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I never would have thought of other applications. I closed Google Desktop and my ISP’s security service, then Outlook and then when I turned off the computer, it didn’t give me the message about not being able to close Outlook. I’ll see if I don’t have any reminders up in the morning. Now I can’t remember though if I don’t get those until I’ve opened Outlook after a reboot, so I may not be able to test it until I open Outlook, then close those things and then close Outlook but leave the computer up.

So I do have this security suite supplied by my ISP. You’re saying that it might be messing up the attachments? Is there some file I should be looking for to determine if I’m running the kind of filter you’re asking about? Should I be reporting the attachment issue to my ISP? I seem to have Norton AV running too – I can’t remember when my year is up but I’ll stop it at that point, but that could presumably compound the problem?

Thanks for the reply. I don’t seem to have any rules set in Outlook. I ran the detect and repair, so now I’ll have to wait for some attachments to arrive to see if it fixed anything.

Maybe it also fixed Outlook’s inability to shut down completely (error message that it can’t close it on computer shutdown, reminders come up when Outlook is supposedly closed), but I did get the error message about not being able to close it when I just rebooted after doing the repair, so I’m not all that hopeful about that.

Thanks, Jan. I have managed to start over with my copying and not get the big files. And tonight, when I was trying to get a big file so I could test the save as htm trick that I had read about, I wasn’t able to get a bloated file. I tried it on a small file and it didn’t destroy the formatting or anything, so if that will work, it’s certainly the easiest fix I can do to a file that’s otherwise just the way I want it. If the problem is just mysterious corruption or a flaky version of Excel, I suppose there’s nothing I can learn to do about it, but if there was something I was doing that caused the file to increase in size like that, I wanted to learn not to do that.

Thanks, Hans. I did read that, but is that MSIE or XP? On my friend’s computer, using Win 98 but MSIE 6.0 sp1, the clock IS displayed. Why the difference on the XP platform? Is it that 98 does not support the code that blocks the push technology? I did find the other link you mentioned and tried everything I could think of to have it display just the PST time, but I couldn’t figure it out and I don’t want the display of those other time zones.

Thanks for the quick reply, John. All done and it was easy too. Once I started to download the ol2knick.exe from MS, I found that I already had the file. This time I decided to try to file the unzipped program in a location where I’d find it again, and when I navigated to where I thought that might be, there it already was from when I’d filed it before (C:WINDOWSApplication DataMicrosoftOutlook, for next time I need this info and think to look in my previous lounge posts).

Thanks for the quick reply, John. All done and it was easy too. Once I started to download the ol2knick.exe from MS, I found that I already had the file. This time I decided to try to file the unzipped program in a location where I’d find it again, and when I navigated to where I thought that might be, there it already was from when I’d filed it before (C:WINDOWSApplication DataMicrosoftOutlook, for next time I need this info and think to look in my previous lounge posts).

Thanks, David. I had never used the “Recover text from any file” option before. That worked fine. I had assumed, when it said that I needed the Pocket Converter to open the document in Word, that I needed the converter and that it would take care of the codes at the top and the tags (like “/par”) throughout.

When the document was originally sent, it had been saved using the default setting, which I think was Word 2000. It arrived as a txt document. My friend resent it after saving it as Word 97, and that one arrived as a Word document and opened with no problem.

Thanks, David. I had never used the “Recover text from any file” option before. That worked fine. I had assumed, when it said that I needed the Pocket Converter to open the document in Word, that I needed the converter and that it would take care of the codes at the top and the tags (like “/par”) throughout.

When the document was originally sent, it had been saved using the default setting, which I think was Word 2000. It arrived as a txt document. My friend resent it after saving it as Word 97, and that one arrived as a Word document and opened with no problem.

Thanks for the additional ideas, Jefferson. I haven’t tried them yet (I’d have to break each cell into three and I haven’t noticed Word on my system is any too happy about that kind of thing), but I have figured out the Microsoft Templates. I had to find one that uses the font I want to use (or now that I think of it, it wasn’t my font but it was a non-Times New Roman font), then edit that, delete everything in the cell and replace it with my card. Do that in each cell. What it gives you is the table, which dimensions I never figured out last night. Are table cell dimensions an html feature? I have Measurement units set to inches, but the table cell dimension dialog is using pixels, the form description is in inches and I wasn’t up to a conversion last night.

OK, Phil, you’re on. The enterprise is that I’m interested to know whether I just misunderstood that you can use mail merge in this situation. It’s not the case that I have any list of names and addresses. I just want to print my business card 10 to a page. I’m not desperate for a solution, as I have figured out the MS templates (see reply to Jefferson) and I have a printable page. The question was only whether mail merge is a possible tool. My card is at
http://www3.telus.net/wcutler/WLCfiles/Cards2.doc%5B/url%5D , as it’s too large to attach.

I should have known better than to get all excited. Update field removes my picture. And if I paste the pictures all back and reposition them, printing updates the fields again anyway (I know I can change that, but normally I want it to do that). It doesn’t seem to make any difference if I get the text and picture in via autotext or autocorrect – the picture still goes. It doesn’t make a difference if I’m using table cells or columns and line feeds.

What does make a difference is if the picture is inline. Then it stays with the bookmark. Otherwise, it doesn’t even work to put a separate bookmark on the picture and add a ref field for that. Of course, I don’t want the picture inline because I want it to the right of three rows. I can put textboxes with the pictures in the header as watermarks, but that’s certainly convoluted. I keep getting different results with textboxes in the text, but the bottom line is that they still go away if they’re not inline (I can’t create one inline, but if I make it a bookmark and put a ref field in the next card for the textbox, it’s inline, so it refreshes but not in the right place and if I put it in front of the text, it disappears next time I update.

I give up. I told Phil I was going to sleep an hour ago. I’m doin’ it. Maybe this will be crystal clear in the morning.

Anyway, it’s nice talking to you guys again.

Thanks, Phil, but I don’t get it. I can’t make sense of what’s a field or even what’s a database. I have a document with five lines and a picture. Can I put that into a field? Or do I have to set up the whole thing as a database with one record and a bunch of fields and then bring in each of the fields and reformat the whole thing in my new document? Can I set up the picture as a field?

No rush on the reply. It’s way past my bedtime.

Jefferson, that is so good. Thanks.

You’d definitely think Microsoft’s business card templates would work that way (with ref fields) if they aren’t going to use the labels tool (which they don’t – I checked again just to be sure. There are no fields, and when you change Business Name on one card, it doesn’t change the other nine). I already had just arranged my nine copies of the card on the page, so I replaced the copies with ref fields. I think the table will be probably even better, as I can size it based on the specs for the business card form.

You should sell your solution to Microsoft.

I just tried this with Word 2000. My experience with pictures is that my experience never matches what someone else says. I took a document that started as 1150kb with two jpg pictures. I created bitmaps from the pictures, and replaced the originals with those, using the default method. That took the size to 780kb. I then cut the pictures and pasted them back as pictures – the file size went back to 1150kb. I reopened the file with the bitmaps, cut them and pasted them as bitmaps (and stretched them a bit). That reduced the size to 240kb. I reopened the file with the bitmaps, cut them and pasted them as independent bitmaps (and stretched them a bit). That reduced the size to 57kb (yes, two-digits).

In the original file with the jpgs, the pictures in the document showed in black and white. When I edited the pictures, they were in colour, but when I closed them, they were still in black and white in the document. After I opened them and copied them to Photodrw, saved them as bmps and re-inserted them, they displayed in colour from then on. I originally was searching for some explanation of the photos not displaying in colour. Now I’m just documenting what I tested so I can find it next time. If someone wants to explain the loss of colour, I’m all eyes. I suspect that the person who sent me the original file, from a Mac, saw the images in colour.

How do we non-techie types know how to answer those firewall questions anyway? Is there a place where we can go to get the right answer when Zone Alarm asks those permission questions? I’m the last person it should be asking. I’d need something that explains “when you’re using this program and you’re doing abc, then give it this permission, else if you’re doing def, give it this permission, …”.