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Tag Archives: Tech Tip

Add Symbols to Office

07 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by Sarah Uthoff - Trundlebed Tales in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Symbols, Tech Tip

Symbol Chart from Word

Microsoft Word is a very specific tool. It’s useful for reports, letters, etc. (See note) It’s fairly straightforward for these uses, but there might be useful features that you don’t know about. One of these is adding symbols to your Word document (or any of the other programs in the Microsoft Office Suite). How to Geek put together a useful how to on how to add musical notes to your text. The screen captures are very clear, but don’t limit yourself to that handful of music symbols. Take a little bit of time exploring, using the same instructions to find other symbols, and see what useful symbols you can add to your next paper, letter, or sign!

Note: While Word is very helpful for many functions making brochures is not its strength. We’ve been getting a lot of questions on these lately. Take our advice and unless your instructor specifically says you have to use a Word template for a brochure use Publisher or even PowerPoint before Word.

Sarah Uthoff is a reference library at Kirkwood Community College. LIKE the Kirkwood Community College Library on Facebook and find links to Sarah all over the web at her About Me Profile.

Transfer Large Files

13 Thursday Jun 2019

Posted by Sarah Uthoff - Trundlebed Tales in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

File Transfer, Tech Tip

Last year our AV services helped us produce a video that was a quick tour of the Cedar Rapids campus library. In order to get us the final version they used We Transfer. I hadn’t run into it before, but if what you need is to quickly and safely send a large file to someone this is a very handy to know about. If you want to know more check out this comparison with Dropbox.

https://wetransfer.com

For more options that don’t only transfer, but store and/or sync, check out this list from Cloudwards and  these  directions  from  PC  Magazine.

We Transfer Logo

Sarah Uthoff is a reference library at Kirkwood Community College. LIKE the Kirkwood Community College Library on Facebook and find links to Sarah all over the web at her About Me Profile.

Google Tips and Tricks

19 Tuesday Jul 2016

Posted by Sarah Uthoff - Trundlebed Tales in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Google Search, Tech Tip

Feeling your research and search skills getting rusty over the summer? Take a little time off and play around with these suggestions. Bet you can’t do a barrel roll!

GoogleLogoHow To Be A Power User is from about two years ago and I think is the clearer how to of these two.

Get More Out of Google is a little more academic focused but covers much of the same material.

Sarah Uthoff is a reference library at Kirkwood Community College. LIKE the Kirkwood Community College Library on Facebook and find links to Sarah all over the web at her About Me Profile.

 

Disappearing Mozilla Toolbar

05 Tuesday Jul 2016

Posted by Sarah Uthoff - Trundlebed Tales in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Disappearing Menu Bar, Disappearing Toolbar, Firefox, Menu Bar, Mozilla, Tech Tip, Web Browser Settings

One of the all time most popular posts on this blog has been the directions on how to stop the toolbar from disappearing on PowerPoint, Word and Excel. I hope everyone will find this post about how to find the disappearing menu bar in Mozilla equally useful.

Directions

  1. Open a window of the Mozilla browser
  2. Click on 3 parallel lines in the top right hand corner near the red x that would shut the program. This is apparently known as a hamburger (top bun – meat patty – bottom bun).
  3. A box will appear. Click on Customize at the very bottom of the box. Show Hide Toolbars
  4. Click on Show/Hide Toolbars and Click on Menubar to make it appear. There should be a check in front of it.
  5. Click on Exit Customization (a green box in the bottom right hand corner)
  6. Exit Customize
  7. The menu commands (File, Edit, View, etc.) should now show at the top of the screen of your Mozilla browser.
  8. The menu gives you lots more control over the browser including the ability to open private windows.

Find more detailed instructions including more screenshots, here:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/what-happened-to-the-file-edit-and-view-menus

Sarah Uthoff is a reference library at Kirkwood Community College. LIKE the Kirkwood Community College Library on Facebook and find links to Sarah all over the web at her About Me Profile.

