Editor’s note: While Mr. C. enjoys some well-deserved time off, we are reprinting a few frequently asked reader questions.
Q. From time to time I receive e-mails with pictures attached and when I open the pictures they are so large that I can view only a portion of the picture at a time. There are also occasions when I send a picture as an attachment, and the recipient complains that the picture they received was too large to view. In Outlook Express, how do I reduce the size of a picture received, and how do I ensure that I am sending a size that the recipient can view?
Tommy [email protected]
A. There are two ways to approach this somewhat common quandary, Mr. G. One is to use software that can view entire huge images by resizing them during display. The other is to use software to make the images smaller, which makes them less worthwhile for later printing on paper.
First find the icon for one of those attachments just below the Subject line in the Outlook Express display and give it a right-click. Look for the command Save As within the pop-up box this creates. Select the Desktop and save the file, and then go to your desktop screen and give the new icon a right-click. Now pick Open With, and in the display you get choose the Windows Pictures and Fax Viewer. This will open the image, no matter how large, in a window where it fits the screen.
I recommend that you go back to the Open With screen and select the check box to always use the Windows Pictures and Fax Viewer, which is the default program for viewing images in Windows XP.
To reduce the size of images, the quickest method is to use the Paint program built in to Windows. Click on Start and Programs and then Accessories to find Paint. Open Paint and use the File/Open command to select the image’s icon. When the huge image loads, only part of it will be displayed in the Paint screen. So click on the Image tool and select Stretch/Skew. In the command box this summons, select Skew and you will get a display showing the current dimensions at 100 percent tall and 100 percent wide. Change both to 25 percent, and it should fit in the screen. If not, make the number smaller.
Be sure to use the Save As command to keep from writing over the superior original, and you’ll get a file with a fraction of the resolution, which will display easily on the computers of folks to whom you send e-mail.
Q. I am perplexed at my word processing software. Suddenly, I am getting a dot between every word that I type. This is terribly confusing, and I am puzzled as well as irked. When I print one of these documents, it comes out fine, but I hate the display with all those dots.
Marla Paul, Skokie
A. That’s not a bug, Ms. Paul, it’s a feature. You just seem to have activated it by mistake. When you get those dots in the spaces between each word, you’ll also notice big black Ps to show paragraphs and arrows to represent tabs and so on.
These marks that show every space and other non-printing character in a document can be very helpful in advanced formatting of fancy documents, but they are terrible for the eyes otherwise. If you look up at the Word toolbar, you’ll probably see a white box with a percentage number that can be used to magnify the letters displayed in Microsoft Word. To the immediate left is a black paragraph mark that is the icon to toggle the tool to show/hide formatting marks.
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Click it and your troubles will be gone.
If the icon isn’t displayed, click on Tools and Options in Word and then select the View tab. There you will find a box that lets you switch the displays on and off.
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Contact Jim Coates via e-mail at [email protected] or at the baiduhai, Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago IL 60611. Questions can be answered only through this column. Add your point of view at chicagotribune.com/askjim.