The Fix:
1. In WordPerfect, click File, Publish to PDF.
2. Select “Settings . . . ” in the bottom right corner of the dialog box.
3. Change the “Export range” to “Full Document” and click “OK” to save the new setting.
4. Cancel the “Publish to PDF” menu and, as an extra precaution, exit WordPerfect to make sure the change holds.

You can check the settings when you open WordPerfect again. When I tested it, the change held.

How this Setting was Changed:
When text is highlighted/selected and Publish to PDF is used, the export range automatically changes to “Selection” and later, when Publish to PDF is used again, the default Export range shows “Current Page” and will need to be reset to “Full Document” as noted in the instructions above.

Check it out and then come on back and I’ll walk you through you a variation.

no. really. check it out. I’ll wait.

okay, welcome back.

While =rand(p,s) is effective and fun, its use has a potential problem. It generates interesting text. Okay, “interesting” is debatable, but it generates English text that makes sense, which means there’s a potential for distraction.

If you don’t want your reader/learner/audience to focus on the content of your text, there’s another, similar feature that generates nonsensical random text that will keep people focused on the form of your document/website without tempting anyone to read for content absorption. Try this:

Open either Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010 and, at the top of a new, blank document, type:

=lorem(8,5)

Then press the enter key.

Like I said. Nonsensical text.

Microsoft generated 8 paragraphs, each 5 sentences long, of Latin-esque text. Many of us have seen this used as placeholder text in the past:

“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. Nunc viverra imperdiet enim. Fusce est.
Vivamus a tellus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Proin pharetra nonummy pede. Mauris et orci. Aenean nec lorem.”

I always lose interest after “Lorem ipsum” so, if I’m looking to generate uninteresting content, mission accomplished.

It’s always interesting to see what people type:

the distracted or disinterested: “I can’t wait for lunch.”

and the suck-ups: “The computer trainer is really good!” (umm hmm)

and of course, the ever popular: “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” frequently makes an appearance.

I’ve written about that third sentence before in a previous post entitled “automatically generate placeholder text in Microsoft Word“. You could automatically generate paragraphs composed of it using Word 2003 and earlier versions using a little known “=rand()” feature in Microsoft Word.

But now, with Word 2007 and 2010, it’s even better.

Check this out. Open either Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010 and, at the top of a new, blank document, type this:

=rand(8,5)

Then press the enter key.

What just happened?

Microsoft Word just reached into it’s help files and copied 8 random paragraphs containing 5 sentences each and pasted them into your blank page.

As a computer trainer, let me just say.

SWEET!

If you’re thinking the “=rand(8,5)” looks like an Excel formula, you would be correct. The first number inside the parenthesis represents how many paragraphs of text you want, the second number indicates how many sentences each paragraph should contain. If you skip the numbers and just type “=rand()” the default result is 3 paragraphs of 5 sentences each.

The formula doesn’t have to be typed at the beginning of a document, but it must be typed at the beginning of a line, with no characters before it.

Again, as someone who frequently needs fake documents to play work with, I LOVE this! I’ve tried to think of other uses and the only other one that comes to mind would be for print samples. If you can think of other ways to take advantage of a random text generator, comment and share!

Install the “Messages_Database.PDB”

I found mine in “c:\documents and settings\UserName\My Documents\Palm OS Desktop\LastNameFirstInitial\Backupold”

If the “Messages_Database.PDB” isn’t found in the above folder, search for the file on your computer.

Good luck fellow Treonaut.

“Pages are special profiles that may only be used to promote a business or other commercial, political, or charitable organization or endeavor (including non-profit organizations, political campaigns, bands, and celebrities).”

You put anything about your business on your facebook profile wall and you run the risk of having your facebook account suspended. It’s a violation of facebook terms of use. (more terms of use excerpts)

“You will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain . . .”

and

“If you violate the letter or spirit of this Statement . . . we can stop providing all or part of Facebook to you. We will notify you by email or at the next time you attempt to access your account.”

I’ve read about such “notification.” The person logged in to facebook to discover his account was removed. All friend contact info gone. Everything gone. Bummer.

I also liked the fact that I could keep my page activity separate from my profile activity: (yet another terms of use excerpt)

“Please keep in mind that the fans of any of the Pages you administer will not have visibility or access to your personal account or profile.”

So I set out to create a facebook page. Logged into my facebook account, I couldn’t find anything to click on to create a page. Nuthin. However, logged OUT of facebook, the link is smack on the login page and somehow completely escaped my attention: (click to zoom in)

If you want a link to get to the “create a page” page (pictured below) regardless of whether you’re logged in or not, type in:

“http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php target=”blank”“

You’ll be faced with three options for the type of page you want to create. Don’t stress about this. The bottom line is that, depending on what you choose here, facebook will prompt you for different info, which you can fill in or not. Note that you currently CANNOT change the type later. To change your page type, you will have to delete it and create another one. Just don’t put a lot of time or effort in until you know what type of page you want to stick with. Until you make a final decision, you may want to put a check in the box marked “Do not make Page publicly visible at this time. (You will be able to edit and publish later.)”

