You’ve probably got a good file and folder naming system all worked out — at least, I hope so. But sometimes when you’re working you want to force Explorer or Finder, depending on whether you’re in Windows or Mac OS, to bring a certain file or folder to the very top of the alpha list but don’t feel like doing the AAA Taxi trick used by the old Yellow Pages optimizers. Simply preface your file name with a non-alphanumeric symbol and the system will sort that to the top.

Some symbols on your keyboard are off limits, though, when it comes to naming files and folders, so use any but these:

Use any character in the current code page for a name, including Unicode characters and characters in the extended character set (128–255), except for the following “reserved characters”:

< (less than) > (greater than)
: (colon)
” (double quote)
/ (forward slash)
\ (backslash)
| (vertical bar or pipe)
? (question mark)
* (asterisk)

So tilde ~ works, as does the “octothorpe” #, the dollar sign $ etc.

This week a bit of fun. Wordle is site that lets you generate “word clouds” from text or a URL that you provide. The clouds are graphical collections of the words in the source text or site. They give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

You can see the Slaw Tips Blog Word Cloud here

Try Wordle for yourself at www.wordle.net.

Most of the paid and free legal research products offer proximity search (i.e., the ability to search for documents that have keywords within a certain number of specified words or paragraphs).

And, to the surprise of most people, Google also allows you to do proximity searches with the AROUND(n) connector. AROUND must be typed in upper case and you replace the “n” with a number specifying how many words you want your keywords to be from each other.

For example, when you search malpractice AROUND(10) pinnington, you get 5,900 hits where malpractice is within 10 words of pinnington.

Remember to try the AROUND(n) proximity search connector next time you are trying to find documents with terms that might be close, but not next to, each other. One of the common places this occurs is with names. You may get simple first and last names, but there might be pages with middle initials or full middle names.

Moving text with the cut and paste commands, either from one application to another, or between documents within the same application, is one of the most powerful features of Windows. It can also be one of the most frustrating features, especially when the pasted text doesn’t appear as you had expected or wanted.

In many programs you can control how Windows pastes data with the Paste Special command. This tip reviews how this command works in Microsoft Word. The steps outlined for Word are identical for pasting text with Paste Special in many other Windows programs.

At one time or another, all Word users will have had problems pasting data. Many lawyers will have experienced this when moving text from WordPerfect to Word. Often the alignment and spacing of pasted text make it very difficult to read.

Here’s how you can use the Paste Special command to control the format of pasted text. First, highlight the text that you want to copy, click Edit, then Copy (or Ctrl+C if you prefer using this keyboard shortcut). This puts the highlighted data into the Clipboard. The Clipboard is just a temporary place for holding text that is being moved or copied from one location to another.

Next, click on the location you want to paste the text you are copying. Then, click on the Edit menu, and select Paste Special (not Paste, which would be your usual selection). This opens the Paste Special dialog box. It gives you several different options for the format of text you are pasting. The “Unformatted text” option is the one that will clean up your pasted text. Select it, and then click OK to paste the data.

The Unformatted text option will paste bare, unformatted text only. All other formatting information will be stripped out, including bold, underlining, italics, indents, bullets etc. If the text you are pasting had various fonts or complex formatting, you will have to manually change fonts and recreate all this formatting. Although doing this can be time-consuming, it will sometimes be easier than trying to fix a document that has problems due to formats that did not convert properly, in particular when moving text from WordPerfect to Word.

Many Windows programs have a Paste Special command, and some have other format options that will help you. Excel for example, has about a dozen different options for reformatting pasted text. Next time you need to clean up text, remember the Paste Special command.

In Microsoft Word (including Mac versions) you can easily create a variety of horizontal lines by typing the following characters three times followed by Return or Enter:

• Minus (-) produces a thin line;
• Underscore (_) produces a thicker line;
• Equal sign (=) produces a double line;
• Asterisk (*) produces a thick dotted line;
• Tilde (~) produces a zigzag line;
• Number (#) produces three lines, a thicker middle line between two thin ones.

The lines will be the width of your page, or if you are using columns, the width of your column. Remember to use these shortcuts to create dividers between sections of a document.

Most of us have tons of personal info on various Google sites, and many lawyers have started using Google in their law practices. Unfortunately, most of us haven’t done everything we should to make our Google accounts more secure. Have you enabled Google’s Two Step Authentication on your Google account?

On his blog, Rick Klau has a fantastic post that outlines all the steps you should take to make your Google account more secure. This post is a must read for anyone using Google, and for that reason the SLAW Tech tip will shamelessly take to you another site this week. If you use Google, personally and/or professionally, please read this post and implement the steps Rick outlines.

How many of you remember the old days when you could only have one browser window open at time? Yikes! Thankfully, the current versions of mainstream browsers now let you open multiple sites and it is easy to switch between them by clicking on tabs.

But what happens when you accidentally close a tab and you want to get back to it? You can of course go digging around your History, but there is a faster way.

You can use the keyboard shortcut “Ctrl+Shift+T” to open the accidentally closed tab. This works in IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari.

A side note for those that are not familiar with the syntax for describing keyboard shortcuts. Simply remember that a plus sign (+) between two or more keys means that you press those keys, in the order they are listed, almost simultaneously, moving from left to right. For example, a capital B would be described as Shift+b. Release them in the opposite order.

Try this handy keyboard shortcut next time you accidentally close a browser tab.

A surprising number of people work with their program windows at full expansion, even though computer monitors are getting wider and wider. This might have made sense when screens were small and you needed all of the room just to frame a sensible document. And it can still make sense if you’re easily distracted and need to throw a blanket over everything other than what you’re currently working on.

But at other times and for other folks, the desktop can be a great tool, rather than a large expanse of wasted space. You can have more than one document window open and visible to be compared, or you can work from an open browser window to an open Word document window. You can store important shortcuts on the desktop and even organize them into useful clusters or patterns. It’s a place for digital sticky notes, patches of frequently used text, and, of course, motivational photos of the reasons you’re working as hard as you are.

How do you use your desktop?

Do you forget to include attachments when you are sending an Outlook email? I hate when that happens!

If so, try Attachment Alarm for Microsoft Outlook. This add-in is very easy to use. You just specify the words or phrases that occur in an email message and imply an attachment (“see attachments”, “see attachment”, “in attachment”, “the file attached” etc.). Attachment Alarm scans all outgoing e-mail messages and if it finds words or phrases from the Key words list, it raises the alarm and suggests inserting an attachment in a Microsoft Outlook message.

Attachments Alarm for Outlook works with Microsoft Office Outlook 2010 32-bit, Outlook 2007, Outlook 2003, Outlook XP (2002), Outlook 2000 and is compatible with Windows 7 (x86, x64), Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista (x86, x64), Windows 2003 and Windows XP.

It is very reasonably priced: US$19.95 for one licence that can be used on up to three computers. Bulk discounts are available.

The next time you need to select most of the files in an open Explorer window don’t waste your time holding down Ctrl and clicking each file manually. It’s much easier to select the ones you DON’T need, and then let Windows reverse your selection.

Inside an open window, hold down Ctrl as you select the file(s) you DON’T want to select (sounds backward, but wait…). Select Edit, then Invert Selection, and Windows will turn your selection inside out leaving you with the files you wanted to select. You can then delete or copy them as needed.

• Nicholas on Software Tools for Editing
• Jamie on Software Tools for Editing
• Steve Coughlan on ‘I Hope This E-Mail Finds You Well’
• Lyn on Womxn
• Celia Chandler on Gross Negligence

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