Convert PDF to Word

I have been waiting to see something like this for a while. Yes, I know I can purchase software to do the job. This one is FREE.

Run the application in the cloud by going to http://www.pdftoword.com/ three steps:

1. Browse your computer for the PDF you need to convert
2. Choose the resulting format—Word or RTF
3. Submit the email address you wish the results to be sent to  

Don’t expect instant response as the site places your conversion in the queue. When you get to the front of the line, it will be converted and sent to your email address. When I ran my trial, they were in the midst of a server upgrade and the conversion took a while to get back to me. It was worth it; the document was a perfect conversion of the PDF including pictures and links.

There is a 5 MB limit on the free on-line version, so if you have a larger file to do, split it into smaller pieces. To create a PDF I use PDFredirect and you can use it to print to PDF parts of an already PDF formatted document.

I have not tried it yet, but it is supposed to do Excel as well! Yes, you can pay for a version that will install on your machine and has more features.

What is Memory in my Computer?

There is much confusion over the meaning of all numbers associated with our computers. I touched on some of this when I wrote about the Task Manger a few blogs ago.

What are all those Mb’s and Gb’s all about?

When you go to the local store or surf the net looking for a good deal, each computer has numbers like the following:

2 GB memory, 160 GB hard disk, 2.4 GHz processor

First, let us review the terms. Mb is megabyte, GB is gigabyte, TB is terabyte, and GHz is gigahertz. Mb or megabyte refers to 1 million bytes and a byte in simple terms is how much storage is needed to store on character of data. GB means gigabyte and refers to 1,000 MBs. TB is terabyte and refers to 1,000 GB’s. GHz is gigahertz and is measurement of speed. Years ago this was referred to a gigacycles.

The memory even if not mentioned as such is that number from 1 GB -8 GB. This refers to the amount of RAM or random access memory in the box. RAM is primary storage. This is a key number as far as speed and the number of applications that can be open at the same time. More on this later.

The 80GB – 1TB number indicates the amount of hard disk space available in the box. This is not primary storage, but rather secondary storage. This is where all your applications including the operating system (Windows XP, Vista, or 7) is stored. It is where you save all your personal documents and pictures and songs and movies. The bigger the drive, the more stuff you can accumulate.

I can remember back in the 1980’s when I would tell customer they would never need more than a 10 Mb disk drive to store all their stuff. When Windows came along that number was not even large enough for the operating system never mind pictures and movies.

How much do we need today depends on what you are planning on storing locally. If you are not into digital pictures or downloading movies, 80 GB should be more than enough for the foreseeable future.

The GHz value indicates the speed of the CPU or central processing unit—the brain of your computer which is located inside the box on the motherboard (also known as the system board). Older machine ran at 400-600 GHz and the newer ones are much faster. Suffice to say, the bigger the number the faster your computer can process data. Yes this affects the speed of your Internet surfing.

How you find out the speed of your computer and how much RAM you have is simple. Hold down the Windows key (the flag key left and or right of your spacebar) and tap the Pause key (usually top right on the keyboard). This brings up the Systems Properties window. Under the General tab locate the Computer section. It tells you the name of the CPU, how fast it is, and how much RAM is installed.  To find out the size of your disk drive hold down the Windows key and tap E. This opens the My Computer window. Locate the C: drive and mouse over the icon. The Total Size value displays along with the amount of free (or available to be used) space left.

Back to RAM.  It is primary storage and is used by the CPU to access and run your applications and work on your data. It is volatile. When the power is turned off, the contents of RAM goes away. This is why we have secondary storage devices like the hard drive, CD/DVD drives, and USB flash drives. Those devices are used to save what we have been working on so we can access it again later.

When you turn on your computer the operating system is copied from the disk drive to RAM. You see a Windows GUI (graphical user interface) and select an application to use. Let’s say you choose Microsoft Word. That application is added to RAM and you see the interface for Word so you can type a letter. What you type is added to RAM. When you save your letter, a file called a document in Word, is created and placed in secondary storage on your hard disk drive. Even what you save on the desktop is placed on the hard disk drive.

