This page is for novice computer users and is intended to tell how to do something and why. I have found that there are many people who know how to check their email and that is about it. If you are in this category, the hints in this page should help.

1. VIRUSES: IF YOU USE EMAIL, READ THIS CAREFULLY ! If you get a message about not opening a certain email if someone sends it to you, first, before you forward this message to everyone on the planet, go to either www.norton.com or www.mcafee.com and look up HOAXES. Check it out. 99% of these messages are a HOAX. The warning email will almost always indicate that they received word of this virus from Microsoft, Dell, McAfee, CNN, Intel, Norton or someother well known company. In the first place, you cannot get a virus from opening an email. The only way is if there is an attachment and that attachment is an executable file and you execute it, i.e., one with an extension of .EXE or .BAT .VBS .SRC or .COM., and you execute this file. Viruses cannot be in GIF, JPG, BMP, PCX or other picture files or TXT, DOC or other text or word processor files. One HOAX tells you to check and see if you have a file called SULFNBK.EXE. If you do you must delete it before June 1. This file is on everyone's computer using Windows 98, it's supposed to be there. If you delete it you need to put it back. Go to www.mcafee.com and under VIRUSES, look for SULFNBK.EXE and it will tell you how to put it back on your computer. Don't ever assume that an email about a VIRUS is legitimate without checking, even if it says the WHITEHOUSE or SNOPES.COM has issued this warning. And don't spread these HOAXES around, just delete them and forget it. Watchout for Screen Savers too, these are SCR files. My last virus was from a screen saver sent to me supposedly by my minister. That's another point, you can receive a virus showing it is from someone you know very well and it really isn't. If it looks suspicious, ask the sender if they really sent it to you.
2. Resolution: Use the highest resolution you can see comfortably and your monitor can handle, like of 1024 x 768 or higher. This is set by right clicking (click the right mouse button) when on your opening screen, the desktop. A dialog box will come up, go to the bottom and left click on PROPERTIES. Another box will come up, click on the tab marked SETTINGS. You will see a slide on the right side with one of the following showing 800x600, 1024x768 up to 1280 x960 or highter, etc. If you put the cursor on the slide, hold down the left mouse button and drag to the right you should see higher numbers. You may find that you cannot obtain a higher resolution. This could be an equipment limitation or you need a different driver for your monitor (software program or file). Most novices tend to stay with 800 x 600 because they like the larger print and icons. The disadvantage to this is they see less on their screen and have to use the scroll bars both for horizontal and vertical viewing. At 1024 x 768 you will see all of them without scrolling. There is a program available for magnifying the screen or parts of the screen for those who are almost blind.

Ok, you find you can increase resolution but the icons and print are too small. Go to the tab called APPEARANCE and play with it. Under ITEM you will probably see DESKTOP. Use the down arrow to see what else is listed. Things like Menu, message box, selected items, inactive title bar etc will show. Click on one of these and you will see a font size. Increase the font size for several of these and click on apply. You can't hurt anything, the worse that might happen is you have to right click on the desktop again to get back where you were. Also click on icons and it will show a size in pixels, increase these numbers and click on apply. Your icons will be larger, play with them until they are what you want. There is a tendency for web pages, games etc to be set for optimum viewing at higher resolutions so you should get with it.

3. Colors: while you have the PROPERTIES box displayed, to the left of the Resolution slide is one for colors. These go something like 16 bit and 32 bit (true color) I would recommend using 16 bit or 32 bit, higher the better.
4. Using LINKS: If you click on a link (generally blue in color and underlined) it should take you to another page. If a page comes up and says this page doesn't exist or cannot display the page, then one of two things is wrong. A.)There is an error in the code on the page or B.)The server is down, in which case you will probably find many pages that are not available. When you send an email, you may get a message that it was not deliverable. This usually means you have the wrong email address but not always. I have had problems sending email to anyone with an AOL account from either my home using COX cable (before changing to DSL) or with Consolidated DSL. I also have problems with AOL from my work email account.
5. Email: When sending an email to a group of people, use BCC rather that just To or CC. This way it doesn't show everyone's email. Put your own email address in the To: space, then list the people you want under BCC using commas to separated names. Two advantages, if you print out the email you don't print a bunch of email addresses and two, it doesn't provide email addresses to spamers. When someone sends you an email and you want to forward it to someone else. Click on Forward, then go to the email and delete all of the email addresses shown before you forward it. You can also go to Addresses, New and then Group to create a list of people, like Garden Club Members. Then all you have to put into BCC would be Garden Club Members and it will go to everyone in your group.
6. Entering a URL (Uniform Resource Locator): For one thing if you are typing in the URL on your browser (IE-Internet Explorer or Netscape) you do not need to enter the http:// , just start with the www or whatever it starts with. Secondly, if someone shows a complete URL in your email, http://www.rca.com or whatever, you should be able to click on it and go to the site without having to copy it. This won't work unless you show the http:// .
7. Copy and Paste: This is related to the URL item above but has many other uses also. Suppose you get an email with tons of other names and email addresses at the top and a joke at the bottom. You want to send it to someone else. The nice way of doing this is to put the cursor on the beginning of the message (below all of the names and email addresses) and hold down the left button. Drag down the message to the bottom and let go of the mouse button. Text should be in a dark blue background. Hold down the CTRL key and hit the C key. (this puts the message on your clipboard) Close this email and go to Send a New email. Go down to the area where the text goes, get your cursor there and then hold down the CTRL key and hit the V key. It should paste the text into the new email without all the useless names, HTML code or whatever. The copy of the text will remain on your clipboard until you copy something else or you turn off the computer. As I mentioned, you could select a URL also using the same method, then put the cursor on your browser where the URL goes and paste in the new URL. If you think you will want to go back to a site, click on BOOKMARKS (Netscape) OR FAVORITES (Internet Explorer) and it will list this site for future use. Next time just bring up BOOKMARKS or FAVORITES, find it and double click. On my pages be sure you book mark a MAIN PAGE, one that has all the links but no actual genealogy data. This is because I may find a cheaper or better provider and my URL's will all change. I will post a "I Moved --" notice on the main pages but not the other 300 plus pages.
8. Find: Make sure you know how to use Find, or Find on this page etc. Both Netscape and IE have a Find function under EDIT. When I started writing my pages I had many cases where I had a Surname or individuals name linked to a page but not the area where the name shows. It simply would go to the top of the page. In this case, go to FIND, enter the name of interest (not case sensitive), and hit enter. Be sure to use FIND AGAIN because the name could appear more than once on the page.

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