After I spent an hour working on a Word document, I had a power failure and the computer closed down. But when I got it running again and opened the file, all my new work was missing. I don’t get it. I have autosave enabled and it didn’t do its job. What’s going on here?

You’re making a common mistake. You’re confusing autosave with AutoRecover . Word does not have an autosave function. What it has is AutoRecover , which periodically saves open documents into a temporary file in the event the original file becomes corrupt or Word malfunctions. Then, when you try to open that file, Word launches a Document Recovery Task box (see screenshot below) in which you’re invited to restore one of the several saved AutoRecover temporary files. In your frustration at not finding your work you may not have noticed the box, which typically appears on the left-hand side of the screen.

To set up AutoRecover , click on Tools , Options and the Save tab. You can program it to save as frequently as once a minute (see screenshot below).

But more important, I suggest you get into what I call the Ctrl+S habit. Those simple keystrokes save what’s on your screen—and that works for any Office application. I do a Ctrl+S every few minutes, and especially when I make a major change or addition or I temporarily leave the work.

By the way there is software, called AutoSave, ( www.atopsoft.com/products/autosave ) that you can program to perform the Ctrl+S command. The $20 product works on all Microsoft Office applications.

I confess I don’t like Track Changes , but I especially hate it when one of my colleagues sends me a document she reviewed with Track Changes and her comments are so long I can’t print them because they don’t fit in the margins. Any suggestions?

You’re right; Track Changes is clumsy, but it’s very useful and so it’s worth learning how to get around its idiosyncrasies. To provide more room on the page for all the comments, change your page orientation to landscape by opening Track Changes (by clicking on Tools , Options , the Track Changes tab) and select Force Landscape in the Paper Orientation drop-down list. Then click on OK (see screenshot below).

Now if you want only comments to print, engage the Reviewing toolbar (Ctrl+Shift+E), click on the Show down arrow and clear all the boxes except Comments and Final (see screenshotbelow).

Then, to print the document, click on File , Print and in the Print what box, select Document showing markup and click on OK (see screenshot below).

I’ve just updated a huge office instruction manual and I want the staff to review only the parts I’ve changed. I can’t think of an easy way to accomplish that. Any ideas?

I’d suggest using Word’s Highlight tool as a graphic guide. It’s not only effective, it’s easy to use. As you know you can highlight a word or a section of a document and then click on the Highlight icon, which provides a range of colors.

If you want to highlight many sections scattered throughout the document, first click on the color of your choice and then go through the document and highlight each with the mouse. When done, just click again on the icon.

I know what you’re thinking: Great, so now my colleagues have to go through the whole manual to find the highlighted section.

No, there’s a fast way to do that, too. Use the Find tool (Ctrl+F) and click on More , Format and select Highlight . Then click on Find Next . When done, click on No Formatting and then on Cancel .

And now, if I can anticipate your next question, you probably want to be able to easily remove the colored highlights. The quick way is to use Find and Replace (Ctrl+H). But before you open it, click on the Highlight icon and select None . Then press Ctrl+H and click on Find what , pick Format and then Highlight . In the Replace with box, pick Format and then Highlight , Replace All and click on OK . When done, click on No Formatting and Close .

I suppose you now want to print the document—but without all the colors, right? That’s easy. Click on Tools , Options , select the View tab and in the Show section clear the check from Highlight and then click on OK .

I’ve heard that Windows can be scheduled to start up on its own every morning. While I can program my coffee maker to automatically brew a pot every morning, I can’t figure out how to get my PC to be up and running when I come to work. Can you help?

Windows XP can do that, and it takes just a minute or two to set it up. Go to the Control Panel and click on Scheduled Tasks and then on Add Scheduled Task to launch the Scheduled Task Wizard , which is very clear. Click on Next and the Browse button to access the Windows folder SYSTEM32 , where you’ll find the Shutdown.exe file.

Now click on Open and the wizard will ask you to give the chore a name (I called it shutdown ) and set a schedule.

It later will ask for your user account name and password (if you have one). Then click on Next and check Open advanced properties and then on Finish .

If you work for a company with more than 1,000 employees, there’s a better-than-even chance your outbound e-mail is being monitored for rule-breaking, which can include such things as leaked trade secrets, improperly disclosed financial information or offensive words.

That information, from a Forrester Consulting survey, was reported by the New York Times.

In the August 2006 issue (page 80) I said that selecting Current page in the Print command only prints the page showing on the screen. Not so, advises Roger Winslett, a CPA from Marietta, Ga. Current Page will print the page where the cursor is positioned , and that’s not that as insignificant as it may first appear. For example, if you have a large document and you use Page Down (or click on the Scroll Bar) to move through the document and then command a print job with Current Page , your printer will spew out the first page of the document—where the cursor was positioned—not the page showing on the screen.