But it’s a little early to be thinking of summer, isn’t it? So why would I mention this in the middle of February?

Oddly enough, even in the dead of winter, with temperatures in the single digits and several feet of snow piled up around the house, I still love a good ice cream sundae. Especially if it has peanut butter ripples, frozen pieces of candy, or chunks of cookie dough.

Some things are just better when they’re frozen, but a computer is definitely not one of them.

When your computer decides to freeze up or hang, it usually does so at a crucial moment, like when you’ve just spent several hours editing a Word document and haven’t saved it yet.

That feeling of dread sets in. You begin to panic, and then you fear the worst: that all your hard work will be lost.

Sometimes, unfortunately, this is the case. But there are some steps you can take to ensure that your work will be recovered in the event that Word crashes.

If you enable the AutoRecover feature, which is available in several of the Office applications, it will periodically save a backup version of the file you’re working on. Then, if the program quits unexpectedly, it will prompt you with the recovered file the next time you open that program.

There is no guarantee offered with the AutoRecover feature, and at times it will fail to recover your work, so your best bet is still to save frequently when working in a file. You may find it much easier to use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+S to save your work as you’re typing, without your fingers ever leaving the keyboard. If you can get into this habit, you might just find your left hand automatically reaching for those keys without you even realizing it!

When the Deep Freeze sets in, whether it’s Windows, an Office application, or a mobile device, we don’t want you to be left out in the cold. The tips for this week will provide you with a starting point for when it seems like all is lost.

• What’s Frozen? – How to determine whether it is Windows or an application that is frozen
• An Ounce of Prevention for File Loss – How to enable the AutoRecover feature for Microsoft Office applications
• Mittens for Your Computer – How to clear out temporary Internet files, cookies, and browsing history
• Save Your Fingers By Letting Your Fingers Save Your Work – Using a keyboard shortcut to save while working in a file

And since you can also experience crashes on mobile devices, here are a few tips that can help you with BlackBerry and Windows Mobile:

• Just In Case – How to back up your BlackBerry data
• How to Thaw a Frozen BlackBerry – Resetting a frozen BlackBerry device
• Frozen In Your Hand – Resetting a frozen Windows Mobile device

We hope you’re enjoying the podcast and all the tips. If there are any topics you’d like to see covered in a future episode, please let us know in an iTunes review, or leave us a message on Twitter @productiveUcast.

That’s all for this week. Try to stay warm even when your computer is freezing, and we’ll see you next time!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

Chocolate chips, snickerdoodles, and gingerbread men by the dozen. We humans have a tendency to celebrate various occasions with food, and I am by no means opposed to this time-honored tradition.

More than the joy of indulging in the sweet treats, however, I am fascinated with the process of creating all these dozens of cookies, especially those for which a cookie cutter can be used.

Using just one gingerbread man cookie cutter, for example, one can amass an entire teeming population of a gingerbread village. But even though they are all born from the same dough and cookie cutter, are they all really the same? Heck no! During the decorating process, each one can be customized with gumdrops, icing, or other accessories. For instance, you can sharpen a candy cane to a fine point and arm your gingerbread village inhabitants so they can protect themselves in case the evil fruitcake monster attacks!

Oh, what? Like you’ve never armed your gingerbread men cookies with sharpened candy canes so they can protect themselves in case the evil fruitcake monster attacks?

Anyway, another process which many people undergo during this time of year is that of sending holiday greeting cards. And it just so happens that there is a tool that can aid in this process. A tool which, like the cookie cutter, allows you to create dozens of greeting cards from a single document, yet still personalize each one with ease.

I’m referring to a software tool in this case: the Mail Merge feature in Microsoft Word.

Performing a mail merge operation greatly simplifies the process of sending out personalized mass mailings. All you need is a merge document and a data source. The data source is typically a set of contact information fields, such as first name, last name, address, etc. These fields can be housed in an Excel workbook, an Access database table or query, or it can even come right from your Outlook contacts.

