Many have lost a post they poured their hearts into, or want to use a link posted, or aren't comfortable with 'cut and paste', or want to put a picture into their profile, or have a specific question - and so on. I know there are some power users on this board and anyone is welcome to help.
My idea is that any post that is meant as a step by step or an explanation should have the specific topic described in a top line of the post. That way someone wanting to understand how to use a link someone posted here can look up "How to copy and paste a web address link for viewing" or whatever that topic is.
People asking questions or comments wouldn't need to be that formal but it would be most useful if a person looking for a particular answer can scan those posts meant as full explanations or step by step help and spot the topic they want without having to scan all the posts that might (or might not) build up here.
Here are the topics that I will try to post a step by step on. Anyone else is welcome to chime in or take one of the topics before I get there. Ideally right up front the platform and software used are clearly identified so that Vista users understand why they're not seeing what Windows 7 instructions are being given.
If anyone doesn't see or get what's being said, ask. I think it's Paulc and others have good skills and if we help each other, it's going to make using this site and related things so much better. What you actually see on your screen may be a little different depending on what you are using so don't get frustrated if you don't see the thing being said. Just ask.
How to copy and paste your message before posting so you don't lose it. How to copy and paste web address links so you can look at them. How to add and arrange favorite sites so it's easy (eg: thealzheimerspouse.com and TASMessageBoards) How to find and use notepad when you want to save something written here for later reference How to add a picture into your profile How to use Google Maps Satellite to get street views How to capture screen images and save them for any other use.
That will do for now I think. Hope this is ok with Joan. I'll get started.
HOW TO COPY AND PASTE YOUR MESSAGE BEFORE POSTING SO YOU DON'T LOSE IT
You are typing into the input window of the screen in the white area above the "Add your comments" button. That is where your message is and you want to stay inside this area when you follow the instructions below.
Copy:
At any time or when you have finished writing, go to the top of your post in the input box which you are typing into and put your cursor over the first letter of the first word.
Left click there and keep the mouse button pressed down.
Now slide your mouse so that you can see the area highlighted (usually in blue). Pull the mouse down until the lines start moving up expanding your copy area to include the whole post. You do that by moving the cursor just below the input box. If you move the cursor too far below the bottom of the input area it will zoom down and you'll have to come back or start again. Moving the cursor just below starts a nice steady progression of capturing all the lines in your post (or whatever you are copying).
Practise right now on the paragraph above. Start anywhere. Hold the left mouse button down. Drag the mouse and watch it include more area. Move the mouse just to the bottom of the computer screen and watch the copy area take in more lines below.
Copy and Paste:
When you have the area highlighted you want to save take your finger off the left mouse button. The area you chose remains highlighted in blue. Now move the cursor over any part that is highlighted. Your cursor must be over the highlighted area anywhere for this to work. Now RIGHT click the mouse once.
A menu has come up that has "Undo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, Select All, Save as Picture" or some variation of that as a menu. Some will be grayed out but 'copy' should be there. Move your cursor over the word "copy" and left click on it once.
You have now copied what you highlighted to your clipboard. It's in memory. Now click anywhere not on the highlighted area to return to normal and post your message.
If your post doesn't go up for some reason, re-sign in and go back to that topic and go to the same input box you usually type into. But instead with your cursor anywhere inside the normal typing area right click once. That menu should come up again, only this time the word 'paste' is useable. Move your cursor over the word paste and left click once. Your copied area will appear in the box. Now hit "Add your comments" and you didn't lose your post.
Practise this anywhere right now if you like. Copy any part of any comments on the site, go to your input box and paste that in. If you were to hit "Add your comments" you would post that so don't because you're just practising. Practise a bit and you'll get comfortable. Click anywhere not highlighted to cancel. The stuff you copy remains here until you copy something else or you shut off the computer. Sometimes you will get a message that a lot is copied to the clipboard do you want to delete it? If you're done with what you copied it for just say yes.