Think of a chalkboard as RAM. As your write on the board it is like writing a letter in Word. You can write until you fill the board. When you are done, you erase the board (like closing the program). Now you can draw a picture as if you were in the Paint program. The chalkboard is the RAM that is temporarily storing your data. Need more RAM? Then you have to get a larger the chalkboard.

The more applications you have open as noted by the number of items on the task bar—that horizontal list of application on the bottom of your desktop, the more of RAM is used. When the amount of RAM in use is close to the physical memory available, you see a message saying you are running out of memory. This does NOT mean you need more hard disk space. It means you must close some programs. However, due to some issues with certain applications, you may want to restart the computer to free up the maximum amount of RAM.

Computer running slow?

Check the amount of RAM you have and the amount free disk space. Adding RAM is usually easy, but on older machines there is a maximum amount determined by the number of slots on specifications of the motherboard. The more RAM the better.

If the disk drive free space is not 10% of the total size of the drive, you could begin to slow down. Run the Disk Cleanup program under Start > Accessories > System Tools to clean out unnecessary files.

Replacing the hard drive can be a challenge. It is easier to purchase an external hard drive that plugs into a USB port. Transfer all your pictures and movies to it. This will free up plenty of space and leave the files accessible when you need them.

Other reasons for a slow computer have to do with ad-ware and malware you may have picked up even with a current security program. More at another time on how I deal with these issues.

Flip It

Here is a new one for you. Ctrl+Alt+DownArrow on some video cards will flip you screen 180* -- turns it upside down! Ctrl+Alt+UpArrow turns it back. Does not work with all video cards, but will not hurt anything by  trying. Useful? Probably not, but fun to try. Might make your neighbor at work really confused when you flip his/her screen when they are not looking... LOL

Free eBook

In addition to these tips, I write a daily Inspirational Thought as part of our ministry--The Evans Ministries. You can download one month of ITs that I recently put into book form. I hope you enjoy each of these writings and comment on them in this blog or directly to me in an email. I know this is not a technical post, but it is an important piece of what I do.


Download the FREE eBook from http://www.rwevans.com/freebook/itaug02.pdf

A Simple Temperature Conversion

With the temperatures diving down under freezing this winter, the subject of Fahrenheit versus Celsius comes up. In the USA we use F and other countries use C. When we are at 32F they are at 0C. So in the Celsius world zero is freezing and anything above zero or + is above freezing. Anything in the minus like -10C is below freezing or really cold!

There are other calculators out there and Excel can do the job as well. Here are the formulas for Excel:

F to C: =5/9*(temp-32)
C to F: =temp*9/5+32

Note: temp should point to the cell where the inputed degrees is located.

Do it right off the Web by linking to http://www.rwevans.com/convert_temp.htm

Task Manager and More

Hardly a day goes by when I do not learn something more about something. You may have known this, but I did not and it is very useful.

I know Ctrl+Alt+Del usually opens the Task Manager. You can even right-click the taskbar and select Task Manager, but these do not always work. There is another way. To open the Task manager simply Shift+Ctrl+Esc.

Who cares, you say. What is the Task Manager anyway? Well it is a utility process in Windows and it shows what is happening inside your computer; in RAM. RAM stands for Random Access Memory and this is where the OS or operating system resides. When you start up Windows, or “boot” the OS loads from the hard disk into RAM. When you click to open an application, the OS finds it on your hard disk and loads it into RAM.

How much RAM do I have?
When you bought your computer there were three numbers that were important. The computer I am on right now has a 2.26 GHz processor, 2.0 GB of RAM, and an 80 GB hard drive. GHz has to do with speed. The bigger that number, the better. The smaller of the other two GB numbers indicates how much RAM you have. In today’s world, 2 GB or more is best but 1 GB will do. The last number indicates the size of the hard disk drive. This is where the OS, all your applications, and all your documents including pictures and movie files are located. Nowadays, the hard drives are usually 160GB or greater.

