PC Doctor April 22, 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:

            I am getting this weird message when I try to save something using ‘save as’ in Excel.  It’s been working fine but now I keep getting a message that it’s not responding and sending me to a website of Microsoft.  I tried doing the updates to see if that was it, but it said I was up to date.  What else could it be?

            Mary

Dear Mary:

            It sounds like maybe Excel got corrupted.  The best thing to do is to put in your Office disk and when it opens up, click ‘repair’ and let the computer do its thing.  It will take a minute for this to happen and you will need to make sure that you have shut any programs that you have open down first.  Once it is complete, just reboot the computer and try it again.  I’m guessing this should work.

            PC Doctor

Dear PC Doctor:

            I have about 100 or more email addresses in my Contacts in Outlook Express.  All of a sudden my addresses are gone.  Are they deleted or can I get them back?

                                                            Frantic

Dear Frantic:

            I’m pretty sure that your addresses are still there, just go up to View on the top menu bar and click, select Layout from the drop down menu and under Basic, check the box for Contacts.  Finally click OK.  That should allow your addresses to show again. 

                                                PC Doctor

Dear PC Doctor:

            On some of the emails that I get there is a box with a red x in it.  It’s really tiny but I’m not sure if it is serving some purpose.  I click on it and nothing happens.  Someone told me that they are pictures?  Is that true and why can’t I see them?

                                    Joyce

Dear Joyce:

            You are correct in that they are usually photographs or pictures.  You didn’t mention which email program you are using, however almost all of them will have a similar procedure to change options and I’m assuming that you have allowing pictures blocked in your setup.  Sometimes you can hold the Control (CTRL) key and then click again on the red x and the picture will open.  Of course this is something you have to do each time.  If you want to have the picture display each time and get rid of most of your red x’s, you’ll have to change your setup.  One of the reasons that you might want to block pictures is that if you have a slow connection, loading pictures takes too much time. 

            In Outlook Express, go up to the menu bar, choose Tools and then Options.  Click the ‘security’ tab and about half way down the page; look for ‘download images’.  Uncheck the box that says ‘block images and other external content in HTML e-mail’.  Click OK and close out.

This sounds weird but you can also try this.  Open up Internet Explorer and go up to the upper menu bar and look for Tools. Select Options off the drop down list and choose the ‘advanced’ tab.  Scroll down until you find ‘multimedia’ and look for a line that says ‘show pictures’.  Put a check mark in that box and then click the OK button at the bottom.

                                                            PC Doctor

Until next time… happy computing!

 

 

Posted: to Athol Library News on Mon, Apr 26, 2010
Updated: Mon, Apr 26, 2010