Some background:
When people talk about the clipboard they mean this process. There are different ways to copy something into memory for use elsewhere and the clipboard is what windows calls that memory area. Basically whatever you copied is sitting in memory if you want to paste it somewhere else. Most software is cross compatible so you could paste that into Excel or Word or your Facebook input. There are dozens of applications.
If you want to save anything you copy into a permanent record Windows includes freeware called Notepad and that is the simplest way to do it. Notepad is just what it sounds like and can be found in the directory programs/accessories/notepad most times. If you like it paste it to your start menu. The notepad files you save are usually stored in your 'documents' folder.
HOW TO COPY AND PASTE WEB ADDRESS LINKS SO YOU CAN LOOK AT THAT SITE (eg: a video)
When you see a web address you want to try you use the copy/paste function a bit differently. Here is the web address from that Hallelujiah flash mob song from last year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE
Move your cursor to the left of the first letter and holding your left mouse button down drag the mouse across that address so the whole thing (but nothing else) is highlighted usually in blue. Now let go of the mouse button and moving the cursor over any part of the highlighted area, click the RIGHT mouse button once. The word 'copy should be in the small menu that comes up. Move the cursor over the word 'copy' and left click once.
That puts what you copied onto the clipboard (in memory).
Paste into a web address box:
Move your cursor up to the top of this screen and left click once in the web address box. That's the 'box' or area where Joan's web address "http://thealzheimerspouse.com/vanillaforum/..." etc resides. By left clicking once there you highlight the address in blue.
You want to get rid of that address and replace it with the one on your clipboard (the one you copied). With thealzheimerspouse address still highlighted (usually in blue) find the 'backspace' key on your keyboard. It's two above the enter key. Hit the backspace key once. Now there is no address in the address box.
Now move your cursor anywhere inside that now empty box, RIGHT click the mouse, find the word 'paste' in the little menu that comes up - and all with your cursor in that box - click on the word 'paste' once. The address you copied should now be pasted in there but is probably not highlighted. Left click on that address to highlight that in blue now and hit the enter button on the keyboard once.
You should have transported to the flash mob video. Don't forget that you can hit the blue arrow back button key to go back to where you were if you've decided you don't want to go through with it - or after you watch the video and want to come back to Joan's site.
HOW TO ADD AND ARRANGE FAVORITE SITES SO IT'S EASY (eg: the alzheimerspouse.com and TASMessageBoards)
There are several ways to make access to this site and Joan's main site easier.
One of them is to RIGHT click anywhere on Joan's site and look down the list of options for the "create shortcut" line. Move the cursor over that line and left click once. You should get a confirming message that wants to make sure you want to put an icon on your desktop that links directly here. If you want that click 'yes' otherwise cancel by clicking "no".
Notice that if you right click over the message input area when you are signed in you get one list of options and if you right click over almost anywhere else you get a different list of options. Don't click things you don't know. That's a great way to get into trouble.
When you confirm yes you want that icon on the desktop, go to your desktop and drag it to where you want. You can do that with facebook or virtually any functioning software on your PC. On the other hand it can clutter up your desktop if it's not organized or you use too many. It is easy though to cancel these icons on your desktop if you want. Right click on them and 'delete'.
The most common way is to mark this site as a favorite. You can do that with most windows software by either left clicking 'favorites' somewhere up in the windows browser menu bar, or you can look for the five sided star and left click on that. It would be beside the little house icon which is your homepage.
If you use a different base browser and still want to use google sometimes, go to the google basic page which is:
http://www.google.com/
and right click anywhere on the page except an input area, find the 'create shortcut' line, left click that and an immediate access clickable icon shows up on your desktop. This can be used with any variety of sites including quick access to Joan's main page where the blogs and other resources are.
You can also drag lines within your favorites up and down to group them though that takes just a bit of practise and you can click the favorites item on the menu bar above and click 'organize favorites' which makes it easier to group your favorite web addresses. You can also make new folders there, name them and group them such as perhaps 'music' or '2011'.
