Perhaps you tried to fix it by changing the page orientation to landscape or change the column widths.  However nothing seems to solve the problem.

Wait!  There is a simple fix…

• From the menu bar, click Table.
• Click Properties. (if you don’t see Properties, click the double-down arrow at the end of the menu list)
• From the Table tab in the Size section, change the Size Preferred width “Measure in:” to Percent.

• Reduce “Preferred width” to 100%.
• Click OK.
• Your table will now contain itself within the set page margins.

Ahhh, now doesn’t that feel better?  Happy computing!

Of course, you first need delegate permissions to send on behalf of another person before you can do this little trick.  That is set from the Delegates tab under the menu item Tools, Options, Delegates.  To allow send-on-behalf-of, the owner will need to grant permissions on the “Inbox” to either “Author” or “Editor.”  If you already have this configured then follow the steps below.  If not, follow this link to instructions on Micosoft’s website.

To direct replies from emails sent on behalf of  back to the owner, use the Have replies sent to: option.  The feature is located in the Delivery options section of the Message Options dialog box.  Below are instructions for setting up this option. 

• Compose a new email.
• Click View from the menu bar.
• Select the From field from the drop-down list.

• Type the owner’s email address in the From field.
• Type the rest of the email message and add any attachments, if necessary.

• Click View again.
• Click Options.

• Click OK
• Click Close.
• Click Send.

When the receiver clicks the Reply button, it copies the owner’s email address in the To: field.  The replies then go directly to the owner rather than delegate.

Have any of these daytime dramas happened to you???

• Scene One:  You actually click No to the question: “Do you want to save the changes to [insert document name here] ? 

• Scene Two:  You open (but not save) a document attached to an Outlook email.  Although you are hitting ‘Save’ in Word, and close it, when you open it up again the edits are missing.

• Scene Three:  You are happily typing along in Word and then, all of a sudden, the screen freezes and you realize you had not saved in a while (okay it’s been 2 hours). You try to save but all you hear is the Windows “Ding!” wav file. (It’s not making fun of you –  really~!)

 I’ve heard all these stories before.  So let us review how to recover from these bad practices and unfortunate circumstances.

• Scene One-The Fix (maybe):  After you do the Homer Simpson “DOH!” take a deep breath and try the following:

(Disclaimer:  This may or may not work.  Everything I read on the Internet, including from Microsoft’s site says No, it can’t be done.  However I have had success before so I know it works…sometimes.)

We are searching for all files edited during the time frame you were working on your document that have a “tilde” in front of its name (~) and also any files with a  “.tmp” file extension.

Windows XP

1. Click Start, click Search, and then click For Files or Folders.
2. In the Search for files or folders named box, type “~*.”
   If you don’t find any, also look for any files or folders named “*.tmp.”
3. In the Look in box, point to the arrow, and then click My Computer.
4. Click Search Now.

Once you find these precious files:

1. Right-click on the file to display the shortcut menu.
2. Choose Open With.
3. Choose to open the file with Notepad.exe (Listed under Programs, Accessories).
4. Click OK.

What will appear may look like just a bunch of weird characters but if you find a chunk of text, like I found for one attorney, you can cut and paste into Word and reformat it.  Note:  As I have mentioned above, I have done this before, but so far, only twice successfully, so I’m 2:2; however, your mileage may vary

Scene Two-The Fix:  You received an email with a document attached.  Rather than save somewhere on your hard drive in a folder, you opened the document and began editing.  The Save button, although used, does not necessarily save your document.   A lot of attorneys do this, in every law firm I’ve ever had the pleasure of working in. 

Unfortunately, by default,  the document’s edits are stored in a temporary Internet folder that is not ‘viewable’ or navigable, especially if you are running Windows XP with Office 2003 installed. 

To retrieve your document edits try this method:

• Open the original  email.
• Double-click the attachment and open it again.
• Click File, Save As.  This opens that mysterious folder location with a name that starts with OLK….

• Scroll through the list documents until you see your document listed. 
  Depending on how many times you opened and edited it, it may have a number in parenthesis at the end of the document name.
  In my example above there are two copies (and one original).  Looking at the documents’ Date Modified and Size information will help you decide which is the most recent one (notice that version (2) is 85 KB and version (3) is 83KB).
• Right-click on the desired document and choose Cut.

1. Click the drop-down arrow next to the Save In: field and choose another folder location.
2. Right-Click and choose Paste.

• Cancel the Save As dialog box and close the document without saving.
• Navigate to the file location where you pasted the document and open it.  Your previous edits should be there.

Scene Three:  I’m Frozen! I click and nothing happens.   (P.S.  I forgot to press ‘Save As’)

When you don’t ’save’ a document directly from an email, when opened, it creates a temporary file.  Word determines automatically where and when it needs to create temporary files. The temporary files only exist during the current session of Word. When Word is shut down in a normal fashion, all temporary files are first closed and then deleted.