The merge document can be in the form of a letter, a set of mailing labels, or envelopes. This document gets associated with the data source file during the merge process. Then, wherever a piece of personalized information needs to appear, you can insert a merge field from your data source. During the last step in the merge process, you can choose to either create a set of documents from the merge document (one for each record in your data source), or just send the documents directly to the printer.

Of course, a Mail Merge will really only save you time if you know your way through the process. Since it can be a bit tricky for novices and pros alike, we’ll include some tips that should help you through it.

The tips include:

• Mass Messages: getting started with Mail Merges in Word
• Start at the Source: tips for setting up Excel data to be used in a merge
• Do Not Label Me: using the Mail Merge feature to create mailing labels
• Pushing the Envelopes: using the Mail Merge feature to create mailing envelopes
• Split ’em Up: using Excel’s Text to Columns feature to split data into separate columns
• Published en Masse: performing a mail merge in Publisher

In all seriousness, I think you need to really think this through. I mean, if the evil fruitcake monster attacks the gingerbread village and they don’t have any sharpened candy canes with which to protect themselves, it’s really going to get ugly.

Oh, well. Don’t forget to stop by and visit us on Twitter @productiveUcast, or head over to write a review of the podcast on iTunes!

Until next time, keep cranking out those cookies and holiday greetings by the dozen!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

It’s absolutely amazing how being limited to 140 or 160 characters can really change our spelling and sentence structure. For instance, if I wanted to invite my friend out for drinks at the House of Blues in Cleveland, Ohio, I might send a text message like, “U Wan2 meet up @ HOB L8R?” WOW! This reminds me of a game I used to play as a kid on road trips where I would try to figure out what someone’s license plate might mean if it were a sentence or phrase.

Some say people have been forced to adopt this message convention to meet the character limits; others think it is code invented by teens so their parents don’t understand them (so much so you can find all kinds of lists on the Internet for translation). Heck, when we were kids we just used double-talk or really poor pig Latin. Whatever happened to the need to actually learn useful foreign languages? I can see it now, next year’s high school language offerings; Spanish, French, Esperanto, German, BFF Jill.

Well, we geeks were the original speakers of language very few understood. We spoke of “If this, Else that,” Goto, Megabyte, Terabyte, etc… In fact, if you listen closely enough, you can find the Geek in his native habitat, WoW (or, to average mortals, the World of Warcraft), speaking Geekinese.

Listen closely to the male Geek attempting to attract a mate…

“Since these are not the droids you are looking for, how about we blow this place together and battle the Sith?”

“Are you also in search of the Allspark? If you want, I can give you a lift… Autobots Transform!”

As it turns out, Microsoft has a long-forgotten language, too. It’s called keyboard shortcuts. With the invention of the mouse and a more visual interface, these shortcuts are usually overlooked by most. I have found that getting to know these can considerably speed up your workday. Here are a few of my favorites. If you learn the pattern, it is easy to remember them.

Let’s start off with controlling windows. Since I am controlling Windows itself with my shortcuts, these all use the Windows Key (usually located between the Ctrl and Alt keys on the left side of most keyboards) in conjunction with another.

• Windows Key = When pressed by itself, opens the Start menu.
• Windows Key + D = Think D for Desktop. Pressing this combination takes me directly to the Desktop, minimizing all my applications.
• Windows Key + M = Similar to the D, minimizes all open applications. If you add the Shift key to the mix (Windows Key + Shift + M), you are doing the reverse and restoring all your Windows that were minimized.
• Windows Key + F = Think F for Find. This pair activates the Find All Files window, useful for searching.
• Window Key + E = E for Explorer, meaning it opens a Windows Explorer window.
• This last one for me is a real time saver.
• Windows Key + R = This activates the Windows Run command.

In order to get the most out of it, you need to know the following words:

• EXCEL is for Microsoft Excel
• OUTLOOK is for Microsoft Outlook
• WINWORD is for Microsoft Word
• POWERPNT is for Microsoft PowerPoint
• and MSPUB is for Microsoft Publisher

So to quickly start Microsoft Excel, you simply press Windows Key + R, then type EXCEL, press the ENTER KEY, and Excel fires up like magic.
These are only a few of my favorites, but I posted some links to more useful shortcuts that work in almost any application in the blog posting for this edition of the podcast at www.productiveUpodcast.com.

