PC Doctor April 7, 2010
Have your computer questions answered here! Search the PC Doctor archive or submit a question of your own at info@athollibrary.org
Dear PC Doctor:
Lately I've been receiving alot of attachments that have the letters pps. It stands for Power Point and I'm not able to open these. What do I have to do to be able to open them? Thanks.
Audrey
Dear Audrey:
The reason is probably because you don’t have Power Point on your computer or the version on your computer is older than the version that is coming through as an attachment. So the fix would be to get Power Point (usually comes bundled with Word). If you have Word, you should check on the disk that you used to load Word and see if Power Point is included, and then load it onto your computer.
If you don’t have it and don’t want to purchase it, you can download the Power Point viewer which should allow you to open it (which I will explain in the last paragraph). Or alternatively if you are getting these attachments from the same person, just ask them to ‘pack and go’ which means they would open up their Power Point presentation and choose the orb (or File) and under Save As, select the option to save it as a Power Point Show. This will save it in a format that you can then open on your computer.
Finally if you are getting them from various sources and want to be able to open all of them without asking your friends to save them a special way for you, you can download the Power Point Viewer. This only allows you to open them; you won’t be able to change them. For that you need Power Point. To download the Viewer go to www.microsoft.com/downloadsand in the search box type Power Point Viewer 2007 (because you’ll want to be able to open any edition of Power Point). Then follow the instructions to open and run it on your computer. When you then click on your pps files, it should open up in Power Point Viewer.
PC Doctor
Dear PC Doctor:
When I turn my computer on Windows live messenger has always signed in automatically, until just recently. Now I have to type in my address and password every time. I went into the menu, then tools, then options and in "sign in". The box is still checked that says to allow automatic sign in when connected to the internet is there any where else that I could go to get it to sign in automatically again?
Donna
Dear Donna:
After doing some research on this topic it appears that the problem is being caused by a Yahoo! Toolbar installer that has caused problems with the Windows user profile registry. A user named Jonathan Kay worked on the problem and came up with a fix called “Make Messenger Remember”. The easiest thing to do is open up Google and in the search box type “make messenger remember” (with the quotes). Download the tool, open it up and click the Fix button. Your computer will restart so be sure to have saved any work that you had open. Open up Windows Live Messenger, type in your information and it should be there the next time you come in.
PC Doctor
Until next time… happy computing!
