Tips of the Week - Information Technology

Technology Tip of the Week - September 6, 2006

Welcome back everyone! Hope you all had a great summer.

This week we're going to look at how to turn off a couple of those annoying features in Microsoft Word, namely that big box that comes up every time you try to draw a simple line and hiding that helpful (?) paperclip.

Drawing a line without the drawing canvas

If you've ever tried to draw a line in Word using the drawing tool bar you know that a big box always comes up and makes it difficult to proceed. To stop the automatic creation of the drawing canvas:

Click on the Tools menu.
Click Options.
Click the General Tab.
Deselect the last option: Automatically create drawing canvas when inserting Autoshapes.

That's it! No more boxes!

Hiding the paperclip (officially known as the Office Assistant)

Although that little paperclip that pops up is MS Word's attempt to be helpful, if you don’t appreciate this help, simply right-click on the paperclip and select Hide.

You can also set different Help options – e.g. trade in that paperclip for a cat – by right-clicking and select Choose Assistant or select different options on the Options tab.

For more help with these features, please contact one of the IT Instructional Support team (Norm Grant, Gene Grande or Linda Beith) or faculty mentors Tony Basilico or Kathy Beauchene.

Website of the Week
The "Pensonal" Computer

Take a look at this computer of the future - that fits in a pen (I'm not kidding!) at: http://www.snopes.com/photos/advertisements/pcpen.asp! Just amazing...

Feel free to post your thoughts or opinions of this site in the Teaching Forum message board.

These tips are provided by the Department of Information Technology instructional support team. If you have any questions on these tips, or wish to offer your own, please feel free to contact Linda Beith at lbeith@ccri.edu or call 825-2487. View an archive of past technology tips at http://it.ccri.edu/Training/Tips/tip_week.shtml.