Cheap Trick of the Week

Cheap Tricks are Editor Eric's famous undocumented or little-known computing tips. Some are surprisingly useful. Others, such as Easter eggs, can be very silly.

Many more are found in Eric's Little Black Book of Cheap Tricks, available from this site. In the meantime, check out the Cheap Trick of the Week for the past month below.

Also check out other Cheap Tricks and advice listed in the menu on the left side.

Cheap Trick of the Week:

Space, the final warning                                              Windows XP

Windows XP displays a warning in the taskbar when your hard disk is almost full. But this can be annoying when you already know about the lack of space.

You can disable the warning with a Registry tweak. (If you're new to working in Windows' Registry, check our instructions and precautions at the link "Editing Windows Registry" on the menu to the left.)

Navigate in the Registry to HKEY_ CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer. Right-click Explorer and select New and DWORD Value. In the right pane, rename the new value NoLowDiskSpaceChecks. Double-click it and in the editing window, set the data value to 1 (the numeral one) and click OK.

Close the Registry restart your computer. You won’t be warned again.

Some recent Cheap Tricks of the Week:

Hitting the links                                                                   Web browser

Looking for a link on a Web page and you don’t want to have to click and scroll all over the place?

Use your keys. Just hit Tab to go to the next link on the page. Or use Shift and Tab together to cycle back through the links.

On a page with frames, tabbing will select each frame and its links in order.

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Path finder                                            Windows

Want to know the full path of a file or icon quickly? Click the Start button and Run. Then drag the file or icon from the desktop, or from its folder, or from Explorer onto the Run window.

The path name will appear in the Open field.

Where am I?                                                               Windows 95/98/Me

Do you ever need to know what your address is—that is, your IP address when you're online? It can help to know this if you play online games or take part in Net conferencing.

Click on Start and Run, enter winipcfg and click OK.

The IP Configuration window appears with your IP address, Subnet Mask and other details about your network connection.

Sorry, it doesn't work in Windows XP.

Return to the scene of your editing crime           Word

You make various changes to a long Word document and then you suddenly realize you goofed, maybe six or seven edits ago. How to find that place?
You could use the standard undo command — either by selecting it on the toolbar or by holding down the Ctrl key (Command on a Mac) and continually pressing Z until you get back to the edit where you made the mistake. But this wipes out all the good text you’ve added since the boo-boo.

So, instead, hold down both Ctrl and Alt (Command and Option on a Mac) and press Z. Tap Z repeatedly and it will cycle through the text, stopping at each point where you made edits — without changing them back. When you get to the place of your error, you can then make the correction there without affecting anything else.

If you keep using the key combo after this, you will eventually return to where you had left off, as the cursor cycles through all your edits in a loop.

    
Keep others from changing your set-up          Windows

If you're not the only one using your computer, you may be tired of people tinkering with how you have the system set up. You can stymie them by making the Control Panel disappear.

The Control Panel won't really be gone, but you'll be the only one who knows where it went and how to get it back (unless they read this article too).

Open your Registry Editor. (If you're not sure how to do this, check our instructions at the link "Editing Windows' Registry" on the left side of this page.) Go to HKEY_CURRENT_ USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Policies\Explorer. Right-click the Explorer key, select Edit, New and DWORD Value. In the Name box, type NoControlPanel and click OK. Double-click the new value and type 1 (one) for the Value Data. Close the Registry Editor and restart your computer. The Control Panel will no longer be available but to get it back delete the NoControlPanel value to set the Value Data to 0 (zero).

Hang out in a bigger or smaller group             Windows XP

When you have several files opened by the same application, Windows XP will group them together on the Taskbar at the bottom of your screen with an arrow that you can click to get a pop-up menu of the files. (If this feature is not working on your XP system, turn it on by right-clicking on an empty space of the Taskbar, selecting Properties, going to the Taskbar page, and checking Group Similar Taskbar Buttons.)

However, this is activated only when three or more files are open. What if you want to start this Taskbar space-saving process with two files open? Or you'd prefer to keep separate buttons on the Taskbar until five or six files are in use?

You can set the number in the Registry. (If you're unfamiliar with the Registry, check our instructions at the link "Editing Windows Registry" on the left side of this page).

Go to HKEY_CURRENT _USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer \Advanced and in the right pane double-click on the value TaskbarGroupSize. In the Edit DWORD Value window, change the 3 to whatever number of files you want to be grouped. Click OK. Close the Registry and restart the computer for this trick to take effect the next time you open multiple files.

Uncovering trash                                         Windows 95/98/Me/XP

Suppose you want to want to move some items to the Recycle Bin but the trash can is covered by open windows. You have to minimize those windows first to get them out of the way, right?

Wrong.

Just drag the items you want to trash onto a blank spot of the taskbar at the bottom of your screen and, keeping the mouse button down, let them hover there for a second. The cursor will turn into one of those prohibitive circles with a slash through it, but more importantly all open windows will disappear off your desktop, letting you drop the items into the now accessible Recycle Bin. 

The windows will then return as they were previously.

Easiest shutdown ever                             Windows 95/98/Me/XP

Windows veterans have been using this trick for years, to close programs, windows, folders, whatever: Hold down the Alt key and press the F4 function key.

