Theology, Politics & Other Musings

Oftentimes when doing design work in Microsoft Office program, you need to move various items fractions of an inch.  In Publisher this is rather easy; simply, hit the various arrow keys and it moves ever-so-slightly in that direction.  But in a program like Word, hitting the arrow key results in a much bigger movement of the object than is normally desired especially if you are lining up various objects.

Thankfully, Microsoft has an answer to this.  Simply select the item you want to move and instead of hitting the arrow key by itself, hold down the CONTROL key and then hit the arrow key.  Doing this moves the selected object one pixel in the chosen direction.

Another helpful feature is when you want to drag an object to a certain location.  Oftentimes it is impossible to simply drag the object horizontally without also moving it slightly vertically; the reverse is also true–it’s hard to move the object vertically without moving slightly horizontally.  But sometimes you just want the object to go up/down or left/right.  To help users with moving an object in only one direction simply press the SHIFT key and then proceed to drag the object in the direction you want it.  This saves you the step of having to realign your object.

These shortcuts and helps apply to Excel, Word, Powerpoint, and Outlook.

If you’re a Mac user here is a simple but cool Bible widget for Mac.  It lets you look up any verse in the Bible.  It’s quicker than jumping online or even pulling up whatever Bible software you use.

Trillian normally writes its log (which is a record of your IM conversations) under Program Files->Trillian->Users->Default.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t have permission to do so in Windows Vista.  So, in order to actually keep a record you simply need to change the location of where Trillian writes the log.

To do this, open up Trillian.  Go to the drop-down box at the top titled “Trillian” and select “Trillian Preferences.”  Then choose “Activity History.”  Look for “Save History To” and click the “Browse” icon.  Change the location to a place that is easy for you to access.  Perhaps making a new folder in Documents labeled Trillian and choosing that as the location for your logs to be written.