I know some of you may know of a more elegant way of handling this, but this is how I do it:

• Make sure anything else is not opened that valuable.  (To see other things running, hold down the ALT key and hit TAB to navigate to another open program).
• Power down your computer (I know…) by pressing the off/on button.  Wait ten seconds.
• Turn on your computer then open Word.
• The AutoRecovery Task Pane will appear to the left side of the screen.  It  lists all the files opened prior to the shut down. 
• Click the drop-down arrow next to the document and choose Open.
• Check to see if your edits are present in the document. 
  If so, save the recovered document over the older one using Save As, navigating to the old version and save over it.  If you  just click Save, you may have issues with having two similar documents in two different locations, causing further confusion.

Now that you have gained your composure (hopefully) again, let us review the very best practices for saving documents:

1. When receiving a file as an email attachment, save the file(s) immedidately to a local location (C:\, D:\, etc.); otherwise, it will save to a temporary folder.
2. Do as Ben Franklin used to instruct, “Save and save often.”  Even today, Ben’s advice holds true for technology.
3. Update Word’s AutoRecovery option to be five minutes instead of ten.  

To locate the setting for AutoRecovery, from the menu bar (2003):

•  
  • Click Tools
  • Click Options
  • Open the Save tab
  • Make sure the check box for AutoRecovery is enabled.  Type the number of minutes you want to backup your document contents. I suggest five minutes.

If you are a geek, like me and want to learn more about recovering Word files, here are some great links to look at:

 Description of how Word creates temporary files

How to recover a lost file in Word 2007 or in Word 2003

Okay, back to drafting!

I’m really more of a Word-wizard than a WordPerfect-ionist.  However, I know some of you out there use WP, and I want to help you create fine looking documents whatever wordprocessor you use.  Besides back in the day, I too was a WordPerfect fan.  In fact, I  learned wordprocessing from WordPerfect 5.1 sans a mouse!.

So in my ode to the “good old days” here is how to create a secondary header or footer in a WordPerfect document. I’ll be using WordPerfect 12 for my scenario.

Adding headers and footers to your documents

Headers and footers display repeated information at the top and bottom of every page.  The nice thing is that you can have different information on different pages.  For example, briefs with a table of contents may use a Roman numeral for page numbering and Arabic on the main pages.  Another example is electronic letterhead where a firm’s logo or name displays on the first page and page numbers and date display on the subsequent pages.

Creating a Header

In my example scenario, I want to display my contact information only on page one, and a page number on all subsequent pages.

• Position the cursor on the page where you want the header to appear.
• Choose View | Header/Footer.  This opens the Headers/Footers dialog box. 
   

(Note:  if you are using another version, the command is under Insert| Header/Footers.)

• Header A is selected by default. Click Create to input the header’s text.

Below, I’ve added a header to my letter.

• To align with your document margins, select the checkbox at the bottom highlighted in pink.
• If corrections need to be made, click Edit.

Disconnecting Header A:

• Go to the top of  the page two.
• Click View| Headers/Footers.  Notice Header A is selected.
• Click Discontinue.

Create a Header on page two:

• Position your cursor on the second page.
• Choose View | Header/Footer.
• Select Header B.
• Click Create.

I’ve added the text “Page.“ The arrow points to the toolbar button for inserting a page number.

Now my document has two different headers, with the second one starting on page 2.

Creating different footers works the same way as creating different headers.

Changing the page numbering format

If you need to  change the type of format for the numbering (need a word or different number type), follow these instructions:

• Click Insert.
• Choose Page Numbering.
• Scroll through the list and select the numbering format to display.

You can even add a word like “Section” before your page number, using the Custom Format button.

There you have it!  What do you think?  Did that help?  What other types of things would you like to learn?

Let me know…. Your Legal Tech Trainer

Well let me give you the scoop on how to add those holidays.  In Outlook 2007 it’s just a few dialog boxes and check-marks.  For Outlook 2003 (which most law firms have these days) it’s a little more involved, but not so much.

Let me tell you how:

Outlook 2007

• Step One: Get to the Calendar Options:
  • Click Tools
  • Click Options
  • In the Options box, click the Preferences tab
  • Click the Calendar Button

• Step Two: In Calendar Options, go to the Calendar Options section (ha-ha no typo here folks, just no creativity from old ‘Softie!)
  • click the Add Holidays… button.

• Check mark all the countries that you want.  Be bold, don’t just pick the United States!

But why? you ask. ;-? Well…perhaps you’re planning on celebrating Festa della Repubblica (Republic Day) with your new Italian  Twitter friends.  Even better, maybe you do business with a client in China and you don’t want to schedule a meeting during the Qingming Festival.  Now, wouldn’t it be clever of you to know all your clients’ national holidays and not schedule meetings on those days

After choosing your country(s), Microsoft downloads to the calendar:

•  Click OK

In Outlook 2003:

An update is now available to fix this issue by downloading and installing a patch for Outlook 2003. If you are a geek and want to read up on this, more information is available through knowledge base article 924423.

This update will replace the holiday file (Outlook.hol) with the latest holiday information. What’s even cooler and even geeker is you can edit this file to populate Outlook with your own favorite holidays, like July 15 which is National Gummy Worm day!  Look for another post to show you the secret steps (LOL – Not so secret if you can Google.)