To see the first two numbers on your keyboard press Win+Pause. This will open the Systems Properties window in the General Tab. The numbers are under the Computer section near the bottom of the window. To see the size of the hard drive, Start > My Computer and then mouse over drive C: and a popup will display the used and total size.

Back to the Task Manager. There are five tabs on the window: Applications, Processes, Performance, Networking, and Users. Let’s look at the first three.

Applications
This list shows the open applications. These are the applications you have opened like MS Word, FireFox, etc. If one of those is stuck, this is where you can select it and then click End Task to close it down. I have found that using Switch To sometimes gets it going again, so try that first.

Processes
This is a list of the behind the scenes programs that are running in RAM. Some are OS related, some are pieces of the applications you have active, and some could be the result of malware on your computer. Malware is a generic term a that refers to a Virus, a Trojan, Spyware, a Worm, etc. Malware is short for Malicious Software. Right now I have 87 processes running and I do not know what most of them are. Some are obvious by their name, but most names are cryptic.

Performance
This displays a neat graphical representation of how hard the CPU or Central Processing Unit is working. If it is at 100%, the machine is going very slow. Typically this number is less than 10%. It moves up when you are moving data or applications in and out of RAM and when heavy processing is happening.

There are four sections below the graphs that show Totals, Commit Charge, Physical Memory, and Kernel Memory.

Totals
These numbers relate to the number of different things going on within RAM. Threads are portions of processes that are running. One process may have any number of Threads. Handles are reference points the processes use to jump around to locate what they need next to run the job. Kind of like using a door handle to get from one room to the next.

Commit Charge
This is the amount of RAM + Disk Cache that is currently in use. Disk Cache is storage (like RAM) associated with the hard disk drive and used to hold frequently accessed data from the hard drive to improve access times. This is graphed in real time on the second set of graphs and listed as PF Usage or Page File Usage

Physical Memory
This shows the actual amount of available memory. The Total should always be larger than the Total Commit Charge. If it is not, then the hard disk drive is being used as temporary storage or pretend RAM and your machine starts to crawl.

Kernel Memory
This is memory used by the OS. Paged can be used by other programs if needed. Non-paged can only be used by the OS.

So what’s the bottom line? When your system says you are out of memory, it does not mean you have to add more RAM or get a bigger hard drive. It means the processes currently running are taking too much available RAM. Solution is to close some processes from the taskbar and perhaps even to restart the machine. Sometimes applications do not handle garbage collection (the removal of all work space when the program is closed) very well and pieces of memory are locked so other processes cannot use them. Restarting is the only way to correct this issue.

Free Images

I have written about the seriousness of using images that belong to someone else without their permission. We all like free stuff, but just because it is on your end of a Google search does not make it free for anything except for viewing. The copyright can come back to bite you BIG. Click to read the previous post.

I was looking for a free animated image to use to wish everyone a Happy New Year and I found a nice site in the UK that has a number of royalty free images. They give permission on the site for you to use them as you wish. Here is what their site reads "If anyone wants to use the free animated gifs on this site for your web site, powerpoint presentation or as animated avatars do feel free to use them and download them to your hard drive."

Give them a try. They are located at http://www.sevenoaksart.co.uk

Which Browser Do You Use?

For a long time I was stuck on Internet Explorer. I guess I assumed if Microsoft made it then it must be the best to use for Windows. Wrong!

Well IE starting freezing up on me in different ways on more than one of my machines. I was getting tired of forcing IE to close and reopening it or even having to restart the machine to get it back working.

So I tried Firefox and was greatly impressed. It did everything IE did and seemed to do it better. At least it did not hang up on me. There were even some add-ons that IE did not have that are pretty cool.

Along comes Google Chrome, so I tried it as well. And I like it the best out of these three. Smooth to use, seems faster than either IE or FF, and it takes much less real estate at the top of the screen. I like the fact that the address bar is also my Google search engine. And when I type something like ric.edu and hit enter, it knows to put in the http:// and open the site.

I have downloaded Opera and it looks fine, but I have been so pleased with GC that I have not spent much time with it.

One downside with GC is that there are some sites that will not work with it. For some of my emailings I have been using Constant Contact. It is a great service and reasonably priced. Much of it works with GC, but when I get to updating there are issues. I switch to FF and all the problems go away. Oh, IE will not work on that site either--editing issues.

Which one is your favorite and why?

Reducing File Sizes

You take a picture with your digital camera and then try to email it to a friend. It is so large that you can only attach one at a time. Even if you just want to upload it to Facebook, it takes a long time. Want to fix that problem? Read on.

Not too many years ago we were careful about the size of our files. We had to be or they would not fit on a 1.44mb diskette. Now our digital cameras create pictures over 1mb each. But with computer hard drives reaching into the terabytes, it is easy not to pay attention to the size of the files we save.

However, bloated files take longer to open and when located on a network drive they tie up bandwidth on the network as well as being slow to open. In our anxiousness, we often double-click two or more times on the same seemingly non-responsive icon only to wait and have multiple windows open, one for each of our frustrated clicks.

Why should we be concerned? The more bloat on the hard drive, the slower it runs and the more frustrated we become. We can control the size of our files and here are some examples of what we can do.

Click to read the complete white paper as a PDF

Forwarding Email

I really dislike those emails I receive that have been forwarded a number of levels down and are filled with all kinds of junk. Do you feel the same way?

For the few I do send on to others, I spend the time to clean them up. This can be a simple task done right in the email program after I have clicked the forward button. Most often I have to select all of the body of the message and paste it into Word to clean it up. When I have finished the fixing, I copy and paste the results back to the email and send it.

This process works well, but it does take a little time. I have discovered a neat little program that is free and does the job well. Google emailStripper, and download it from its maker, www.papercut.biz.

Here is what they have to say about it:

emailStripper is a free program for cleaning the ">" and other formatting characters out of your emails. It will restore "forwarded" or "replied" emails back to their original state so they're easier to read.

With emailStripper open, you select the body of the email, then on the emailStripper screen click Paste. Next click Strip It! and the email is restored to a readable format. You can make additional changes in the text, if necessary right in the emailStripper window.

When you have it the way you want, click Copy and the cleaned up text is placed on the clipboard. Return to your email screen, remove the existing body text, and then Ctrl+V to paste the cleaned up version.

The next time you click that Forward button, take the time to clean it up. Your email friends will appreciate it.

Copyright Issues

I understand that when someone creates something, they own it and the copyright for it. Of course, if someone were to take that item and use it, they would be violating the copyright. But who would know?

Truth is nobody would know unless they came across the item and knew it was theirs or belonged to someone else they knew. When that is discovered, the original owner must be able to provide the proof that they do hold the copyright.

There are a couple of ways to copyright something. You can apply to the government for a copyright and it will be officially registered with the US Copyright Office. Another approach is to mail a copy to yourself and not to open the package. Tell the post office what you are doing and they will seal all the edges and hand stamp each seal. If you have to take someone to court about violating your copyright, you can produce the sealed package as proof you own it.

The real message here is for you to make sure you are not violating someone else's copyright. It is a principle I speak often of when teaching Web Development classes. If you create it, you own it. If you Google it and copy/paste you are probably stealing it. Want to use a picture in your work, grab your digital camera and take it yourself. Do not grab it off the Web.

If you really like the work someone else has done, contact them and ask permission to use it. In most cases, they will grant permission. Sometimes they ask that you give them credit for it by including a link to their site or their email address. Do not just use their image and hope you do not get caught.

Of course, you can purchase thousands of royalty free images on CD's over on the Web and in your local office supply stores. These can be used without worrying about the copyright because when you bought the package you received a license to use the items that came with it. Make sure that license allows you to use it publically and not just on documents you print out. It will usually not allow you to use the items for sale to others.

A few weeks ago, I received a lawyer's letter telling me I had violated the copyright on an image used on one of my Web sites. This was a simple graphic I had added in 1999—10 years ago. The letter said I needed to prove I had a license to use the image or be prepared to be sued for up to $25,000!