This week’s tips include:

Save Your Fingers By Letting Your Fingers Save Your Work
If you have not learned the hard way already, save yourself the heartburn by heeding this bit of advice: AutoRecover and AutoSave, while handy for recovering work after crashes and other computer failures, should not be substituted for manually saving your work at frequent intervals.

Cut… Paste… That’s a Wrap!
We usually think of Cut, Copy, and Paste all together, but we usually use them in pairs. Most often, we use Copy and Paste. This tip talks about the lesser-known Cut. For moving text rather than just copying it, the Cut command is a champion when combined with Paste.

Take It Back
Most of us are pretty good friends with the magical Undo button that resides on the toolbar of most Office applications. Have you ever accidentally deleted an entire paragraph from a Word document? Ever hastily made a change to a complex formula that now causes an error in an Excel worksheet? We all have; and the always-forgiving Undo button has been there to comfort us by restoring our lost work. What could be better?

Seek and You Shall Find
We are busy people. We often do not have time to read through entire documents, web pages, or spreadsheets. Sometimes we need to locate just one piece of information so that we can go on our merry way. Perhaps the most time-saving tool that is near-univeral is the magical key combination of Ctrl+F.

The Fast and the Furious
When working in various programs, we often find ourselves doing a lot of repetitive actions. Certain functions in programs are assigned to keyboard combinations called shortcuts. Many programs have similar functions and fortunately, they often assign the same keyboard shortcuts. Using these shortcuts can considerably speed up your daily productivity.

Well, that’s all for this week’s edition. But before we go, I would like to say a special thanks to Doug Mosiondz, my silent grammar guy (I’m a geek, but I never said I had good sentence structure), and David Clayton of Clayton and Fulcrum for the excellent beats behind my podcast.

See you next week for another exciting episode of “Pigs in Space” (just kidding!).

I see poor quality images everywhere I go and you probably notice them too. Here are some real easy places to spot them — see if you can.

• Placemat at a diner or restaurant
• Ads in a magazine
• Logos in the newspaper

Although it is becoming more commonplace, do you really want someone’s first impression of your work to be one of a high school amateur?

So what does make a good image, and how do I know what will work best?

There is a one word answer: resolution. No, not the New Year’s kind, but you will need more diligence than you did for that “all asparagus, lose 20 lbs over night” diet from last year, if you’re going to show your best work.

What is resolution? In short, it can be summed up as how many little dots, called pixels, are being shown. Okay — if you look close enough, they are actually squares, but I trust we all know our shapes by now.

Think about this from your middle or high school art class. Ever hear of a painting style called pointillism, like paintings by Georges-Pierre Seurat? (There is a link to a Wikipedia article included in the blog so you can see examples.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Pierre_Seurat

Resolution is determined by the count of how many little dots there are to make up the picture you are viewing. Sometimes this is referred to as DPI or Dots Per Inch.

Depending on the medium that you use to view the image, the resolution can make a huge impact. For instance, let’s say you have bought one of those new fangled HDTV’s. You probably noticed that some of your old TV stations look a little wonky on them while other stations do not. The reason is resolution. Your basic TV set saw pictures at 640 by 480 dots per inch (or 480i) and most HDTV’s see them at 1980 by 1080 (or 1080p).

So here is a little test for you to try to illustrate what I am talking about. Get a magnifying glass, or, if you’re like me and have 20 pairs of those grandpa reading glasses lying around, grab a pair of those. Now hold it near your TV. What do you see? You should see are the little squares that, from a distance, blend together to make the image. The more you magnify or zoom in, the bigger they become and the fuzzier the image appears.

So how does this really apply to your files?

There are certain resolutions that are better suited for different tasks. First, you need to decide how the image will be displayed; will it be on a website, in a presentation, printed for customers or friends, or on sticker paper to be used to create a third eye on your forehead?

