For example, say you are importing a column of data from an Access database table that contains fractions such as 1/50, 2/70, and 30/65. You will need to format the column of cells containing the data to an appropriate fraction format before importing. Follow these steps:

• Select the column that will contain the fractional data.
• Right-click the selection.
• Select Format Cells.
• In the Number tab, under Category, select Fraction.
• Under Type, select Up To Two Digits (21/25), then click OK.

Now, when you import the data to that column, Excel will format each entry as a fraction. Keep in mind that if the data contained fractions such as 30/750, you would select Up To Three Digits (312/943) in Step 5. If you wanted to display your data as fractions over 100 (for example, 30/65 displayed as 46/100), you would select As Hundreds (30/100) in Step 5.

Alternately, if you won’t be using the fractions in calculations, you can prevent Excel from changing your entries to dates by applying the Text format to the cell before you enter the data. In that case, in Step 4 select Text under the Category list, and then click OK.

Follow these steps:

• Select the chart title.
• Click the Format tab under Chart Tools.
• In the WordArt Styles group, click Quick Styles and then select Gradient Fill, Accent 4, Reflection from the list.
• Click the Text Fill button and select Green.
• Click the Text Outline button.
• Point to Weight and click the 2-1/4 line.
• Click the Text Effects button.
• Click Full Reflection, 8 Pt. from the list.

In addition to the Text Fill, Text Outline, and Text Effects buttons, you can access more WordArt options by clicking the Word Art Styles button to launch the Format Text Effects dialog box.

By default, DEP will only protect Windows and not other programs. You will have greater security protection by enabling DEP on all programs and services. If you have a program or service that doesn’t play nicely with DEP, you can turn DEP off for that particular service.

Follow these steps to turn DEP on for all Windows programs and services.

• Click the Start button and type Control Panel.
• Click System and Maintenance | System | Advanced System Settings.
• UAC will prompt you to continue and choose the Advanced tab.
• Under Performance, click Settings.
• Choose the Data Execution Prevention tab.
• Tick the Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those I select.

Protect Your Windows Vista With Data Execution Prevention

That depends on how you use them! Take these tips to help keep your personal or financial information private.

1. Don’t save your logon information.
   • Always log out of Web sites by clicking “log out” on the site. It’s not enough to simply close the browser window or type in another address.
   • Many programs (especially instant messenger programs) include automatic login features that will save your user name and password. Disable this option so no one can log in as you.
2. Don’t leave the computer unattended with sensitive information on the screen.
   • If you have to leave the public computer, log out of all programs and close all windows that might display sensitive information.
3. Erase your tracks. Web browsers such as Internet Explorer keep a record of your passwords and every page you visit, even after you’ve closed them and logged out. To disable the feature that stores passwords,before you go to the Web, turn off the Internet Explorer feature that “remembers” your passwords.
   • In Internet Explorer, click Tools, and then click Internet Options.
   • Click the Content tab, and then click AutoComplete.
   • Click to clear both check boxes having to do with passwords.

   To delete your temporary Internet files and your history

   When you finish your use of a public computer, you should delete all the temporary files and your Internet history.

   • In Internet Explorer, click Tools, and then click Internet Options.
   • On the General tab, under Temporary Internet files, click Delete Files, and then click Delete Cookies.
   • Under History, click Clear History.

   To delete other files saved by corporate portals, such as Sharepoint Portal Server

   If you’re using a corporate Web site that allows you to view internal corporate documents, you may be inadvertently storing sensitive documents on the public computer.

   • Delete all the files in the temporary folder of your user account which you can find by browsing to C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temp.
   • If your company uses Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server, empty the temporary folder (My Documents\SharePoint Drafts).
4. Watch for over-the-shoulder snoops. When you use a public computer, be on the look out for thieves who look over your shoulder or watch as you enter sensitive passwords to collect your information.
5. Don’t enter sensitive information into a public computer. These measures provide some protection against casual hackers who use a public computer after you have.But keep in mind that an industrious thief might have installed sophisticated software on the public computer that records every keystroke and then e-mails that information back to the thief.Then it doesn’t matter if you haven’t saved your information or if you’ve erased your tracks. They still have access to this information.If you really want to be safe, avoid typing your credit card number or any other financial or otherwise sensitive information into any public computer.