I had no idea where I found that image. I could not believe that I found it on the Web and copy/pasted it into my site. This was against all I had been teaching for years. However, I could not remember anything about the image. Well, I removed it from my site and copies of it from my computers.

This was good, but they still wanted payment for its use. We negotiated down to a reasonable figure and were just wrapping things up when, in my work of cleaning out for our move, I came across a CD of royalty free images I had purchase in 1996.

You guessed it; the image was on that CD. I was able to prove I had a license to use it and did not have to pay any penalty.

So remember, if you use someone else's item like an image or picture, get permission in some form and SAVE IT where you can find it later. Ten years down the road you may be challenged and have to pay a huge penalty for not keeping good records.

I suggest keeping your documentation right in the folder you have the work (Web page, document, etc). If it comes from a CD, scan the license into a PDF and keep it in the folder. If it was an email giving you permission, save the email in the folder.

Be careful as there are people out their searching the Web for unauthorized usage of their work with the intent to collect large sums of money for your failure to abide by the copyright laws or being lax in keeping good records of your work.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Over the years I have accumulated a number of shortcuts I find useful in my everyday dealings with the commputer. This list is not in any particular order. I suggest reading it one at a time and trying them out. Start to use them a little at a time and you will be surprised how your productivity improves. These simple keyboard clicks save me time as I use applications daily.

Please let me know of others you may use. I always like to add to my toolbox.

Win+D - Minimizes all open windows so you can see the desktop. A second tap restores them

Win+E - Opens Windows File Mamanger

Win+F - Launches Windows search

Win+L - locks they keyboard and can only be unlocked with your windows password.

Win+Pause - Opens the System Properties

Win+R - Opens the Run dialog box

Win+Pause - Opens System Properties

Win+U+U - to shut down

Win+U+R - to restart

Alt+F4 - Closes the active window/application

Ctrl+Alt+Del - Opens the Task Manager

Ctrl+F - accesses the Find feature in the currently-running program

Ctrl+Shift-F9 - Removes hyperlinks in MS-Word (great for cleaning up pasted web pages)

Shift+Alt+D in Word pastes the current date in the default format

Ctrl+; in Excel pastes the current date

Shift+Ctrl+C in MS-Word copies the format (same as format painter)

Shift+Ctrl+V in MS-Word copies the saved format

Ctrl+1, 2, and 5 in MS-Word changes the spacing to single, double, or space and a half

Shift+F3 in MS-Word toggle the case from UPPER, to lower, to Sentance case

F4 in MS-Excel toggle $ in a cell reference

Alt+= in MS-Excel is AutoSum

Alt+F9 in MS-Excel to reveal the hidden programming behind the text

Ctrl+X, C, and V are used in most programs to Cut, Copy, and Paste to the Windows clipboard

Ctrl+H in Word opens Find and Replace

Ctrl+N in Windows Explorer 7 and earlier opens a duplicate window

Ctrl+S opens the Save dialog in most programs

Shift+Ctrl+S opens the SaveAs dialog in some programs

Ctrl+O opens the Open dialog in most programs

Ctrl+Z is undo in most programs

Ctrl+Y is redo in most programs

Ctrl+P opens the print dialog in most programs

Ctrl+A selects all items in most programs

F5 restores the current window

F2 opens the rename function for the selected item

F1 opens the Help function in most programs

PrtScrn causes the picture of the desktop screen to be saved in the Windows clipboard

Alt+PrtScrn causes the picture of the active window to be saved in the Windows clipboard

Ctrl+L, E, R, and J in MS-Word for aligning Left, Center, Right, and Justified

=rand(p,s) in MS-Word generates random text (p=# paragraphs, s=# sentances)

Add a Calendar to the Desktop

I cannot count how many times I have double-clicked the clock in the system tray to get a date from the calendar. Of course you have to be very careful not to click OK and change the system date or all your new and modified files end up with the wrong dates.