Good resolutions for screen displays (like presentations or websites) are between 72dpi and 96dpi. In fact, if you have ever had a really large file size for PowerPoint, your image size is likely the culprit. You can easily shrink the file size by right-clicking on one of your pictures in the file and choosing Format Picture; in that window, there is in option to Compress Pictures, which gives you various resolution choices. If you’re in version 2007, then all you need to do is select any picture and click on the option from the ribbon labeled “Compress Pictures”.

A general rule of thumb for files that will be printed is:

300dpi for most printers or 600dpi for professional printing.

Now that you have some basic understanding of resolution, you can move on to this week’s tips on images. Included this week are:

• Inserting an Image
• Changing How Much of Your Picture is in Your File
• Text Wrapping and Images
• Creating Images from Your Slides for Use in Other Applications
• Saving Drawings as Images
• and Fixing the Color of an Image

Once you have these basics under your belt, you can jump up and down excitedly while showing your friends. Just do us a favor and don’t act like Tom Cruise on Oprah. Our listeners have a little more dignity than that.

Don’t forget: you can find more than just these tips by visiting us on the web at www.productiveupodcast.com, where you can find more tips or sign up for the expanded edition of our tips and tricks newsletter.

Thanks for stopping by!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

So I asked, “What makes you think that?” She was quite forthcoming and mentioned that if I looked carefully I could see this everywhere around me from wallpaper to uniforms. So of course, this set my mind wandering and noticing things that I had never seen before. You know, like how you never see certain cars until you buy one, and then they’re all over the place. It isn’t that they are everywhere all of a sudden or that they have suddenly flooded the marketplace. The issue is you altered your filtered view of the world to now include these cars.

I started to wonder what else is out there that uses this technique and that’s when my filtered vision let me in on a little unnoticed treasure that was right in front me the entire time:  the newspaper column.

I’m guessing many of us don’t even notice because we have become desensitized to its hypnotic powers. But why have newspapers and magazines chosen to use this effect? At first I thought it gave more space for text on the page. Nope, in fact it actually gives less room on the page for text, because they have increased the amount of white space. So how did this technique come into being?

Well, it turns out that it actually started back in the days of the printing press. Each press operator had a limited inventory of letters to print with at any given time. By printing the paper in columns, they could reuse their stock of letters and once they had printed the first column, the press operator would typeset the next column and continue printing.

So why, with all of the technology available, would we continue this practice? I have a couple of theories that work for me (well, OK — they sound good in my head, at least).

The first is … Alien abductions, which have led to the human race having smaller eyes… oops, that one should have stayed in my head.

Another idea I had was Advertising. It creates a very easy to understand unit of measurement for selling advertisements to clients. Take a look for yourself; you will probably notice that the ads in most papers can be measured in columns.

Let’s see… How about thinking back to the traveler of the early to mid-1900s? Having newspapers and magazines in columns made it easier to carry a large volume of content with them but made it easy to fold the paper and see only the article they were reading. But why fold it at all?

Well, when your eyes move less to read the article, it is easier and takes less effort for the brain to process the information. Try this little experiment. Shrink your email message window the next time you’re reading a long message so it appears only on a portion of the screen, and see if it takes less time to read it. I tried it with my stop watch and I improved my reading performance by over 10%. Wow!

You will probably find that nowadays, blogs are crafted into columns, too. I know this helps me to skim articles faster and hone in on those useful nuggets of information that I care about most.

Here are some links for this podcast that will help you understand more about using the Parallel and Newspaper Column features available in your productivity software like Microsoft Word and Publisher.

* Newspaper Columns in Word

* Parallel Columns in Your Document

* Changing the Text in Part of Your Publication

* Easier Parallel Columns using a Table

And the next time you’re creating a newsletter or report masterpiece, think about slimming it down so your hard work can bowl ‘em down!

Recommended eTraining Class: “Using Tables Effectively”

Click here to get the sample file in Word Format

Theme music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum