The Send To option has always been one of Windows’ handiest shortcuts. It lets you copy a file - or a folder full of files - to another folder without having to navigate your way to that destination folder. Send To also lets you quickly upload, email or open a document.

To use Send To, all you do is right-click a file or folder, select Send To from the pop-up menu, and select a destination to copy, upload or email the item.

Windows pre-populates the Send To menu with a selection of destinations and shortcuts, and some applications add further shortcuts to the list. You can add your own twists to the Send To menu, too. For example, you can add folders where you archive or store documents to the Send To destination list.

Shortcuts to the destinations which appear in the Send To list are stored in a special folder called SendTo (note there’s no space between Send and To in the folder name). In Windows XP, you’ll find the SendTo folder located in:

C:\Documents and Settings\username

where username is your Windows log-on name.

In Vista you’ll have to dig deep to find the SendTo folder:

1. Click Start then click your log-on name to open your user folder.
2. Click down through AppData -> Roaming -> Microsoft -> Windows -> SendTo.

Of course, as is often the case with Vista, instead of digging down through this list of folders you can quickly jump to the SendTo folder by using the search box: Click Start, type sendto in the search box and click the SendTo folder in the Files list. 

As well as adding shortcuts to folders and network drives to the SendTo folder, you can also add programs. When you Send To a program, the document you select will be opened in that program. For example, you might want to add a shortcut to Notepad to the SendTo folder so you can quickly open a document in a plain text editor.

Send To SendTo

If you frequently modify the Send To list, instead of opening the SendTo folder in order to add new shortcuts, you can add a shortcut to the SendTo folder to the SendTo folder itself. When you do so, you’ll be able to add a new destination to the Send To list simply by right-clicking the destination (folder, network drive or program) and selecting Send To -> SendTo. It sounds a little mind boggling, but it’s very simple in practice:

1. Open your user folder then navigate down to AppData -> Roaming -> Microsoft -> Windows.
2. Right-click the SendTo folder and select Create Shortcut.
3. Rename the shortcut SendTo.
4. Drag the shortcut into the SendTo folder.

Once that’s done, whenever you want to add a new destination to the Send To list, right click the destination and select Send To -> SendTo.

If your daily stints at the gym have you feeling virtuous, this may come as something of a downer: A session on the treadmill or stair machine won’t undo the damage caused by that sedentary day job. That’s according to recent Australian research published in the April edition of Diabetes Care, which found that sitting there, hour after hour, is bad, bad, bad on your system.

There is some glimmer of hope for the desk-bound. The same research found that those who took frequent breaks from sitting reduced their girth and their body mass indexes, and lowered glucose and triglyceride levels in their blood streams.

According to the study, it doesn’t matter how much exercise you get; unless you also break up your sitting time, your body will suffer.

On reading this research, I felt a sense of impending doom. I sit down in front of the computer and that’s it - I’m absorbed for hours. In the days when I used to do computer programming, I’d even forget about going to the loo. I’m not quite as lost to the screen these days, but sedentary is certainly an apt description of me at work.

Stretch Break 

Enter Stretch Break. Stretch Break is a program which gives you a gentle nudge every now and then, reminding you to take a break. At an interval you determine, it pops up a break reminder and, unless you tell it to leave you alone, displays a series of gentle, yoga-ish exercises you can perform at your desk.

Stretch Break is flexible. As well as determining how often it should interrupt your work, you can choose the number of stretches for each session or even choose a particular sub-set of stretches to use. The latter is particularly useful when it comes to breaking up your sedentary time: by selecting the standing stretches, you can make sure you heave your frame out of your chair whenever Stretch Break pops up. Stretch Break also displays “ergo reminders” at the end of each break, little hints that will keep your body ticking along more happily.

I’ve been using Stretch Break on and off for years. It’s currently up to version 6.2 and I think the first version I used was 2.something. My problem is that it’s hard to commit to using the program. For the first few days after I’ve installed it, I use it religiously. But then, inevitably, comes the time when it will pop up while I’m in the middle of something intense, and I’ll think “Not now!” and hit the Later button. I promise myself I’ll take a break when the next reminder appears, but I know I’m already on the slippery slope to uninstalling it.

Stretch Break tries to accommodate busy or recalcitrant users by offering to delay the session for a minute or even five minutes. Once you start hitting those Later buttons regularly, you’re probably doomed.

So I’ve decided that what I need is the gentle inducement of Stretch Break plus a goad. I think that Australian research might be just the goad I need. When Stretch Break pops up now, I think about that research and the big payoff from taking a couple of minutes away from the computer. I also don’t, necessarily, perform the stretches displayed. Instead, I’ll get up and walk around, or make a phone call and walk as I talk. Anything to get me out of the chair. This approach has worked so far.

Stretch Break costs $US44.95, so it’s not cheap, but you can download an evaluation version to see whether it works for you. There are some free reminder programs available you might prefer, or you can set any one of dozens of other programs to pop up an alert at regular intervals. But none of those gives you the thoughtful exercises and visual cues Stretch Break offers, and which really help you notice what’s happening to your body as you sit there. I think it’s worth the money.

You’ve probably heard the stats: 80% of Microsoft Word users make use of only 20% of its features. My guess is that only about 0.1% of Word users use the handy calculator built right into the program.

I’m not talking about the SUM() and AVERAGE() fields or any of the other of Word’s useful but not particularly elegant mathematical tools. I’m talking about a simple, straightforward calculator which lets you perform any basic arithmetical operation anywhere within Word.

You haven’t heard about it? Don’t worry, even Microsoft has no information about this feature, unless you dig way back into its archives where you’ll find that the calculator – which formerly held a prominent position on the Tools Menu – was driven underground in Word 6.0 to make way for the far more cumbersome, albeit more powerful, formula field.

It’s true Windows comes with a more advanced calculator built in, but if you spend your days working in Word, nothing beats having a calculator right there in front of your nose at all times.

Unearthing the calculator

Because Microsoft has buried the calculator so thoroughly, you’ll need to resurrect it before putting it to use. That means sticking it on a toolbar. In Word 2007, you’ll have to put it on the Quick Access toolbar:

1. Right-click the Quick Access toolbar and select Customize Quick Access Toolbar from the pop-up menu.
2. Make sure For All Documents is selected in the Customize Quick Access Toolbar drop-down box.
3. In the Choose Commands From drop-down box, select Commands Not In The Ribbon. (Side note: Perusing this list is highly educational for old-time Word users pining for lost commands.)
4. Locate Calculate in the list and double-click it to add it to the list of Quick Access commands, then click OK.

In Word XP/2003, do this:

1. Right-click any of your toolbars and choose Customize from the pop-up menu.
2. Click the Commands tab in the Customize dialog.
3. In the Categories list click Tools and in the Commands list scroll to Tools Calculate.
4. Click and drag the Tools Calculate command onto any of your toolbars.
5. To display a more compact icon, right-click the Tools Calculate button on the toolbar, select Change Button Image and pick the calculator icon. Right-click the Tools Calculate button once more and select Default Style. Then click Close.

What the calculator does

With the Calculator now ensconced on a toolbar, you’re ready to give it a whirl.

The calculator handles addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, percentages, exponentiation and roots. It takes six operators:

• Addition: +
• Subtraction: - or place the number to be subtracted in parentheses, ( )
• Multiplication: *
• Division: /
• Percentages: %
• Exponentiation and roots: ^

If you omit the operator, the calculator assumes you want to add the numbers. So you can write:

235 79 9412 17.95 432.82

then select the numbers and click the Calculator button. The result (10176.77) is displayed, briefly, in Word’s status bar. The result is also stored on the clipboard, so you can press Ctrl+V to paste it into your Word document or copy it into another program.

Calculate anywhere 

Unlike formula fields, the calculator works anywhere, including in paragraphs containing intervening text. Thus if you use the calculator on the following sentence:

At the dinner there were 13 doctors, 25 cosmologists, 53 seismologists and 219 assorted hangers on.

the total number at the dinner will be calculated. Note, though, that if your text includes characters such as =, - or * you’ll confuse the calculator and end up with an error.

You can also use the Calculator in tables to tot up numbers in columns, in rows or in the whole table. As in ordinary text, use parentheses around a number or a minus sign before it to denote a negative number in the table.

Take care: although it’s possible to select numbers in non-adjacent cells in a table by holding down the Ctrl key while you select each cell, the calculator will not give you a correct total if you try to add these numbers. Your selection must contain contiguous cells, rows or columns.

Try it out

Try out a few simple examples to get an idea of what you can do with the calculator:

• Simple addition and subtraction: 12+9-17.5
• Simple multiplication: 123*52
• Simple division: 9.3/7
• Calculating a percentage: 3422*17%
• Exponentiation: 7^4
• Calculating a cube root: 1728^(1/3)

Note that you don’t need to use an equals sign; in fact, Word will give you an “!Unexpected end of formula” error if you do.

Ordering

The calculator uses operator precedence and parentheses to determine the order of calculations in more complex expressions. For example:

12+9*2^3

gives you the answer 84, while:

12+(9*2)^3

produces the result 5844.

If you don’t include parentheses in an expression, Word performs operations in this order:

1. percentage
2. power and root
3. multiplication and division
4. addition and subtraction.

Mind your parentheses!

When using parentheses, you need to keep your wits about you. Take these four expressions:

• 17(8)
• 17(2^3)
• 17*(8)
• 17*(2^3)

The results are, respectively, 9, 25, (136) and 136. In the first example, the calculator subtracts 8 from 17; in the second, it adds 8 (2 raised to the 3^rd power) to 17; in the third, it multiplies 17 and -8; and in the last it multiplies 17 by 8. The second expression, in particular, is worth noting: the calculator performs the expression within the parentheses and then discards the parentheses, resulting in a final expression of:

17 8

The two figures are then added to produce 25.

I’ve recently started writing for Office for Mere Mortals. I wrote for this email newsletter some time back but took a break for a while. It’s a collection of tips and tutorials on Microsoft Office aimed at regular users, not tech-heads.

You can subscribe for free using the link above, but I’ll also be publishing some of the tips here on Before Hours. I’ll kick it off with a couple of Word tips.

Selecting a column of text

Most text selection in Word involves selecting horizontally – selecting a line or a paragraph of text. Sometimes, though, you need to select a vertical slab of text. To do that, hold down the Alt key while you click and drag your mouse over the text.

Hold down the Alt key to select columns of text This comes in handy when someone sends you an email or other document with the lines indented. When you copy the email into Word, you end up with empty space at the beginning of each line. To instantly eliminate the spaces and shift the whole block of text over, hold down the Alt key, click immediately to the left of the first character in the top line, then drag down and to the left to highlight the spaces. Press Delete to erase them. You can use the same technique to eliminate unwanted characters when you copy an email into Word in which each line has been preceded with a quote character, such as >.

You can also use this technique to select a vertical column within a slab of text, although this works best when you’re dealing with monospaced fonts where each character is the same width.

Rand() gets a facelift

One of Word’s quirky, tucked-away features is the rand() function. It lets you quickly insert a block of text in a document. To use the function in pre-2007 versions of Word, at the beginning of a line type =rand() and press Enter. Word inserts three paragraphs, each containing five sentences like this:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

To vary the number of sentences and paragraphs produced, add parameters to the function. For example, =rand(5,7) produces five paragraphs each containing seven sentences, while =rand(15,2) produces 15 paragraphs containing two sentences each.

Why would you want to do this? Well, it’s useful if you want to try out formatting or quickly whip up a document to demonstrate some of Word’s features. The sentence contains all the letters of the alphabet, so it’s particularly handy when you want to compare fonts.

In Word 2007, rand() gets a makeover. It no longer displays a sentence containing all the letters in the alphabet; instead, it produces three paragraphs of text explaining how to perform basic formatting actions.

It’s a shame Microsoft didn’t take this a bit further and include a sizeable number of Word 2007 tips rather than the meagre three paragraphs offered; that would have made rand() a really useful training aid. As it is, although you can no longer use rand() to display all the characters in a particular font, the more varied text – nine different sentences instead of the dizzingly repeated “quick brown fox” – makes rand() much more useful as a formatting aid. Use the text to test how page flow works in a document template or for positioning pictures or tables in a page and then flowing the text around them.

For the curious, the maximum value for rand is rand(200,99) or rand(99,200). If you try that in Word 2007 you’ll end up with almost half a million words inserted into your document and, if your PC isn’t speedy, a long wait. Use with caution!

You don’t have to use Internet Explorer just because it comes with Windows. There are much better choices available, and they’re almost all free.

I’ve added a new article called Get a better browser to the Tutorials & Guides section. It provides a roundup of Internet Explorer’s main competition.

IE 7’s daft design 

As I wrote ‘Get a better browser’, I was thinking about why I dislike Internet Explorer 7 so much. There’s no doubt it’s more secure than its predecessor, Internet Explorer 6. It also has support for tabs and other features we’ve come to expect from a good browser. And yet, I hate using it.

Why? Because it’s designed for last-generation screens. Most of us have replaced the old, almost-square screens we used to have with widescreen flat panels. Even if you haven’t made the shift to widescreen format, chances are you’re using a much larger screen than you had 5 years ago. On such a screen, Internet Explorer 7’s far-right placement of its toolbar icons makes using the browser awkward. To click the Home, Refresh or Stop buttons, for example, you have to move the mouse pointer all the way over to the right of the screen, and that can be a long trip if you have your browsre maximised on a 21- or 24-inch screen. Worse, although in IE 6 we had the power to move the toolbars around and place them where we wanted, that control has been all but eliminated in IE 7, so we’re stuck with Microsoft’s toolbar placement.

This might seem like a small thing, but if you use your browser a lot, it’s little things like this that will drive you nuts. It’s also a good indication that Microsoft’s programmers failed to think like users; if they had, IE 7 would have a very different design.