The above article is extracted from Microsoft.

If your Windows XP system is running slowing and you need to improve the performance of your Windows XP system, one of the major things for you to do is to turn off unnecessary services on your Windows XP system.

Following are the common services we’ll turn off if you are running in a typical network environment. Check them and you’ll be surprised by what is running without your knowledge.

Service Glossary For Windows XP

IIS – Microsoft’s Internet Information Services provide the capabilities of a Webserver for your computer.

NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing — NetMeeting is primarily a VoIP and videoconferencing client for Microsoft Windows, but this service in particular is necessary to remote desktop access.

Remote Desktop Help Session Manager – This service is used by the Remote Assistance feature that you can use to allow others remote access to the system to help you troubleshoot problems.

Remote Registry – The capabilities provided by the Remote Registry service are frightening to consider from a security perspective. They allow remote users (in theory, only under controlled circumstances) to edit the Windows Registry.

Routing and Remote Access – This service bundles a number of capabilities together, capabilities that most system administrators would probably agree should be provided separately. It is rare that any of them should be necessary for a typical desktop system such as Microsoft Windows XP, however, so they can all conveniently be turned off as a single service. Routing and Remote Access provides the ability to use the system as a router and NAT device, as a dialup access gateway, and a VPN server.

Simple File Sharing – When a computer is not a part of a Microsoft Windows Domain, it is assumed by the default settings that any and all filesystem shares are meant to be universally accessible. In the real world, however, we should only want to provide shares to very specific, authorized users. As such, Simple File Sharing, which only provides blanket access to shares without exceptions, is not what we want to use for sharing filesystem resources. It is active by default on both MS Windows XP Professional and MS Windows XP Home editions. Unfortunately, this cannot be disabled on MS Windows XP Home. On MS Windows XP Professional, however, you can disable it by opening My Computer -> Tools -> Folder Options, clicking the View tab, and unchecking the Use simple file sharing (Recommended) checkbox in the Advanced settings: pane.

SSDP Discovery Service – This service is used to discover UPnP devices on your network, and is required for the Universal Plug and Play Device Host service (see below) to operate.

Telnet – The Telnet service is a very old mechanism for providing remote access to a computer, most commonly known from its use in the bad ol’ days of security for remote command shell access on Unix servers. These days, using Telnet to remotely manage a Unix system may be grounds for firing, where an encrypted protocol such as SSH should be used instead.

Universal Plug and Play Device Host – Once you have your “Plug and Play” devices installed on your system, it is often the case that you will not need this service again.

Windows Messenger Service – Listed in the Services window under the name Messenger, the Windows Messenger Service provides “net send” and “Alerter” functionality. It is unrelated to the Windows Messenger instant messaging client, and is not necessary to use the Windows Messenger IM network.
On your system, these services may not all be turned on, or even installed. Whether a given service is installed and running may depend on whether you installed the system yourself, whether you are using XP Home or XP Professional, and from which vendor you got your computer if MS Windows XP was installed by a vendor.

With the exception of Simple File Sharing, all of the above listed services can be disabled from the same place.

How To Turn Them Off?

To turn off any services, just do the following:-

• Click on the Start button, then navigate to Settings -> Control Panel, open Administrative Tools, and from there open the Services window.
• To disable any service in the list, double-click on its entry in that window and change the Startup type: setting.
• In general, you should change services you are turning off for security purposes to a “Disabled” state.
• When in doubt about whether a given service is necessary for other services, check the Dependencies tab in the service’s settings dialog.

Windows Services Running On My System

Obviously, this is not a comprehensive list of everything running on your computer that you may want to turn off. It is merely a list of ten items that you most likely do not need to have running, and constitute a security vulnerability if left running. Most users will never have need of any of the services in this list, once the computer is up and running. Other services may be disabled without ill effect as well, though you should research each item in the complete services list before you disable it to ensure that you actually do not need it running. Some of them are quite critical to the normal operation of your system, such as the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) service.

