Q. Lately it seems that the rash of bugs to hit the Internet have all been written to infect those of us who rely on Microsoft Outlook/Outlook Express to manage our e-mail. Can you recommend a different mail program that works just as easily as Outlook, but may offer better protection against these viruses?
Dennis Gillan, victim of the “love bug” @worldnet.att.net
A. I am delighted to say that I can point you to an absolutely superb non-Microsoft e-mail program, but I want to emphasize upfront that no e-mail software can protect people who take the huge risk of opening e-mail attachments from strangers, which is how the latest round of gremlins, more accurately called worms than viruses, do their damage.
So let’s leave the preaching with a reminder to never open e-mail attachments with extensions such as .exe or .vbs or .bat, among others.
Point your browser to www.eudora.com and you will find Eudora Pro 4.3, named for America’s greatest living writer, Eudora Welty, and perhaps the best e-mail package ever written. Best of all, you can try it out for free under a deal where you agree to accept limited e-mail and ads from a sponsor and get the full functionality of 4.3.
Upgrades to a non-sponsored version are $50, but I personally never saw any reason to pay because the sponsors tend to be pretty light-handed.
Q. How about some help with connecting two computers together? I just received my new laptop computer. I also have a desktop computer attached to a printer. The laptop will be placed in a different room. So I don’t have to get another printer, is there a way I can network the laptop to use the desktop printer? Is it just software that I need, or is there some hardware also?
David Gran @earthlink.net
A. You are a prime candidate for one of the new hassle-free home networks that use your house’s telephone wires to move data among computers and printers in different rooms, Mr. G. Or, since you have a laptop, you might want to try a home radio network that will broadcast data to the desktop from the laptop wherever you happen to carry it.
Intel’s new AnyPoint radio network uses a broadcast station for desktops that hooks into the USB port; laptops are supported with a PCMCIA card. Range is around 150 feet and since there are no wires, this setup is great for laptops. Look to pay $130 for the laptop card and $120 for the desktop USB device.
A cheaper alternative is the AnyPoint device ($80 or so apiece) that does the same thing when you plug each computer into a phone jack. These networks use either the USB or the printer (parallel) ports to connect to the phone lines and are extremely easy to set up.
Readers who have a mix of Macintoshes and PCs should consider a competing and equally easy-to-use system from Diamond Multimedia Systems Inc. that, unlike Intel’s products, networks PCs and Macs.
Q. We can’t seem to fix a problem with Microsoft Word 2000: When we try to open individual documents by clicking on their icons, we get an error message and the program won’t load. These same files work fine when we just open Word and use the open command under the File toolbar. The error message says: “MICROSOFT VISUAL BASIC Run-time error `5′ Invalid procedure call or argument.” Any help you can give would be much appreciated.
R. Skinkle Russell @webruler.com
A. Tough question, Mr. R. The problem is that somebody created a subprogram in Visual Basic for Applications, which is intended for advanced users. Subprograms usually do things like check the hard drive or even the Internet for new information each time a document is opened. They are used for exotic tricks like updating stock prices each time a document gets opened.
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Your easiest solution is to reload the Word software from the original CD.
If you don’t have the CD, you might be able to fix the problem by disabling all Visual Basic elements in each of these files. Click on Tools and scroll down to the Visual Basic command in your version of Word. In the Visual Basic window that opens, select Add-Ins and then look to see which programs are on your machine. Highlight each of them and right-click on the mouse to order them unloaded, and you should be back in business.
Q. I have a brand-new Hewlett-Packard computer and cannot get it to power down. H-P tech support advised me to contact microsoft.com–that they would have a fix for the problem. However, the only fix that I could see was how to get the system back up from the standby mode–nothing about getting it into standby. This is a problem I never had with my old Compaq.
Rosemary Conley,
Zephyrhills, Fla.
A. The techies who blew you off should be ashamed of themselves, Ms. C.
The procedure for setting up machines to go on standby is quite simple. Move your mouse cursor to a blank space on the desktop and right-click. Chose the Properties selection in the little box that pops up. Select the Screen Saver tab on the next display.
Look for a logo for the U.S. Energy Star program and click on the Settings box next to that logo. You will get a box that lets you set the standby time for any length of time you want, from Never to 1 minute up to 5 hours.
Q. I need help moving four years’ worth of very large data files created in the Quattro Pro spreadsheet onto a new computer that comes with Microsoft Excel as the spreadsheet. I have essentially been told by Microsoft and Corel that it is not possible to import files from Quattro Pro into Excel. Microsoft says that the only way would be if I can convert them into an HMTL format. I know nothing at all about what they are talking.
Does this mean that I have to always keep using Quattro Pro and never be able to export my files to someone using Excel or else have to spend days or weeks in retyping all the data which I now have in Quattro Pro into Excel format?
Bill Heinaman @bellatlantic.net
A. Whomever you heard from at Microsoft didn’t get it right, Mr. H.
It’s not exactly a cake walk, but there are several ways you can move those big data files into Excel without resorting to complex HTML (hypertext markup language) tricks.
The easiest is to open each file in Quattro Pro and then use the Save As selection to save as Quattro Pro for DOS files with the .wq1 extension. Excel will import this format.
Another choice is to use that same Save As selection to save the data as comma-delimited data in files with the .txt extension. This saves every cell in Quattro Pro as a set of words or numbers separated by commas, and Excel will import these files and restore spreadsheets cell by cell.
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Contact Jim Coates via e-mail at [email protected] or via snail mail at the baiduhai, Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611. Questions can be answered only through the column. Add your point of view at chicagotribune.com/go/askjim.