The type of page you choose here will also automatically include certain common facebook apps for that type. However, your use of different facebook apps isn’t limited by the type of page you create. You can add any app you want later. The type of page just automatically adds some based on the most common apps used for a particular type of page.

After you’ve created your page, you will be faced with an option to link your page with twitter. (again, click to zoom in)

If you choose to link your facebook page to your twitter account, your facebook page updates will automatically tweet the first 140 characters of the update – including a shortlink back to the update so your followers can read the entire thing – and possibly become a fan of your page.

Last but not least, become a fan of your own page. It makes getting to your page from your facebook profile quick and easy. At your facebook profile page, click the “Info” tab and scroll down to the bottom. There’s your page! Click on it to continue customizing and adding content any time you want. You can also go to your page directly by typing in the URL, but until you get 25 fans of your page, you get a weird URL with a bunch of numbers at the end:

“http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pragmatic-Computing/102258476476825?”

Once you get your 25 fans, you can request what’s sometimes referred to as a “vanity URL” and you can ditch the giant number at the end of your URL. (CLICK HERE for a post on how to request a vanity URL)

So what are you waiting for? Go make your facebook page! (And watch for more posts from Pragmatic Computing as I blog my way through my facebook page learning curve.)

One problem I noticed immediately? I could no longer see a complete listing of who “Likes” my page? (you could see a full listing of all the fans before)

Here’s a workaround:

1. Search the page on FB, using the full name of the page,
2. Instead of clicking the link to go to the page, click on “See More Results for…”.
3. From the results page, you should see the page link, along with “XXX People Like This.”
4. Click that (the XXX People Like This), and you’ll see the entire list of fans.

Who knows, maybe they’ll fix it. Eventually.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Julie-Stiles-Mills/379608672550

A little research and I found out that after I get 25 “fans” I can request this:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Julie-Stiles-Mills

MUCH better!

So – If you have more than 25 fans and would like to ditch the giant unmemorable number at the end of your URL, go HERE:

http://www.facebook.com/username/

You will be presented with TWO options:

VERY, VERY IMPORTANT: BE CAREFUL! IF YOU MIX UP YOUR PROFILE AND YOUR PAGE NAME IN THIS REQUEST, FACEBOOK WILL NOT HELP YOU FIX IT!! YOU COULD END UP WITH YOUR INTENDED PAGE NAME AS YOUR PROFILE NAME INSTEAD.

If you have a facebook PROFILE: The default is to request a vanity URL for a PROFILE, so go ahead and type in your requested name.

If you have a facebook PAGE: Select “Set a username for your Pages.” towards the bottom of the page. (click the image below to enlarge and see the link circled in red.)

Then you will see THIS option:

Click the drop down arrow, and your page should be displayed. Select it and then click “Check Availability” to confirm. If your page name is unique, you should get it! Good luck!

1) Scroll to the bottom of your news feed. (in your PROFILE, not on your Fan Page)
2) Click on “Edit Options” toward the bottom right. (click on the image to enlarge it)

3) Make sure your Fan page isn’t listed in the “Hide” box on the right. If it is, just click the “x” on the right side of it to remove it.

“Reformat documents for the WordPerfect default printer on open”

This eliminates a few different problems, two of which come immediately to mind:

1. Older WordPerfect documents won’t open correctly in a newer version of WordPerfect.
2. Existing documents won’t print to the correct paper trays, but new documents will.

Sometimes an error message will indicate a missing (and OLD) print driver, sending someone on a quest to find it. When it’s found and loaded on a new machine, WordPerfect can open the document.

That’s a good workaround, but sometimes an old printer driver can’t be found or and/or old universal drivers won’t do the trick. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more of this type of issue since HP isn’t making Windows 7 64 bit drivers for their old printers.

Try this instead: Click Tools, Settings, Environment, 2nd check box – UN-check “Reformat documents for the WordPerfect default printer on open”

I was very happy when I found out the Windows XP default NumLock state was OFF!

I win!

Then, a client asked me how to set the default state to ON. Since I never wanted to do that, I asked my favorite IT guy how to do it. He started talking about the bios and the registry and then my eyes glazed over and I started to hear the ocean – or a Prius, I’m not really sure.

There had to be a simpler way. And there is. The NumLock state can be set differently for each user profile in Windows XP. Here’s how to set the default NumLock state to ON:

1. While logged in, set the NumLock to ON.
2. Click the START button and select “Log Off” (the second option from the bottom).
3. Select “Log Off” again (NOT switch user)
4. You should see a message which reads “Saving your settings” as the computer logs off.
5. After log off is complete, you should see a message which reads: “To begin, click your user name”
6. When you do, you should see a message which reads: “Loading your personal settings”

The NumLock should automatically turn on all by itself!

It should stay set to ON until or unless someone LOGS OFF with a different NumLock state active. Shutting down without logging off shouldn’t change the NumLock setting.