Q. I have a Dell computer with an HP 832C DeskJet printer. When printing a long document, is there any way to make the printer print it in reverse page order so the last page is first?
My old Mac had this feature, and when printed that way a document came out in correct order and didn’t have to be sorted. It is a feature that I miss on my current printer.
Am I missing something?
Malcolm Vye, Evanston
A. I suspect that just telling folks that one can reverse the printout order is of general interest, Mr. V. This feature is written into most of the driver software for Hewlett-Packard printers, as well as those from other makers. But, as your question illustrates, it’s almost always disabled by default, and the toggle box is tucked away where a lot of folks can’t find it.
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This is done because many computer users, including the Type A technology buff who writes this column, often order quick printouts because we want to see something in hard copy quickly more than we want the convenience of having the output pages emerge in the proper order.
Whatever the manufacturer, the printer’s software drivers interact with the Windows operating system and use built-in routines to display optional commands.
So to make the change, fire up any program you print from, then click on File and the Page Setup command. With most HP software, this brings up a box with several tabs, including one for Paper.
Open that tab and click on the Print Options button on that page. In the display this creates, look for a box with something like Reverse Print Order.
Owners of other gear should look for either a button for Properties or for Print Options in the Page Setup displays.
Almost everybody with a reasonably modern printer will find behind these buttons that, in printing at least, the last shall be first and the first shall be last.
Q. How can I back up the My Favorites file in the Windows browser without putting them on a disk?
Is there a way of transferring them to Microsoft Word, for example, so that I can print them out as a hard copy? What is the process?
Ronni [email protected]
I have discovered that the Favorites list cannot be printed out as is.
A. There is a quick way of doing this, but I’m sorry to add that it isn’t going to be pretty.
Unbeknownst to most Internet surfers, Web browsers contain a tool that lets a visitor open a word-processor document with the actual code called HTML (hypertext markup language) that goes into creating a Web page. This includes the built-in Web page called Bookmark.htm that holds one’s Favorites.
Start out just as you would do to save Favorites onto a disk. To review for other readers, click File in the browser and then Import/Export. Next, pick Export favorites. A file called Bookmark.htm in the HTML format will be placed in your My Documents folder. The icon will look like any other Web site icon. Click it open, and your Favorites will be displayed as items in a Web page instead of in the customary drop-down menus.
Now click on View and then scroll down to the Source command in the Browser toolbar and select it. This creates a text file in the Windows Notepad software that shows the programming code and the actual names and addresses of all the favorites.
You simply select all of the text in this file, copy it and paste it into a Word file to get a raw document with all of the data. It will look like gobbledygook at first, but the information you want is included, along with the codes used to instruct the browser of what to do.
Here is an example of a single Favorite in my personal Bookmark.htm file:
DT
A href=”http://functions.wolfram.com/” ADD-DATE=”1088548016″ LAST-VISIT=”1113334403″ LAST-MODIFIED=”1088548016″ The Wolfram Functions Site
/A
You see the actual address at the beginning of the wolfram.com item. At the end is the site name. You either can edit out the code in between or just use the document as is to archive your Favorites as a hard copy. Most versions of Word include the ability to read these HTML files, and so the document you paste up from the Source code will display with all of the hyperlinks underlined and ready to click.
Q. After I reinstalled Windows XP Home, the cursors jump to the position of the mouse pointer. How do I turn off this feature? It makes typing in Microsoft Word very time-consuming. I have to make sure the mouse pointer is always in front of what I am typing.
Linda Later, Baltimore
A. Let’s try a down-and-dirty fix that may or may not be the needed repair, Ms. L.
It is possible to set the mouse cursor so that it automatically jumps to the default choice in the next proffered command box. This saves a lot of mouse movement, but it sounds like something went wrong with this tool on your machine.
It could be that this setting is kicking in and combining with something else to mess up your cursor.
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To disable the cursor jump feature, click on Start, then Control Panel and open the one for Mouse. Look for a Mouse Pointers tab and remove the check mark from the box for automatically moving to the default command. This very well could fix your problem.
However, this sort of cursor chaos also sets in when changes get made in a number of different Microsoft Word options, especially when so-called Macro commands are created.
You can fix this by forcing Word to abandon all such additions and go back to the default settings that came with the program in the good old days when your cursor wasn’t playing mouse hockey.
To do this you need to get rid of a file that Word creates called Normal.dot, which holds all of a user’s preferences. To find Normal.dot, right-click on Start, then select Explore and click open the C: drive icon.
Open the Documents and Settings folder and the Owner subfolder there. Select Application Data next, then Microsoft and, finally, Templates. Here you will see the Normal.dot file. Change its name and close the folder.
The next time you start Word, the software will create a new Normal.dot file with the default settings.
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Contact Jim Coates via e-mail at [email protected] or via snail mail 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.