Information management and technology assurance

Q: My Outlook has been running really slow, and I finally figured it’s probably because my Inbox and Deleted Items files are huge. I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve accumulated several years of e-mails. So I recently spent an hour or so of quality time deleting messages. But now, after

Q: I find your Tech Q&A column very useful. Is there some way I can track down items you published earlier? It sure would be handy. A: Several readers have asked about this, and yes, the magazine has a very comprehensive and easy-to-use Web site for locating articles. Go to

Q: I understand that the more system memory I have, the better my computer will perform. However, I’ve already loaded as much system memory as my computer can hold. Is there any way to add more? A: Yes, once you run out of slots in your computer, you can configure

Q: I was working in Excel and suddenly realized that I made a mistake when I entered a formula about 10 minutes earlier and that was screwing up a lot of what I did since then. So I turned to the old faithful Undo command (Ctrl+Z), and although it took

Q: I recently had to replace my hard drive. My tech support person said it had crashed, and he didn’t know why. When I asked him what I could have done to prevent it, he shrugged his shoulders. What advice do you have? A: I assume, since you had to

Q: A colleague showed me how to add the path and file name to an Excel spreadsheet, and that’s real handy. But the Header screen (see screenshot below) leaves much to be desired: It doesn’t tell what each of those 10 icons does. Sure, I can figure it out from

Q: When I’m not at my computer, I experience what I call calendar withdrawal. Sure, I could carry a little pocket paper calendar, but then I’d have to keep it synced with Outlook. No, thank you. And unlike our president, I’m not about to go high-tech with a data phone.

Q: I run XP and Office 2003, and I was rummaging through the Options menu (click on Tools, Options), and in the Save tab I came across an option to Save AutoRecover info every:. And then it gives you the choice of how frequently you want it to save. Huh?

Some of the worksheets in my Excel files are in landscape orientation and some are portrait. To maintain the orientations when I print the entire file, I print each worksheet separately, which is time-consuming. Is there some way to do the task in one print order? Obviously you never tried

When I copy something in Word, say, with Ctrl+C, and then move on to edit and even copy material in some other part of my document, is there a way to retrieve the snippets I copied for later use? Absolutely. The tool you need to exploit is the Office Clipboard,

When I boot up my Windows XP computer, I keep getting a pop-up above my system tray that says: Updates are ready for your computer. Click here to install these updates. How do I know this is not some kind of virus? There is no indication who is sending them.

Help! Something happened to my shortcut keys in Word. They got all botched up. I know how to reset them, so that’s not my question. But what I discovered when I started to reset them was that I have way more shortcuts than I thought I had— and for tasks