Sometimes you may receive an e-mail message where the "word-wrap" doesn't work and the message is extraordinarily long and scrolls horizontally off your screen, making it very cumbersome to read. This seems to occur when receiving email from folks using Novell GroupWise or anyone else who hasn't set word-wrap on their outgoing e-mail preferences. Pretty much every message on the Wiscat-L electronic discussion group seems to have this formatting annoyance.

If you use Netscape Communicator 4.51 and find this is a problem, all you need to do is to change one setting in Netscape's preferences. Follow these steps to fix it:

1. On Netscape's menu bar at the top of the application window click Edit.
2. In the menu that pops up click Preferences.
3. In the small Preferences window double-click on the words Mail & Newsgroups.
4. This section should open up to show you a number of subheadings. Click on Messages.
5. Appearing in the bottom half of this Messages window there is a section named "Message Wrapping". Click once in the box next to the words "Wrap incoming plain text messages to window width".
Here's a screenshot with a red dot indicating the spot where you need to click:



6. Click the OK button, and you're done!

For those of you using Pine, non-word-wrapped messages may look okay on your screen but not print correctly when you press the Y key to "prynt". The only solution I've found is to print the message one screen at a time -- in SmarTerm this is done by pressing the F2 key.

It's time for my semi-annual reminder not to panic when Netscape says, "Bookmarks have changed on disk" when you open Netscape any time after 2 am on April 2nd. Is it a late April Fool's joke? Nope, it's just caused by the change to Daylight Savings Time.

The reason this happens is when you exit Netscape the browser compares the last modified date for your bookmarks against the current time. The time change temporarily throws Netscape off, so all you need to do is click the OK button on the error message and all will be well.

A handy timesaver in Windows 9x and Windows NT is the ability to open any recently used document. This includes word processing documents, spreadsheets, and Web sites. To make use of this shortcut...

1. Click the Windows Start
button.
2. Place your mouse pointer over Documents.
3. A list of documents you've accessed recently will open up, so just click on the one you'd like to re-open. Windows will automagically start the software/application associated with the document to access the document, if it isn't already open.

After a while the Documents menu can become quite long and list items you're no longer interested in. To clear the it follow these steps:

1. Right-click your mouse on any open area of the Windows Taskbar.
2. Click on Properties.
3. Click on the Start Menu Programs tab.
4. Click the Clear button
to remove the contents of the Documents Menu.
5. Click the OK button.

And for a bit of fun, take a look at this list of undocumented Windows 95 error codes which somehow got overlooked when printing the documentation.

National Library Week is coming up April 9-15, so in addition to the PR packets that are on their way to Winnefox libraries, visit the 8 Ways to Celebrate National Library Week Web site to find creative ways to get the word out!

From Harry Potter to Of Mice and Men, we're very familiar with the wide assortment of books that have been challenged in our libraries. Now The Onion offers us a bit of comic relief in "Nation's Teens Disappointed By Banned Books".

Standard disclaimer: this article is satirized for your amusement, not sanitized for your protection -- it contains language that some may find offensive (if you're reading this at a filtered workstation Bess will surely bark at it!)

is Curry Chicken, which won the 1st place award at the recent Staff Association Fat Tuesday Cookoff.

This issue of The Ides was written on March 15, 2000

The Ides is written by Joy Schwarz.
Please direct any questions, comments or recipes to schwarz@winnefox.org

URL: http://www.winnefox.org/ides/idesmar00.html