Now you are ready to book that holiday trip or schedule those international  calls with clients, cause you know what day it is.

CT Summation is offering a free half-day seminar in Dallas, Texas, on November 10, 2009.  Mary R. Buker, CT Certified Trainer, will lead the training.

It will focus on some of these topics:

• Review the ‘review’ process for case documents loaded into iBlaze.
• Learn new tips and advanced features on working with electronic codeposition transcritpts.
• Insight and ideas for working with electronic documents loaded into summation:
  • creating better document summaries
  • modifying forms
  • running complex searches; and
• Understanding the edoc functions in iBlaze.

You can even bring your own laptop and follow along with the instructor, Mary R. Burker.

Location: Dallas, TBD
Date:   Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Time:  09:00am-12:00pm
Register

Seems every time Adobe creates a new version of Acrobat, it gets even better about handling law office files that are being reviewed, edited or submitted. 

One of the coolest features is it’s ability to merge many files into one, and what makes this feature even cooler is that they don’t all have to be PDFs or even the same format.  You can combine Word, Excel, and even .tif images into one PDF.  In this demo, I’m using  Adobe Acrobat Professional 9.  However, this feature is also available in the Adobe Acrobat Standard and Extended Pro versions.

In this scenario, I have been asked to provide outside counsel with copies of certain files in a case.  The files are presently stored as .tif images in my Summation database.  Using Adobe’s ‘Merge Files’  feature, I will create one PDF file containing all the files for the outside counsel to review.

Okay, let’s get started!

• Open Adobe Acrobat and from the toolbar, click the Create button.
• From the drop-down menu, select Merge Files into a Single PDF…  

•  There are four choices for adding your files.  In our scenario, I copied the files into a separate folder, so I’ll select Add Folders…

•  The Browse for Folder dialog box appears.   In this scenario,  my files are in a subfolder called “Outside” under the My Documents folder.
• I’ll highlight the folder and click OK.

• Use the Move Up ↑ and Move Down ↓ buttons to reorder the files, if necessary. 

• The Remove button allows you to delete some of the files before you combine. 

•  If you have a multi-page document, the Choose Pages button allows you to remove certain pages from a single document before combining the files. 

• Options are available to change the way the conversion works.  We will leave them at their default for our example scenario.

• Click the Combine Files button. 

• As each file is converted, a green check mark displays to the right to show the conversion was “Successful.”

• When the process of conversion and combining  is complete, you are prompted to name your combined file and click Save.

• With your PDF open, you can add other features like  comments, page numbering, and more.

In  future posts, I’ll share some other great features I L-O-V-E about Adobe Acrobat 9!

Understanding .tif files

I frequently get calls from attorneys who cannot open  files with a “.tif” or “.tiff” extension.  Generally, they receive the file(s) from an expert, co-counsel or client.  Of course, not wanting to look technically inept, they call me to help. 

So for all those that have always wondered how to approach this techno-detour, I’ve created this post about how to open .tif files.  

The “.tif” (Tagged Image File) file format (aka .tiff) is a format primarily used for creating huge image or line art files.  Even some scanning devices and software applications save in a  .tif format.  The problem for some is when you try to open the .tif file, it won’t; or asks you which program to open it in.  It’s simply that the .tif extension is not registered as a file extension, or not associated to open with a program on your computer.

You can check this on your own computer following these steps:

• Double-click the My Computer icon,  or right-click on the Windows® Start button and choose Explore.
• Click Tools, Folder Options...

• Click the File Types tab and scroll through the list and see if .tif or .tiff is listed.

• If you don’t see either listed, click the  New button 
• Type TIF in the File Extension field and click OK.

 Once you have the extension listed, you can choose which program to use to open and edit the files.  The computer will supply a recommended list of programs in alphabetical order to choose from, as shown in the example below.  I would pick one you feel most comfortable working in.

Additionally, by checking the box “Always use the selected program to open this kind of file,“  you can request that .tif files open ONLY using the selected program.  You will save a lot of billable minutes by not having to decide each time you receive this type of file on how to open them.

In my next post, I’ll talk about converting all those .tif images into one PDF.

Creating a Zip File to send

Have your files saved somewhere in the same location

1. Click to select your files (hold the Ctrl key down to select multiple files)
2. Right-mouse click one of the selected files
3. Click Send-To > Compressed Zip folder
4. It will create a zipped file with a default name from one of the files. To change the name, right-mouse click, choose Rename and type a new name (Note: be sure to keep the .zip extension at the end of the filename)

If you want to email your zip file, you will need to password-protect it in order to get through our spam blocker.

Password protecting a Zip File

Right-mouse click the zipped file
Click Explore
Click File > Add a Password
Type the password in both boxes

To remove a password

Repeat the same steps as above but choose Remove Password

Unless you enjoy document editing masochism or you are content to just use Word on a superficial level, you will want to learn to apply styles to your document content. Since there is no escape from styles, it’s best to surrender to this fact and adopt the use of styles instead of jumping through direct formatting hoops to avoid them.