(before I posted this I copied it to my clipboard in case I took too long or there's a glitch in putting it up)
HOW TO FIND AND USE NOTEPAD WHEN YOU WANT TO SAVE SOMETHING WRITTEN HERE OR ANYWHERE FOR LATER USE
This is for windows although MAC uses a very similar approach.
From your toolbar which is the usually black line most people leave above other windows along the bottom find your 'start' button. That's the round button usually at the left with the windows logo on it. Left click that once.
You will see a menu come up with the software you use a lot and anything else you've pinned here. Down usually the right side is the list of basic functions that opens up your search menus, documents etc.
Along that left side at the very bottom is usually a search area called 'start search'. Just above that is a line called "all programs". Left click (normal click) on the line 'all programs' once. You can practise this while you're reading. Just click anywhere once on your screen away from that menu and it will cancel.
So, left click once on your start button, left click once on 'all programs'. This is a listing of all the main runnable programs on your computer. The first group is those programs. The bottom group all have the file folder icon because they're folders with other programs inside them.
The first such folder is called 'Accessories'. Left click on that word once. That will open that folder for your inspection and you will see a list of programs called 'Calculator', 'Command Prompt', 'Notepad', and 'Paint', among others. You can practise this and then left click back on Joan's site here to cancel without doing anything yet to continue reading at any time. That's just looking.
What we want to do is bring out both 'Notepad' for now and then 'Paint' for later. I prefer to pin them to my start menu which can comfortably display about a dozen choices depending on what your computer graphics resolution is set at. If you have a crowded start menu you may want to just learn where it is and open it as wanted. You can create an icon on your desktop but you have to actually go into the program directory and that's a bit more complicated.
Let's pin them to our start menu (so they're handy later I can also just come to this 'accessory' director later and open the program that way if I don't plan to use it much).
So click the 'start' button. Click the 'all programs' line. Click the 'accessories' folder. Now put your cursor over the 'Notepad' line and RIGHT click once. Look at that menu and find the option "pin to start menu". Move your cursor over that line and left click once. It should now be in your start menu and can in future be launched from there (launched means use the program).
If you don't want to pin it to your start menu and just use Notepad, put your cursor over the line that says 'notepad' and left click once.
A blank box pops up on your screen called 'untitled notepad'.
Now use the copy/paste explained above to copy what you want to save, move your cursor over that notepad input area (the main white body inside the border), RIGHT click, and move your cursor over the word 'paste', and left click once.
Practice. First you highlight and save what you want. Then on your toolbar you bring up the notepad. Then you paste that in. When you see you have what you want, you will save this with a unique name.
If this is getting complicated. Go back and review and practise what you learned so far. That will make the next part easier to get.
Saving and accessing later:
Notepad has simple functions. Once you see you captured what you wanted move your cursor over the "File" word on the options line which has "File Format VIew Edit Help". Left click on the word File once.
That opens a menu which has the ability to save this file. Since this is a new file you can't just click on the 'save' line. You have to create a new file so you need the 'save as' line just below it so that you can give it a name.
Left click the 'save as' line once. You will see a directory menu pop up and your cursor is already on the name line. Type in a name you want to save this file as and and then left click once on the 'Save" button further below. If you're not comfortable, click the "Cancel" button right beside that instead.
Note that the directory it is going to save this into is displayed. That's usually your user name and 'documents'. You don't have to mess with knowing how that works if in future you call up notepad and left click on the 'open' line. That will bring up your 'documents' folder and you can scan through the list of files there. You have to remember what you called it although your last three or so files used will already be displayed when you click the 'open' line.
You could save this in many different programs or copy it later from your notepad file and paste into email or many other programs.
A picture in a computer is just a file like any other file. It's data. And the file extension (three letters after the dot at the end of the name) tells you what kind of file. That's just information you won't need to remember.
What you do need to understand is two things.
The first is that the picture has to be somewhere in the outside domain so Joan's system can go and get it. What you do is put that address in your profile. It's Joan's computer that goes and gets it and displays it. So you have to tell her where it is. And that can't just be in your computer.
The second thing to understand is how to get that 'address'. And it involves right clicking over the picture where it is now. And then opening up the 'properties' menu line to find that address. Then copying that address to your clipboard. And then pasting that into your profile here on the proper line.
So, if you look at any picture anywhere on any screen and you move your cursor over it and RIGHT click you will get information about it. That's a long menu list that often starts with 'open link' and goes through 'save picture as' and more, but almost always ends with 'properties' at the bottom. That's the one you want.
So having RIGHT clicked on the picture, move your cursor onto the menu over the 'properties' line and left click once.
A smaller window will open up showing you the properties which includes the name, the protocol, the type and so on. One of the lines says "address" and usually 'address (URL)'. Now as learned above copy that full address onto your clipboard. Which means move your cursor to the very left of the address which starts with 'http://' and press AND HOLD your left mouse button (the normal one) and slide your mouse across to highlight the entire address but nothing else. Don't worry if it loops to the next line just make sure you have the whole thing highlighted. Now let go of your left mouse button, move your cursor anywhere over the highlighted area and press the RIGHT mouse button. Move your cursor over the 'copy' line and left click once.
You have copied the address of this picture onto your clipboard. (just as I have now copied all this onto my clipboard so that if something glitches I don't have to write everything above here again).
Now come into Joan's site, sign in, and go to your account and personal information screen. Go to the account picture line. If there's something in there already left click on it and backspace everything out of there so that it's blank. When it's blank left click in that box and then RIGHT click while still in it. Now find the word 'paste' on your menu and move your cursor over that word and left click once.
The address of the picture should now be in the right spot for Joan's computer to look it up and go find the picture. Go to the bottom of that screen and left click the 'save' button to save it and your picture will show up when someone clicks your name on the forum.
How that's formatted is another matter which can be solved with Windows picture viewer edit features and or the Paint program. That can be discussed later.
HOW TO USE GOOGLE MAPS SATELLITE TO GET STREET VIEWS
If Google is not your homepage, type Google into your search engine, look for either http://google.com or http://google.ca or http://google.au depending on what country you're in (google often defaults to assigning you to the country you're in). Add that to your favorites if you want or just do it when you want to use it's map feature.
On the black bar at the top of the standard home Google page is a list of options across on what you want to do. Depending on what version and features you have such as Google Chrome, these will vary but they will include:
Search: uses the web to search Images: uses the web image databases to search Maps: brings up the google map features YouTube: searches in the video database News: searches in the news item database
Those are the main common ones. Type in a word. Say it's "Rose". Now click on that black bar through the five options I've mentioned with the exception of 'Maps'. That's different and the one we're going to discuss. Each type of search gives different results for the word "Rose".
Now left click on the black bar on the word 'Maps'. The window should move to a split screen where usually the right side is a map of somewhere. Where that is isn't important. This is where you learn to grab and drag.
Move your cursor over the map anywhere. Left click and hold that button down. Move your hand or trackball around. The whole map moves with you. Grab and drag. Let go of the mouse button and the map stays where you left it. That's how you navigate the map.
There's some function tools on that map and they help with using it. The first is a box which either says 'Map' or it says "Satellite". Move your cursor over into that window and left click once. Left click again. It switches between the two modes where one is a satellite image of the earth and the other is a drawn map of the same area. You can use the map if that's easier to see and then switch to satellite to see the picture or stay in satellite the whole time. When you zoom in and move around, sometimes you can lose your bearings and be unsure of where you are. Using map or zooming out fixes that.
We're not in step by step here yet. This is a discusssion of how this works.
