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.

Google Docs Keyboard Shortcut Problem Workaround

Google Documents sometimes ignores keyboard shortcuts. This happens when the computer shifts its attention to another program. For example, copy a block of text from a Google Doc, switch to another program and paste. Or hit the key command to have the text block read aloud. On returning to the Google Doc and selecting another block of text, the keyboard shortcuts may not work. In the menu bar, the copy command is disabled, as if no text was selected. Sometimes the menu command or even the keyboard shortcut works, but not consistently.

The workaround is to click in the Google Document window, type a single letter and then backspace over it. This gets Google Docs attention, and menus and shortcuts work as usual.

Workaround for Hotmail Keyboard Shortcut Problems

When I try to copy and paste something out of a Hotmail document, I get an error message that says "Hotmail was not able to complete this request. Microsoft may contact you about any issue you report." Same thing happens when I select a block of text and hit the key command to get my computer to read that passage aloud. Apparently Hotmail is unwilling to accept key commands from my computer while I am reading a message.

There are two workarounds. The copy and start speaking commands in the menu bar still work, so one can use those in place of the key commands. Alternately, one can hit the reply button. This opens a window including the entire original message quoted. Since this window expects you to be typing, it allows key commands.

Bin Laden, a bus and the Milky Way

Apparently there was something in the news about some guy getting killed in Pakistan. But the big news today is that a car hit the Streamline bus I was riding in from Belgrade.

Net results: Obama poll numbers have just got to go up. John Negroponte, G. W. Bush's UN ambassador, answered a question on NPR which included mention of the fact that some previous administrations had downplayed the importance of getting Bin Laden. Which previous administrations those might have been was not mentioned. Negroponte assured us that Bush never lost interest in getting Bin Laden for a single second. There was damage to a bus wheel and damage to the already damaged car which looked like it had hit some other bus before it hit our bus. I got to spend half an hour sitting in a sunny bus reading a fascinating article in Scientific American while the police did whatever it was they were doing.

What we know: Bin Laden and his people were hiding in a huge house very near a Pakistani military facility and Pakistan says they did not know it. We flew a helicopter strike force into that area meeting no resistance from Pakistan, and we say we did not tell them we were coming. The kid who hit the bus says he ran the red light and hit the bright yellow bus which was clearly illuminated by the sunlight coming from behind him because he was picking up something he had dropped on the floor. Everybody who hears this assumes that what the kid had dropped was his telephone. And, most importantly, matter constantly flows into and out of galaxies to an extent not previously imagined. We already knew that the heavier atoms in our bodies, everything above lithium, were formed by fusion reactions inside stars. Now we know that many of those atoms that make us up were probably formed in stars in galaxies outside our Milky Way. Bits of Osama Bin Laden now resting on the floor of the ocean came a very long way to get there, and will someday return to intergalactic space.