Every running — but unused — service on your machine is an unnecessary security vulnerability. If a service is not important at all for authorized users and basic system functionality, turn it off.

If you are reading this article, I suppose you are still using Windows XP at this very moment. I hope you know that Windows 7 is already out and if you have heard of anything bad about Microsoft Windows Vista, fred not, cause Windows 7 is seriously a lot better than Windows Vista.

For us, we still have customers using Windows XP and their reasons are:-

• “why spend extra when everything is working fine?”
• “it’s working with my current hardware and software, so no reason to  introduce unforeseeable problems into our environment”
• “we are comfortable with Windows XP so no point wasting time to learn anything new”

As you can see, the bottomline is the inertia to upgrade and the mentality of “don’t fix when ain’t broken”.

If Can’t Beat Them, Join Them

There are actually tonnes of reasons for you to upgrade to Windows 7, which we’ll probably list in another article, but for now, if the users are  still comfortable with Windows XP and don’t intend to upgrade any time sooner, the only thing we can help is to improve the performance of Windows XP so that it can run as good as new (new as in the time when they bought their system then…)

So, for those who are still using Windows XP, you can do the following to  enhance your Windows XP eXPerience:-

1. Defragment your hard disks
   • Even if you have a fresh installation of XP, you should regularly defragment all your system’s physical hard disks.
   • To run the system defragmenter, use the defrag command or run dfrg.msc.
   • I recommend doing so at least once a month, however, do note that you should not be running any other program, including your screen saver, when you are  running the defragmentation program.
2. Periodically clear the Prefetch folder
   • Found at %Windows%\prefetch, the prefetch folder contains pointers that help the system load programs that you’ve recently run. Over time, the accumulation of little-used entries can degrade system performance.
   • Empty this folder about once a month; Do note that cleaning it out much more often will degrade performance.
3. Disable unneeded services
   • By default, XP installs services that many users don’t need. Disabling unnecessary services makes the resources that they used available to other applications.
   • You can use the Msconfig utility’s Services tab to disable services.
4. Get rid of unneeded Startup programs
   • Programs that automatically install icons in the system tray and Startup folder are those you need to look out for. Although they usually add no functionality, they do eat away at system resources.
   • To get rid of these parasites, run Msconfig, click the Startup tab, and clear the check box for each program you want to disable.
5. Adjust the Visual Effects setting
   • For systems that don’t have a lot of CPU power (less than 800MHz), you can boost screen performance by changing the Visual Effects settings.
   • Open the Control Panel System applet, click the Advanced tab, click the Settings button in the Performance area, then select the “Adjust for best performance” option.
6. Preset the paging file size
   • When your system needs more memory than it has, Windows expands the paging file and all other system functions stop until the expansion is complete.
   • Setting the maximum paging file size to twice the amount of physical RAM typically lets you avoid that performance hit.
   • Open the System applet, select the Advanced tab, and click the Settings button under Performance. In the Performance Options window, select the Advanced tab, then click Change under “Virtual memory”. Enter the desired maximum paging file size in the “Maximum size” field.
7. Get a second hard disk
   • With today’s high performance systems, the performance bottleneck is almost always the I/O subsystem. Spreading I/O over multiple hard disks relieves that choke point.
   • Put your OS on one drive and your applications on the other.
   • Adding a drive also helps you keep the recommended 20 percent free space on your system drive.
8. Use the DMA setting for all your hard disks
   • When you add a second hard disk, XP often automatically sets it to the slowest Programmed I/O (PIO) mode. Most of today’s drives are capable of using the far more efficient direct memory access (DMA) setting.
   • To change the drive settings, open the System applet, click the Hardware tab, then click Device Manager. Expand “IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers” and open the properties of the Primary IDE Channel. Select the Advanced Settings tab, and select “DMA if available” from the Transfer Mode drop-down list under both Device 0 and Device 1.
9. Paging File Location
   • If you use a two-drive system, you can enhance performance by moving the paging file I/O to a different disk spindle than the one the OS uses.
   • To do so, open the System applet, select the Advanced tab, and click the Settings button under Performance.
   • Select the Advanced tab in the new window, click Change under “Virtual memory,” and select your system’s second drive from the Drive list.
10. Get more RAM
    • Getting an adequate amount of RAM is the most effective way to improve XP’s performance. If you don’t have enough RAM, no amount of tweaking will make your system run faster.
    • Every XP system should have a minimum of 512MB of RAM. For power users, 2048MB is even better.

