NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, August 2011
The Tip Corner
By Bill Sheff, Novice SIG Coordinator,
Lehigh Valley Computer Group, PA
March 2011 issue, The LVCG Journal
http://www.lvcg.org
nshell (at) aol.com (click to email author)

Google Chrome Home Button
If you look at the interface of Google Chrome, as compared to other browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer, you will notice that there is no “home" button. You know, the little house icon on the toolbar? The other browsers have it, but not Chrome? It's ridiculously easy to fix.
* Open Chrome, click on the Wrench icon in the upper right-hand corner and select Options.
* Under Home Page, put a check next to Show Home button on the toolbar.

The effect is instantaneous! Click Close and you now have a home button in Google Chrome!

PowerPoint does not open?
If you can't open PowerPoint presentations that come in your e-mails you are not alone. This can happen even with the Power Point Viewer. Try some of these tips:

1. How are you checking your e-mail? The very first thing to look at is the way in which you are checking your e-mail. If you check e-mail via a dedicated e-mail client such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, Eudora, etc., instead of double clicking on and trying to open the PowerPoint file from within the e-mail program, export the PowerPoint file from your e-mail into a folder on your desktop (typically done by dragging and dropping the file from your e-mail message into your desktop folder) then double click to open it. The reason for doing this is that some e-mail clients will try to open a file using its own program features and/or incorrect associations, instead of using the correct program to open the file. As such, you will typically see an error message, or no response. If you are not using an e-mail client, but a web mail interface (such as Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc.) to check your e-mail, you will want to download the PowerPoint file from your e-mail to your desktop, then attempt to open the file on your computer instead of in your e-mail. Again, doing so eliminates one more possible misconfigured program (in this case your Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, or other web browser) from attempting to open your PowerPoint file by downloading or moving the file to your computer and trying to open it there.

If either of these steps opens your PowerPoint file, you have just found a solution to your problem. You may still want to look at configuring your e-mail client and/or web browser to associate PowerPoint files with your PowerPoint reader program.

2. Check your file type Believe it or not, PowerPoint itself can be the problem. There are currently four distinct types of files commonly output by PowerPoint, each of which have restrictions on how the different versions of PowerPoint can read them. These file types are:
* PPS - Used to contain a “viewable” PowerPoint presentation. This PowerPoint file will normally open in the PowerPoint Viewer or the full version of PowerPoint without issue.
* PPT - Used to contain an “editable” PowerPoint presentation. This can sometimes be viewed in the PowerPoint Viewer but will only be editable in the full version of the PowerPoint software.
* PPSX/.PPTX - The same as .PPS and .PPT, respectively, but saved in a newer Open XML format introduced in PowerPoint 2007.

Typically, you will not be able to view PowerPoint files of these types without a recent version of the PowerPoint Viewer or PowerPoint 2007 or higher. If you are unsure of which file type you are having trouble opening, right click on the file and select Properties from the menu.

3. Get with the program With the above in mind you will want to confirm that you do (or do not) have the correct programs installed on your computer to read them. The quickest way to do so is to update your PowerPoint Viewer to the most current version. After installing the latest PowerPoint Viewer, just about any PowerPoint file should open right up for you to view; simply click on and open the file on your desktop in the PowerPoint viewer. If it does not open, download and install the latest version of OpenOffice, which includes Impress, which is a part of the OpenOffice suite of programs. Impress has many of the same features and editing capabilities of the full version of Microsoft Office PowerPoint, but at a very hard to beat price: FREE!

4. Check your source If the file still fails to open, you either have a damaged or corrupt PowerPoint file, or a password protected PowerPoint file. In either case, you will want to contact the sender and have them resend the file and/or give you a password to open it.

I hope all your PowerPoint files can now open without any problem.

Clear Your Firefox Downloads List
Do you have quite a lot of files you've downloaded via Firefox?. Not sure? Open up Firefox and click Tools>Downloads and a window pops up. Is it pretty cluttered and in need of a good clean out? To delete single downloads from your Firefox queue, simply right-click the download you'd like to delete from the list and select Remove From List. You can clear the entire list by clicking the Clear List button at the bottom of the download window.

Note: This doesn't delete the physical file from your computer; just the listing in the Firefox downloads window.

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