61. Print your document pages in the correct order

Most printers – especially home inkjets – print onto the side of the paper that faces upwards. So, if you’re printing a multi-page document, the first page emerges face up, then the second page lands on top of it, and so on. At the end, you have a pile of sheets with page 1 on the bottom and the last page on top, and then you have to deal them out from top to bottom to reverse their order. Wouldn’t it be helpful if they could be printed in the correct order – from last page to first page – to save this bother?

Well, in Microsoft Word they can. It just takes a quick change to one of Word’s options and your documents will always be printed this way:

* Word 2013/2010: click the File tab and choose Options. At the left of the window that opens, click Advanced. Scroll down to the ‘Print’ section and tick the box beside Print pages in reverse order, then click OK.

* Word 2007: click the circular Office button and then click Word Options. At the left of the window that opens, click Advanced. Scroll down to the ‘Print’ section and tick the box beside Print pages in reverse order, then click OK.

* Word 2003/2002: choose Tools > Options and select the Print tab in the window that opens. Tick the box beside Reverse print order and then click OK. 

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60. Windows 7, a long goodbye

It’s been with us for over four years now, but Windows 7 is just starting to bid us farewell. Microsoft announced in December 2013 that it’s no longer selling Windows 7 at retail. In other words, you can’t nip into a computer store and buy a boxed copy of Windows 7 to install.

The same announcement also included the news that Windows 7 would cease to be sold with new PCs after October 2014, but apparently that was a mistake. Microsoft is now saying that the date for this is ‘to be determined’.

Whatever the actual dates, the time has come for Windows 7 to bow out. However, like all Windows-related goodbyes, this one will take a long time. If you use Windows 7 and you can’t be tempted away from it by Windows 8, Microsoft is going to continue supporting it and supplying regular updates for it until 2020.

But perhaps that isn’t going to matter. Perhaps you could be tempted away from Windows 7 after all. You may not have been enticed by Windows 8, and you may have turned your nose up at the improvements brought by Windows 8.1, but the word is that Windows 8.2 is going to be a more attractive proposition. Two little snippets have just been leaked by Microsoft insiders:

?The new-style Windows 8 apps, which currently occupy your entire screen when you use them, will be able to run in ordinary windows on the desktop, just like all the other programs we’ve been using for donkey’s years.

?Having brought back the Start button in Windows 8.1, Microsoft will bring back the much-missed Start menu in Windows 8.2.

If these two rumours do turn out to be true, it will be hard to find any reason to stick with Windows 7. The implication is that Windows 8.2 could have everything we know and like about Windows 7, coupled with some clearer thinking about the newer elements of the system.  

From PC Tips for Seniors www.pcforseniors.co.uk.

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59. A Great Application to use with your Kindle

Everywhere I go now there are people sitting on beaches or by the pool or at airports etc. reading their latest book on a Kindle. In a previous article I showed you how to transfer books from your PC to your Kindle using the built-in File Management software on your PC.

All of this is still valid but there is another much easier way to transfer books straight onto a Kindle, and maybe rename them or change the cover picture etc.

I speak here of Kindle books which you may have been given or have downloaded from the Internet, NOT those you purchase from Amazon as the latter are transferred to your Kindle on demand.

There are many types of ebooks out there on the Internet and they have different extensions to their file names. Files with extensions .mobi and .prc are already compatible with the Kindle whilst the other main category is the .epub extension which cannot be used directly.

Now if you search out and download a programme called Calibre, a genuinely free piece of software (although they welcome small contributions to help with their development) which will keep all of your books together, enable editing of their titles or cover pictures, and will also translate books with a .epub extension into a .mobi book allowing it to be read on the Kindle.

Full instructions come with the download of the software and it is simplicity itself to install and use. One of its beauties is that it recognizes when you have your Kindle plugged in to the PC and when you want to send a book to the Kindle you click on its title in Calibre then click on a button at the top which says “Send to Device” and the transfer is done for you.

I have several collections of books by my favourite authors and obviously the titles don’t necessarily follow on from one another. I rename my books so that they display in the correct order. For example, my books by Peter Robinson about Inspector Banks, the detective in Yorkshire, I rename them with the prefix “Banks 01.....”, “Banks 02......” etc.

These titles are then transferred to the Kindle along with the book allowing easy finding of a book in a particular series or genre. 

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