So, this sums up what you need to do to improve the performance of your Windows XP system. If you have any other tips, do feel free to comment below.

Follow these steps to add odd and even page headers to your Word 2007 documents:

• Click anywhere on page 1.
• On the Insert tab, click Header in the Header & Footer group.
• Click Austere (Odd Page) or any Header formatted for odd pages.
• Under Header & Footer Tools, click the Design tab and then click to select the Different Odd & Even Pages check box in the Options group.
• Click the Next Section button in the Navigation group.
• Click Header in the Header & Footer group.
• Click Austere (Even Page).

If your document already has a header that is not formatted for odd and even pages, you don’t have to delete it and start over. You can simply convert it to an odd/even format by following these steps:

• Double-click the header area in your document.
• Under Header & Footer Tools, click the Design tab, and then select the Different Odd & Even Pages check box in the Options group.
• Click the Next Section button in the Navigation group.
• Click Header in the Header & Footer group.
• Click Austere (Even Page) or any Header formatted for even pages.

You can also create odd and even footers for your Word 2007 documents. Simply follow the steps above, substituting the word footer for header.

• Click the photo to select it.
• Under Picture Tools, click the Format tab.
• In the Picture Styles group, click the down arrow once to display Row 2 of the overall visual styles. Point to the Reflected Rounded Rectangle style, which is the first style in the second row. Word displays a preview of the style.
• Click the Reflected Rounded Rectangle Style to apply it.

You can also preview a dropped shadow before applying it. Follow these steps:

• Click the photo to select it.
• Under Picture Tools, click the Format tab.
• In the Picture Styles group, point to the Drop Shadow style, which is the fourth style in the first row.
• After you see a preview of the style, click to apply the style.
• Under Picture Styles, click Picture Effects.
• Point to Shadow.
• Click Shadow Options.
• Move the distance slider to 45 pt.
• Click Close.

• Right-click any toolbar.
• Click Drawing.
• Click AutoShapes on the Drawing toolbar.
• Point to Basic Shapes and click Rectangle.
• Click and drag in your document where you want to position the rectangle.
• Click the Fill Color button’s drop-down arrow in the Drawing toolbar.
• Click Fill Effects and then click the Picture tab.
• Click the Select Picture button.
• Navigate to the picture and click Insert. Click OK.
• With the shape still selected, right-click the shape and select Add Text.
• Type the text you want at the prompt.
• Select and right-click the text.
• Click Font.
• Choose the desired font, font size, color, etc. from the Font dialog box and then click OK.

You can position the text within the shape by adding blank lines, spacing, indents, or any other paragraph formatting you wish.

1. Open the workbook containing the report you want to send.
2. Press [Alt][F11].
3. In the Project-VBA Project pane, double-click ThisWorkbook.
4. Go to Insert | Procedure.
5. Click in the Name text box and enter WeeklyReportEmail. Click OK.
6. At the prompt, enter the following code:
   • Dim DistList As Variant
   • DistList = Array(“name1@company.com”, “name2@company.com”, “name3@company.com”)
   • ActiveWorkbook.Sendmail Recipients: = DistList
7. Press [Alt]Q.
8. Press [Alt][F8].
9. Click WeeklyReportEmail in the Macro list.
10. Click the Options button.
11. In the Ctrl+ box, enter m. Click OK.

Now when you need to send a report to everyone on your distribution list just open the workbook and press [Ctrl]M.