If you have a mousewheel on your mouse in between the left and right buttons, that is the easiest way to zoom in and out. Roll the wheel towards you to zoom out and roll the wheel forwards to zoom in. If you don't have a mousewheel you will have to use the slider bar on the left side of the map where you can click on the + or - buttons or grab the slider bar and drag it up and down to zoom in and out.
So, lets land on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Fransisco and look around.
Click that window to put yourself into the 'satellite' mode (that window will now say 'map but the map itself is therefore a satellite image of the earth). Zoom out until you can see most of the United States in one image (so that it's dead easy to 'travel' vast distances). Grab the map and drag it so that San Fransisco is pretty much in the middle. Zoom in some. Grab the map and center it. Zoom in some. Grab the map and center it over the bridge. Zoom in some. Repeat this until you can see the individual cars from above and are centered over the increasingly large bridge.
Now push the mousewheel forward and hold it. That will switch you in a second to streetview and lo and behold you are standing on the Golden Gate Bridge. Now grab the image and drag it left or right. Release it and do that again and eventually you will come full circle. In other words you have 'looked all around'.
You are looking at the latest streetview image of that spot that Google took.
You will also see a white circle that moves around with your cursor if you move it somewhere in the picture and click you will be transported there. In this way with a little practise you can walk across the bridge or through the streets of Paris or the place you're thinking of moving to or Carol and Bama can use it to look around their new neighborhoods from the comfort of their computer.
To get out of streetview, just pull the mousewheel back towards you and in a second or two you will be back in the topview satellite image. You can navigate easily with some practise with it.
If you know the address of where you want to look, type that into the white input bar. An option window will likely open guessing where you want. Type the address until you can see what your looking for in that menu (because state abbreviations etc vary but you can type in whatever you want). When you see the address for the right state click on it. That should move you in satellite view over your location. Zoom in fully to get streetview. Grab and drag the screen to look around. You can also use the mousewheel at streetlevel to zoom in or out (like a camera).
HOW TO CAPTURE SCREEN IMAGES AND SAVE THEM FOR ANY OTHER USE.
If you've never used the windows program "Paint" this is that time.
You capture screen images with the "Print Screen" button on your keyboard. Have what you want on your screen. Find the PrintScreen button usually near the top right on the keyboard and press it once. You will have saved it to your clipboard. This time you don't use Notepad although you can paste that into Word or Excel or many other programs. You use the program "Paint".
Open your start menu. Look near the bottom for the line "All Programs". Left click on that once. That will open a list of programs available and a list of folders under that. The first folder is usually called "Accessories". That's the one you want. Left click on that word once. That will open up the programs inside the folder and you will see Notepad there, but also "Paint". Left click on the word Paint once. That will launch the program.
Along the very top you will see the menu line 'File Edit View Image Colors Help'. Left click once on Edit. You will see the word paste boldened because you have already screencaptured your image. Left click on the word 'paste' once and you should see the screenshot you captured come up in the program.
Go back up to that menu line and left click once on the word 'File'. Move your cursor down to the 'Save As' word and left click on that once. Now a save option screen comes up and the cursor is sitting in the 'File Name' bar. Type in what you want to call it and hit the save button at the bottom. It will likely save it in your Pictures folder. You can change any of this but that's a different topic. Notice that you have a lot of options on what file type to save it as. It likely defaults to .jpg suffix but you can use this program also to translate one filetype into another since Paint works with many different ones.
Now that you have saved this image, you could crop and resize it using Paint although that's not as friendly as using something like Windows Picture Manager or numerous others.
If you just want to save a picture you see, right click on it, use the 'save picture as' function and now you have that picture alone. That doesn't work with Google Maps because Google Maps is an interactive program - not a picture file. So you would have to screen capture and save it in a program such as Paint first if you want to have it on your PC for any purpose.
Ok. That's the first round of topics I thought might be useful.
That's why my picture in my profile was that bridge. I went there using Google Maps, captured the picture and saved it into paint, uploaded it to my Flickr account so that it's out there in the public domain, and then went to Joan's site with that address and pasted it into my profile.