Well, I finally did something about it. Check out www.rwevans.com/calendar. It opens a small browser window with an easy to use calendar. Nothing fancy. All it does is allow you easy access to the calendar so you can find that date you need to find. Drag it to a location on your desktop or minimize it to the task bar where it is ready at any time to use.

I Lost Send To Compressed!

All of a sudden the right-click > sent to compressed option was gone! Along with it was missing the ability to double-click a compressed file to extract the files.

I had no idea what caused the removal of this ability from my Windows XP machine, but it was a problem. I used to use PKZip and it was great, but it takes extra steps to decompress and compress files and folders. XP is great; right-click and you are good to go. But, no more.

I Googled every combination of words I could come up with and found a few suggestions. Here is the simple solution if it happens to you, or to me again.

First, locate a computer that has the right-click working. Then, from the Run dialog box (Win+R) type at the run line type this %userprofile% \sendto, and then click OK

Copy the Compressed (zipped) Folder file to a flash drive, diskette, or CD. Or somehow get it over to your desktop.

On your desktop, at the run line type this regsvr32 zipfldr.dll, and then click OK

At the run line type this %userprofile% \sendto, and then click OK

Next, drag the file from your desktop to this folder

Now right-click > send to should have the compressed folder selection

Instant Virus Check

Wonder if there is a virus lurking around in your machine right now? If you have an Internet connection, try out http://www.nanoscan.com/. This is especially useful when you are away from your own machine or even using your notebook at one of the local WiFi available restaurants or coffee houses. It work very quickly--try it out.

Getting Rid of U3

Not to be confused with R2D2, U3 is an application that is piggybacked on the SanDisk Cruzer USB Flash drives. The Cruzer flash drives are a nice size and I like the slider to expose the connection. Those darn caps seem to always get lost or do not stay on after a while. However, I am not thrilled with the included U3 and extra software that comes with it. It takes too much time to mount the drive, I do not want the extra software, and I want all the gigs I paid for.

This procedure will remove U3

1. Open your browser to:

http://www.sandisk.com/Retail/Default.aspx?CatID=1415

2. Download the application

3. Plug in the flash drive and wait for the U3 launch pad to load.

4. Run the application choosing one of the two options. Both options remove U3 and format the drive. (Yes ) keeps all your data (takes about 1 hr/gb) or (No) destroys all data on the drive (takes about 10 sec)

You now have a full sized USB flash drive without the U3 application

Converting Formulas to Values in Excel

Ever need to convert cells containing a formula to its value?

Sure, you can select the cell, copy it to the clipboard, paste it back to the same cell, click the Paste Options button, click Paste Special, and then click Values. The cell contains the value instead of the formula.

There is a better way. Simply select the cell to be converted, press F2, and then F9.

IE7 and the Scroll Wheel

I just discovered a neat feature in IE7. Click a link with the scroll wheel instead of the left or right mouse button and the page opens in a new tab. Use with links off a Web page, the Links bar in IE7, and the Favorites links. This saves a number of clicks. To close the tab, click the tab with the scroll mouse.

Remove the Hyperlink

How many times have you copy and pasted from a Web page into a Word document and been frustrated with all the links that carried over? Sure, you can pull down the Paste Option button’s arrow and select Keep Text Only, but this removes all the formatting as well. You may want to keep the fonts and colors, but just not the links.

One at a time, you might right-click each link and select Remove Hyperlink. A longer method is to click Insert > Links > Hyperlink, and then on the Insert Hyperlink dialog box, click Remove Hyperlink.

There is a better way.

Click the hyperlinked word(s) and press Shift+Ctrl+F9. The hyperlink is removed. To do all at once, Ctrl+A to select the entire document, then Shift+Ctrl+F9 and all hyperlinks in the document are removed.

Closing Multiple Excel 2007 Workbooks

I often end up with many open workbooks. To close them one at a time takes a number of clicks by right-clicking and selecting close for each one. If I had made any changes to a workbook, a dialog box opens and I have to decide to save or the workbook, or not. There is a better way.

http://www.ric.edu/faculty/revans/webct_files/Closing%20Multiple%20Workbooks.mht