pop-up window. Google provides a complete list of keyboard shortcuts for calendars and for event details.

Add a specialty calendar
Football season is right around the corner, and now I'm ready with all my alma mater's games listed on my Google Calendar. And all I had to do to add them was download one of the public calendars that Google collects in its calendar gallery.

To view the gallery, click the down arrow next to Add on the left side of the screen and choose "Add a public calendar." You can either browse the categories on the left side of the window or enter a term in the search box at the top of the screen.

Along with calendars for TV shows, sports teams, presidential candidates, and movie and DVD releases are entries listing celebrity birthdays, phases of the moon, and the holidays celebrated in various countries. What's missing is a calendar of events for the upcoming Beijing Olympics. C'mon, NBC! I don't want to miss the rhythmic gymnastics finals!

I always think twice or even three times before I enter my e-mail address in a Web form. Even when the site gives me the option not to have any messages sent to the address (usually by unchecking the Web form's "Notify me" entry that's checked by default), I can't help but think somehow, somewhere, some snake-oil salesman is going to get hold of my address.

Now I register at such sites using a separate e-mail account whose mail I filter out of my in-box. When I have to click a link in a confirmation e-mail to complete the registration, I simply look for the message in the folder I specified previously.

Start by creating a POP or IMAP account only for Web site registrations. Most ISPs offer multiple mail accounts for free. In fact, when I last checked, I had 114 free mail accounts available with my ISP. Of course, I've also registered five different domain names with that company, each of which comes with several mail accounts.(Maybe I could sublease the ones I'm not using.)

If your ISP doesn't offer multiple e-mail accounts, sign up for a free account at a service such as Inbox.com. The company offers up to 5GB of mail storage for free and allows POP3 and SMTP access to your in-box.

Now add that account to your mail client. In Outlook 2007 and 2003, click Tools > Account Settings > New, choose "Microsoft Exchange, POP3, IMAP, or HTTP," and click Next. Add your account information on the next screen and click Next. Outlook will connect to the server automatically and send a test message.

Add your throwaway account to Outlook via the Add New Email Account wizard.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Once the account is in place, return to the Account Settings dialog box, select the account, and click the Change Folder button at the bottom of the window. Choose one of the existing folders, click New Folder, give the folder a name, click OK twice, and then Close.

Since I forward the mail sent to my ISP accounts to my Gmail in-box, I also need to keep messages sent to the throwaway account from cluttering that in-box. To add the account to Gmail, click Settings in the top-right corner, choose Forwarding and POP/IMAP, and select either Enable POP or Enable IMAP, whichever is appropriate for your account.

Now click the Accounts tab and choose "Add another mail account" in the "Get mail from other accounts" section. Enter the e-mail address and click Next Step. Add your password, check both "Label incoming messages" (the address is the default name for the label) and "Archive incoming messages (Skip the Inbox)," and click Add Account.

Keep mail sent to your throwaway account out of your Gmail in-box by selecting the bottom two options.

(Credit: Gmail)

After the account is confirmed, you'll be asked whether you want to make this account a custom From address. This allows you to send mail from Gmail and make it appear to originate from that account. Click Yes if this sounds like something you might want to do.

When you need to access a confirmation e-mail sent to your throwaway address, just choose the label in the list at the bottom left of the Gmail in-box and select the message in the resulting window.

Some people seem to think they have carte blanche to spell any which way they want to when they're on the Internet. But whether you're writing Web mail or IMs, filling out a Web form, or just entering a term in Google's search box, spelling matters.

And that's not just because an abundance of spelling errors can make people think you're an eighth grade dropout. (Nothing against eighth grade dropouts!) It's also because misspellings can prevent you from finding the information you're searching for and lead to e-mail miscommunication.

Firefox 2 and 3 have spell-checkers built in, though they're pretty basic. That's a tad better than Internet Explorer 7, which comes spell-checker-less. Free dictionary add-ons enhance Firefox's spelling abilities, and the free IE7Pro provides IE with a way to minimize Web misspellings.

If you're an iGoogler, there's a great new gadget called SpellBoy that puts a spell-checker on your home page.

Activate Firefox's spell-checker
To enable the spell-checker in Firefox, click Tools > Options > Advanced > General, make sure "Check my spelling as I type" is checked, and click OK. Now you'll see the familiar red dots under words the browser's dictionary lacks (including "Firefox," surprisingly).

If you don't see the red dots under misspelled words, right-click and choose Check Spelling. Now when you right-click a misspelling you'll see a handful of optional spellings at the top of the context menu.

I wasn't particularly impressed with the choices Firefox presented for misspellings, so I downloaded the U.S. English dictionary add-on. While I was at it, I also installed the French dictionary add-on, just in case I bump into Ludivine Sagnier in a chat room someday. Right.

Give IE 7 some spelling skills
One of the many reasons I recommend IE7Pro to Internet Explorer users is the great spell-checker in the add-on. To get it operating, choose Tools > IE7Pro Preferences, click Spellchecking in the Modules pane of the Settings window, and click OK.

I was more impressed by IE7Pro's spelling suggestions than with those offered by Firefox's dictionary. As with Firefox, you can add dictionaries for other languages. Plus, you get all the other great IE7Pro features, including a customizable ad blocker and shortcut-key manager.

Add spell-checking to Internet Explorer 7 via the free IE7Pro add-on.

(Credit: IE7Pro)

Put a spell checker on your home page
You can check your spelling from any browser by adding Christopher Blum's SpellBoy gadget for iGoogle. Type or paste text into the large SpellBoy window and click Check spelling.

The SpellBoy gadget for iGoogle puts a spell-checker on your browser's home page.

(Credit: Christopher Blum)

The gadget gives you a count of possible misspellings and shows each underlined in red. Click one of the entries to see five possible corrections, as well as an empty text box you can use to type your own alternative spelling. Corrected words are shown with a green underline.

Note that this beta has no bells or whistles: You can't add languages or custom dictionaries. There were some comments from early users who claimed they were unable to delete the gadget, but I was able to remove it without any problems. Still, a beta is a beta, so use SpellBoy at your own risk.