I used Paint to take one image from Satellite view, then I mousewheeled into streetview and took another image of that and saved it. Then I resized the streetview image smaller. Then opened up Paint to that satellite view. Imported the second picture and placed it on top. Then I used the drawing tools on the left side of Paint to draw in the yellow arrow. Saved all that as under a new name. Uploaded it to flickr. And then pasted that address into my profile.
I'm done this round. Hopefully this will help people who want to view the video links that get posted here and using this site more effectively. Any questions are welcome.
Bama, I'll try to post an image in my profile that illustrates it more.
Marty, I saw it before you took it off. That's a closeup of your chin. You may have stuck that into the icon slot. Try pasting it into the 'account picture' slot (in account here under personal information).
Sorry Marty, didn't see your other post. If you want you can shrink that picture a lot and get it into icon. Don't remember but I think it's 32x32 pixels so quite tiny and needs a tiny picture or we just get a small central piece of it.
Bama, put a picture up that might help. It should look that that highlighted and I have the 'copy' ready to go. Tricky part is getting the cursor just to the left of that address and then dragging across. Hope that helps.
You helped....Picture disappeared. Told you I was a dummy. Nikki had to put the first one up. Oh, well, for all you newbees I am 39, no grey hair and no wrinkles. Sounds good to me.
YEAH THANKS WOLF!!! Honestly I thought I was fairly savvy, but the darn programs just seemed to cut my head in half every time, and I need all of it.
Great to see you too mary75*! The picture in my profile was taken when Dado was in hospital in December, poor dear he just lost those two front teeth. I did have a nicer photo me with makeup, however, this one is the real me.
Trying to be of help to anyone like me who was once a computer dummy. ....Over two yeas ago, when in desperation, I first came to this site I really was a computer dummy, but because of something I found here I don't consider myself as such now. At that time I didn't even know how to copy and paste. What I found here was this page......OT- the 'How do I' Topic for computer skills. Contributed by Wolf. I copied and pasted it into my computer so I can refer to it easily. ....Wolf must have spent many hours putting it all together and he gives such great click by click instructions. It's really a work of art, and has helped me so much. Now it lies buried in the archives of the site, and is of little use to any new-comers Who may need it like I did. ....So I'm thinking that if I add this little message here it will come to the top of the discussion page and be of benefit for a while. ...........GeorgieBoy
Did you know that you can change the size with which your browser displays everything? Your browser is the program you use to view the internet which includes this site. You don't need any fancy clicking either.
With your finger on the CTRL button on your keyboard press the plus or minus sign on the far right number pad part. That moves your view one step at a time. You can do the same thing keeping your finger on the CTRL button and moving your scroll wheel on your mouse up or down.
Your computer remembers that setting once you close your browser and will come up that way the next time you use it.
Changing the zoom level changes the layout of the page at some point. Once I've changed my zoom level from default (I run normally at 125% because it's easier on my eyes), then in Google Chrome which I use, I get a magnifying glass icon in my address bar beside the star which is used to bookmark. If I hover over that magnifying glass it explains that I can click that to return to the default zoom.
I have been trying to find an easy way to get to the last page for quite some time. More difficult with fat fingers on my tablet. Thank you for this tip Wolf. I already have a new habit. Still need to practice Google street view. My niece moved to NYC recently.and I took a walk through her neighborhood, but need more practice.
If you want to re-load a page, for example to see if anyone has posted, you don't have to click on the little circle button on the tool bar up there all the time.
You can push the F5 function key (usually on the top row of a keyboard). Pressing F5 is the keyboard way of refreshing your page.
If we struggle at times to control the mouse pointer that's a great alternative way of seeing if anything new has happened on whatever page we're on.
Reloading/refreshing just means please replace the version of the page I'm looking at with the most recent version of this page.
When asking for help and posting hints it is important to mention if you computer is running Mac or Windows and what version and what web browser you are using. Recommendations involving one browser will often not work for another.