But if nothing is open, this actually brings up the shutdown dialogue box.

So....

To end everything that's going on with your computer, no matter what's open, just hold down Alt, keep tapping F4 and watch everything close up, until the shutdown dialogue box appears. At that point a simple Tab will likely move the highlight to the Shut Down/Turn Off option, and you can then hit Enter to select it.     

Virtual keyboard                                                              Windows Me/XP

Did you know Windows has a built-in keyboard that lets you enter text without using your real keyboard?

Click Start and Run. Enter osk in the Open field and hit OK.

The keyboard will appear on your screen. You can change its settings to be on top of any program in which you want to enter text (such as a word processor), or set it to select keys by clicking, hovering or using a joystick.

Hidden Trash                                                          Windows 95/98/Me/XP

Suppose you want to want to move some items to the Recycle Bin but the bin is covered by open windows. You have to minimize those windows first to get them out of the way, right? Wrong.  

Just drag the items you want to trash onto a blank spot of the taskbar at the bottom of your screen and, keeping the mouse button down, let them hover there for a second.

The cursor will turn into one of those prohibitive circles with a slash through it, but all open windows will disappear off your desktop, letting you drop the items into the now accessible Recycle Bin.

The windows will then return.

Revisiting text edits                                                                     Word

You make various changes to a long text document and then you suddenly realize you goofed, maybe six or seven edits ago. How to find that place?

You could use the standard undo command — either by selecting it on the toolbar or by holding down the Ctrl key (Command key on a Macintosh) and pressing Z. But this would wipe out all the edits you've made since the boo boo.

So, instead, hold down both Ctrl and Alt (Command and Option on a Mac) and press Z. Tap Z repeatedly and it will cycle through the text, stopping at each point where you had made edits — without changing them back. When you get to the place of your error, you can then make the correction there without affecting anything else.

If you keep using the key combo after this, you will eventually return to where you had left off, as the cursor cycles through all your edits in a loop.

No more sharing                                                                      Windows XP

Have you noticed those folders in Windows XP's My Computer for "Shared" documents? It could be just one folder or it could be numerous folders for shared photos, music, etc. What do you need them for, especially listed so prominently in your main folder?

Ever try to delete them? You can't, unless you can outsmart it with the following simple Registry hack: 

In your Registry Editor, navigate through HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Explorer\My Computer\ NameSpace\ DelegateFolders. 

You'll find a key named {59031a47-3f72-44a7-89c5-5595fe6b30ee}. Right-click on it and select Delete. The Shared folders will immediately disappear.

Explore where you wanna explore                   Windows XP

If you launch Windows Explorer in Windows XP by clicking on Start, All Programs and Accessories, it opens by default in the My Documents folder. It doesn't even show you anything else. You gotta fix that.

So go to the same Windows Explorer item on the Accessories menu, right-click on it and select Properties. In the Windows Explorer Properties window, in the Shortcut page you'll see the following in the Target field: %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe.

Add to the end of this string /n, /e, /select, C:\ with spaces before each forward slash and before C. The result should be

%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /n, /e, /select, C:\

Click OK and the next time you open Explorer you should be shown your entire system.

Secret desktop folder from Start menu         Windows

We've told you before how to access the secret folder of desktop icons. But now you can set up your system so this folder is available from your Start menu.

  1. Right-click the Start button and select Open.

  2. In the Start Menu folder, right-click on a blank space and select New and Shortcut.
  3. For the Command Line, enter c:\windows\desktop and click Next.
  4. Accept the default name Desktop or enter a new one, and click Finish.

Close Explorer and now you have a Desktop command on your Start menu.

Vertical integration                                          Word

Ever want to select a vertical block of text — like a column of figures — but Word only lets you highlight lines that go right right across the page? The trick is to hold down the Alt key (on a Macintosh, use the Option key) while you drag the mouse diagonally across the selection.

You can also do it with key commands alone. Press Ctrl, Shift and F8 together (with a Mac, use the Command key with Shift and F8), then let go and use the arrow keys to extend the highlighted box.

Secret desktop folder                                    Windows

Remember our tip for displaying a folder of all your desktop files and folders — click on Start and Run, enter a period and click OK? If you do this a lot, we can make it easier for you by setting up a button on the taskbar at the bottom of your screen that you can click when you want to see the desktop folder. Here's how to set this up:

  1. Right-click Start and select Open from the context menu. This should open the Start Menu folder.

  2. In the Start Menu folder, double-click Programs to open that folder, and then StartUp.
  3. In the StartUp folder, right-click on a blank area and select New and Shortcut from the menus.
  4. In the space for the Command Line, type c:\windows\explorer.exe c:\windows\desktop — there's a space only before the second c: and those are backward slashes. Click Next. (This command assumes Windows is stored in the directory named Windows. If not, substitute the name of your Windows folder for windows in both instances.)
  5. Name the file something profound like Desktop and click Finish.
  6. Back in the StartUp window, right-click the new Desktop icon and select Properties.
  7. Under the Shortcut tab, in the Run field select Minimized and click Close.

The next time you start Windows, the Desktop icon will be on the taskbar. Click it at any time and you'll get immediate access to all your desktop items in a separate folder.