Recently reinstalled Windows XP. Prior to the reinstall, I backed-up all my data using Backup Now3. However, on reloading my files I have found I am unable to open any of the Office files. Instead, a message appears that: ‘Word (PowerPoint, Excel, etc) was unable to open or save the document. Please ensure that you have access privileges to read or write the document and that it is not encrypted’. The computer is running Windows XP Home Edition with full administrator rights, and I originated all the documents with no restrictions. I saved the backups both on standard CD-R and CD-RW media, and both present the same problem. (more…)

Starting Microsoft Word takes a very long time (at least two minutes) and I do not understand why it takes so long. Occasionally a ’serious error’ message occurs. The computer is a new Compaq with an AMD 3.2 GHz Processor, 512 MB RAM running Windows XP Home. (more…)

When opening a document in Word 2000 through the ‘File’ menu > ‘Open’ facility, the ‘Open’ window appears and then the first document in the file list is automatically highlighted and opened. This is frustrating, and means I cannot select and open any other documents through the ‘Open’ window. How can I stop this behaviour? The computer is running Windows 98. (more…)

I received an Excel spreadsheet containing performance data from a financial company. When printing spreadsheet, it would not fit onto one page (even in landscape layout) but instead only about half the width of the spreadsheet printed on one page. How can I reduce the spreadsheet size to fit on one A4 page? A second question relates to text size. I receive many text-heavy documents, which are sent in quite large print and use a lot of ink when printing. Is there a way to reduce the text size, to reduce ink consumption on printing? (more…)

Whenever I send an email using Outlook 2003, a message appears saying the email could not be sent, and the message remains unsent in the Outbox. This issue occurs irrespective of the message size, or any attachments. Most annoying is the problem is only intermittent - sometimes when I send a message, Outlook says the message was not sent (and remains in the Outbox) but I find the message has actually been sent and received by the intended recipient! A possible related issue is I cannot simply delete these unsent messages from the Outbox - I have to drag the messages into Deleted Items folder. These problems are causing major grief, as I have no idea whether the emails I have been sending are actually being sent. The computer is running Windows XP Professional SP2 with PC Cillin (Trend) AV 2006 (which is configured not to scan outgoing mail). (more…)