What is it about Excel’s Reviewing toolbar? It seems to have a mind of its own. It turns up intermittently—usually when I don’t want it—and each time I have to go to the toolbar menu and unclick it. Is there some way to stop it?

I don’t know if it’s a bug or if the Microsoft team just believes it’s a handy function to have around all the time. If it helps any, you’re not alone with the problem. I became so irritated by it that I recorded a simple macro with a shortcut key to remove it every time it pops up. If you’d like to do the same without any special macro knowledge, here’s how.

The next time it appears, click on Tools , Macro and Record New Macro , which brings up the Record Macro screen (see screenshot). Give the macro a name (it has to be one word) and a shortcut key and click on OK .

Then, each time the Reviewing toolbar appears press your shortcut key and, poof! it will disappear.

Since I use a laptop as my main computer, I keep it plugged in 24/7. But when I take it on the road, I notice that my battery meter shows nearly empty even when it still has loads of power. Can that be fixed?

I’d guess it’s a NiCadmium (NiCad) battery, and in all likelihood it needs to be recalibrated, which is easy to do. Leave the computer running on the battery until it runs out of power and shuts off automatically; then recharge it fully.

If your battery is a Lithium Ion (LiIon), which most newer laptops use, the problem is more difficult to solve and you should take it in for repair. In any case, avoid running a LiIon to empty because it shortens its life.

There’s loads of misinformation about rechargeable batteries. Let me clear up some of it. Before LiIons were introduced, the dominant laptop battery was NiCad, which suffered from a shortcoming called “memory effect.” If you continually recharged a NiCad before it was completely empty, it eventually “thought” the full charge was where it was just before you recharged it and stopped recharging fully. As a result, users were advised to run NiCads down to empty every couple of weeks and then fully recharge them.

The new LiIons, which hold a larger charge than NiCads, have their own shortcoming: They don’t store well. They generally last two to three years whether used or not—and their clock starts running right after they’re manufactured; so never buy a used LiIon. Their lifeline is further compressed each time they are run to empty. So, in general, it’s best to keep them fully or at least partly charged.

If your LiIon-powered computer can run plugged in without the battery, consider such a setup while in the office, but be sure to use a good surge suppressor. To maintain the LiIon’s life, charge it to about 40% and store it in a cool place (about 60F); higher temperatures hasten its demise.

I frequently need to view two Internet browser windows at the same time—for example, when I’m comparing results on two financial sites. Is there a way to do this?

Indeed there is. The technique, called tiling, can be done with any screen image, whether it’s from a browser or an application. For example, you can show a Word document on one part of the screen and an Excel spreadsheet right next to it or just below it (see the screenshot below for a double-browser view).

While it’s technically possible to show many screens simultaneously, as a practical matter four to six are the limit; beyond that, unless you have a giant screen and excellent vision, the images are too small to read.

To generate multiple images, open the screens (from your browser or an application) you want tiled and minimize them all at once by pressing Windows key+M or one at a time by clicking on the dash in the upper right-hand box (see screenshot below).

Minimizing the active windows puts you at the desktop, with the icons of the minimized windows showing in the taskbar (see screenshot below).

Now hold down the Ctrl key and right-click on each window, evoking the menu at right. Then select how you want it tiled—horizontally or vertically.

Once you have the images tiled on your screen, you can move them around by dragging them with your mouse or change their dimensions by nudging the screen edges with the mouse.

I have a spreadsheet that lists products with identifiers that go from C1 up to C1267. Since they are all unsorted, I tried to use Excel’s Sort function to put them in order, but then I ended up with C1, C10, C100, etc. What am I doing wrong?

What you don’t realize is that, because the first character in each cell is a letter, Excel is sorting the data as text. As a result, it first sorted all the cells starting in C1. It wasn’t until it got to the 62nd entry that it got to C2.

The solution is to use the LEN, RIGHT and LEFT functions to convert the ID format: adding zeros before the numbers, so C1 becomes C001, C2 becomes C002, etc. The conversion formula looks like this:

=LEFT(C1,1) & RIGHT(“000” & RIGHT(C1,LEN(C1)-1),3)

Now, when you sort by the newly formatted entries, you get the desired results.

When I started with computers in the 1980s, we had those 5 inch floppy disks—and they really were floppy. Then PCs and DOS came along with three-inch disks (and although they were still called floppies, there were no longer floppy). Now my new computer doesn’t even have a floppy slot. My concern is this: I have tons of business data stored in .doc and .xls formats on a bunch of CDs and, for safety, I also have copies on a remotely stored big hard drive. I also have loads of photos of my kids and grandkids stored in .jpg format on my home computer. But will tomorrow’s computers be able to read a CD or even my remote hard drive? Am I sounding like Chicken Little?

No, you’re raising critical questions that, for the most part, are being ignored by users and technology developers. Technology is moving so fast that at some point tomorrow’s computers and software will not be able to read today’s data. (By the way, it may surprise you to learn that the chemicals which coat CDs have an estimated shelf life of 5 to 10 years; after that, they will be unreadable by any software.)

Later this year, when Microsoft is scheduled to introduce its new Vista operating system and office suite, both the .doc and .xls formats will be retired. However, Microsoft promises that the new formats, which will fully incorporate Extensible Markup Language (XML), still will be able to read the old .doc and .xls formats. My question is, though: For how long?

I think it’s safe to assume that each major software advance will be compatible with at least the immediate two or three past technologies. So if you want to protect your digital data, keep your software up to date and recopy all your archived data into the new format every time you upgrade.

Important : I’d advise against skipping even one technology upgrade. If your archive is more than one technology step behind, you may find that not all your data are upgradable or digital errors are introduced when you do copy them.

Is such a process tantamount to wearing a belt and suspenders? Yes, it is a very conservative approach. But aren’t the snapshots of your grandkids worth it?

I was watching one of my colleagues edit a document with her mouse. She just dragged words and whole paragraphs to different locations and even copied sections. When I tried it, nothing happened. She told me she spent weeks training her smart mouse. She was kidding me—right?

Well, she was half-kidding. To get the mouse into the edit mode, you have to prepare it by changing a default.

Here’s how: Click on Tools , Options and the Edit tab. Be sure the Drag-and-drop text editing box is checked (see screenshot above).

Now you can use your mouse to move text in the same way you move a graphic. To do it, highlight the text you want to move with your left mouse button and drag it to the new location. If, on the other hand, you drag it with the right button, you evoke a menu (see screenshot above), giving you the choice of moving, copying, linking or creating a hyperlink.