Microsoft Office Save Undo Fix

Problem: Microsoft put the Save and Undo buttons one pixel apart on the Quick Access toolbar. Thus, you go to save your work and accidentally Undo the last thing you did, in which case you have to hit the Redo button before you save. Or you go to Undo a terrible mistake and accidentally Save, in which case you curse forever the idiots who designed the Quick Access toolbar and take to drink. Well, actually you can still do an Undo after you have done a save, so all is not lost. But still, if there were ever two tiny buttons that should have space between them it is Save and Undo.

And you can put that space there. Just right-click one of those buttons and select Customize Quick Access Toolbar. In the resulting dialog add a few separators between Save and Undo. I find five produces an aesthetically pleasing spacer. You have to do this for each of your Office programs, but unlike so many useful Microsoft workarounds, this one carries over from one document to the next. Do it once for Word 2010 and you never need to do it again. Would that all Microsoft design flaws were so easy to repair.

Comma Turmoil

In Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, a comma walks into the sentence three words before its cue.

"In all, the internal turmoil particles within the cloud pick up electrical charges."

I did a Google search for the phrase "internal turmoil particles," and learned that in the Special Illustrated Edition of Mr. Bryson's book, the sentence has been corrected.

"In all the internal turmoil, particles within the cloud pick up electrical charges."

I prefer the uncorrected version. Internal turmoil particles must be the molecules that cause anxiety, confusion and indecisiveness. If internal turmoil particles are indeed picking up electrical charges, we might be able to deflect them with magnetic fields. Perhaps those folks who have strapped magnets to their wrists and their pipes to ward off arthritis and lime scale will actually receive the benefit of inner peace.

Default Settings on Excel 2010 under Windows 7

How to set row height and column width, or font, or whatever, to what you always want, and get it automatically every time.

Create an ideal Excel spreadsheet, blank but with all the settings you like.
Control Panel --> Folder Options --> View --> Show hidden files, folders, and drives --> Apply
Save your ideal blank spreadsheet, selecting Excel Template (*.xltx) from the Save As Type: pop-up menu. Save it into C:\Users\[your user name]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART.
Control Panel --> Folder Options --> View --> Don't show hidden files, folders, and drives --> Apply
(Unless you like having the hidden folder visible.)
All new Excel spreadsheets should have your desired features automatically.

MacBook Pro Trackpad Failure Catch-22 Solution

The battery in a MacBook Pro swells. This damages the trackpad so that the computer thinks you are permanently holding down the left mouse button. Since you are already clicking, you cannot click. The computer behaves as if your left mouse button did not work. An external mouse does not help, since the trackpad is still sending the blocking signal, preventing the mouse click event from being accepted. The solution is to turn on "Ignore trackpad when mouse is present" in the System Preferences. However, the way you turn this on is with a left mouse click, the one thing you cannot do. Catch-22.

The deeper solution is to open Macintosh HD/Applications/Utilities/Terminal. At the $ prompt type in this command exactly as written:

defaults write -g com.apple.mouse.ignoreTrakpadIfMousePresent 1

Notes: That is a single space between items, a single dash before the g, com.apple.mouse.ignoreTrakpadIfMousePresent is all one word with three periods in it, the last item is the number one. (If it was a zero, it would turn the trackpad back on.)

Hit return. Quit the terminal program. Some sources say to log out and back in, but that did not work for us. We had to shut the computer down and restart it. And then, as long as an external mouse is connected, the computer works just fine. The modern word for miracle is "workaround".


Added note: However, despite the setting, on the MacBook Pro we were trying to fix, any touch of the trackpad overrode the setting and the mouse locked up again. Perhaps something thin taped over the trackpad would prevent this? The owner opted for a new laptop. He was due, anyway.

Google is the Manual and the Manual is Google

In program after program the online manual is missing or useless, often so badly organized that available information is unavailable. I almost convince myself that the answer does not exist, but then I remember that Google is the Manual for every application. I Google the question and find a discussion or blog post or video tutorial put up by someone who suffered through my problem last year and found the answer. For every hundred questions I get answered about software, the manual or help feature provide five answers, and Google provides the other ninety-five. To save time, I now try to remember that the Manual is Google and always start there. The actual manual and built-in or online help are weak supplements to be used only in desperation.

Apple Preview PDF Fixes

The Apple Macintosh Preview program will allow the user to fill in and save a PDF form, with a couple of oddities. If text is entered into a field and the form is saved before the field is closed, either by tabbing or clicking out of the field, the text is not saved. So, be sure to click outside the last field before saving.

If the filled form is opened in Acrobat on Windows, the text entered into fields will not appear unless one clicks into the field. A script that fixes these forms can be found here. In Acrobat Pro X, rather than adding a menu item, I extracted the heart of the script and made it an Action. (Tools --> Action Wizard --> Create New Action --> More Tools --> Execute Java Script --> Options and enter the modified script.) Now when I open a completed form with missing text in the fields, I click the new action to activate it, and a moment later all the text is visible.