Monthly Archives: January 2011

convert Microsoft Works documents

Computer Aid Posted on by

A customer had upgraded her PC from an old Windows 98 PC to Windows 7 (yep, a big jump).

In transferring her documents, I found the biggest hurdle was her old Microsoft Works documents.

Firstly, she hadn’t purchased Microsoft Office (and wasn’t keen on buying it, given that the salesman had told her the PC would have everything she needed…)

And secondly, she couldn’t understand why she couldn’t work on her existing documents with the new computer.

I must say, I understand how she feels. If you buy a computer thats at least 12 years newer, then it should be better than the old one in all respects…

In car terms, its like going from a 1960’s Mustang to a 2011 Mustang, only to find that the wheels are now optional…

Given that she hardly ever uses the web, uses emails occasionally, and uses the PC mostly for writing a book, then installing OpenOffice seems to be the best option.

I soon find out that OpenOffice will not read works documents.

Since there are only about 15 works documents, I quickly discover that the best way to convert the files is to use the website: www.zamzar.com

Its good for a handfull of documents, as it limits you to converting 6 documents at a time.

With 15 documents, I needed to do 3 conversion batches.

To do a much larger number of conversions, its worth looking at subscribing to zamzar.

Crash while writing email (Microsoft Word has encountered a problem and needs to close)

Computer Aid Posted on by

Whenever an email was being written, Microsoft Word would crash (Microsoft Word has encountered a problem and needs to close).

I figure: customer is probably using Word to write emails from Microsoft Outlook.

A quick change of settings and Microsoft Office is working normally.

But when I try to open a word document, I still get a word error, so the problem is not with the email system.

I try opening an Excel spreadsheet, and it opens normally.

OK then, the problem is specific to Word only.

I check the control panel settings, making sure word is the default program to open word documents (it is).

A quick search finds a passing mention that the problem is related to a corrupted normal.dot file.

I’ve seen similar problems in the past, so the first step is to find the folder that has normal.dot.

I quickly find it in:

C:Documents and Settings{username}Application DataMicrosoftTemplates

Note: for Vista and Windows7 (office 2007), the location is more like:

C:users{username}AppDataRoamingMicrosoftTemplates

(also note that office 2007 uses: normal.dotm)

Anyway, I rename it, and word starts working normally again.

Can you stop someone linking to your website?

Computer Aid Posted on by

I recently had a very concerned lady call me about her website, and how she thought someone was “interfering” with her site by adding links to her site from other “bad” and “spammy” sites.

Well, the answer is: you cannot control who links to you, nor how they link to you.

This might sound like a horrible situation, but its just the way it is.

A real-world comparison is: can you stop someone from sending you letters via the post?

Of course the answer is: No

If someone wants to wast their money sending you hundreds of letters per day, then there is little you can do… Particularly if they send the letters from different mailboxes…

But its not as bad as it might seem.

Google (and other search engines), keep track of the “neighbourhood” that your site belongs to. This means: if you have a music web site, and most links from your site point at other music sites, and other music sites have links pointing to your site… then google will put your site into its internal “music” category.

So, if your site gets some links from, say, a computer website, or a “spam” website, then google will automatically “tone down” the importance of those unrelated links.

What you should never, never do, is link back to the unrelated websites, out of “revenge”. This will tell google that you want to take part in the category of the unrelated website (by effectively “voting” for it)… this will make the “bad” links more important, and seriously downgrade your site “in googles eyes”.

So, the best way to minimise the effect of bad links to your website is to make sure you have good links to your website.