Research Tip: Source Types in Ebsco

08 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by Sarah Uthoff - Trundlebed Tales in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

EBSCO, EBSCOhost, Reach Tip, Tech Tip

You may think you know all there is to know about Ebsco, but we think we can still surprise you. Keep an eye on this blog for more tips.

How to find just a magazine or trade journal when you don’t want a scholarly journal

Limiters from EBSCO searchQuite often we help students with an assignment where they were looking for scholarly journals and we’ve defaulted to a check box with that filter in our limiters that appear on the left hand side of the results list once you complete your first search. This lets you adjust the results for things like being scholarly and the dates to search.

Check the box in front of Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals and almost all (sometimes another type of article will slip through) that you get will be scholarly articles. We’ve been talking about that for years through orientations.

However, you may not know how to do the opposite. How do you find just magazines when a scholarly article is not what you want? There is a quick way, but you may not have seen it before.

Source Types

Source Types from an Ebsco SearchBelow the limiter box are other boxes you can open. This is where you find things like the Subjects you can click on to narrow down your results from an initial keyword search. But the box you want to open is called Source Types. It defaults to all type of resources, but lets you choose by checking or unchecking boxes what type of source you want searched. So while you can choose journals at this point to you can also limit your search to magazines, trade journals, or news sources if you prefer.

So the next time you think, I wish I didn’t have to wade through all these scholarly journals, now you don’t have to.

Sarah Uthoff is a reference library at Kirkwood Community College. LIKE the Kirkwood Community College Library on Facebook and find links to Sarah all over the web at her About Me Profile.

Student Tech Resources

26 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by Sarah Uthoff - Trundlebed Tales in Uncategorized

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Eaglenet, Kirkwood Community College, Student Computers, Student Tech Resources, Tech Tip

Trying to use the student tech resources at Kirkwood? Then your first step should be right here!

Student Tech_Resources_FINAL_060215

Whether you want to know what Kirkwood computer programs do or you’re trouble shooting a problem, this handout tells you what to do next.

If you still have questions be sure to contact the student help desk located in the computer lab in Nielsen Hall. Stop by in person on call them at 398-7624.

Vital Statistics

26 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by Sarah Uthoff - Trundlebed Tales in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

reference, research, Tech Tip, Vital Statistics

What it is and why to use it?

One of the mainstays of our reference collection is Vital Statistics of the United States: Births, Life Expectancy, Deaths, and Selected Health Data. A vital statistic is a record of birth, death, or marriage. Although in the genealogy world it is often used to reference information on a particular person, this source congregates and analyzes mass data for the entire country.

Want to know the rate of marriage in Iowa? The total number of divorces across the country in 2012? The current life expectancy in the US? (78.8 years FYI) The percent of babies born to non-married women? All of that and more is available for use in both informational and persuasive papers and speeches.

Where to find it

The last time we were going to re-order our paper version for reference we discovered that the Center for Disease Control had this information online for free. So if you are looking for charts of data of vital statistics (birth, death, and marriage, etc.) check out this link instead.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss.htm

Caution

There is sometimes an expectation that the numbers will be up to the minute when they will often be two or three years behind. That is because the data the numbers are extracted from needs to be collected at the end of the year from state governments and other sources and then analyzed and imputed to the CDC’s various reports. This causes the delay, so don’t look for results from this year yourself or expect your students to find them.

Sarah Uthoff is a reference library at Kirkwood Community College. LIKE the Kirkwood Community College Library on Facebook and find links to Sarah all over the web at her About Me Profile.

How to Get Word to Look Normal

19 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by Sarah Uthoff - Trundlebed Tales in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Problem Opening Word Document, Tablet Friendly, Tech Tip, Word 2013

With Windows 8 and 8.1 Microsoft attempted to make one operating system and program suite that would be seamless across all platforms and devices. They made several major changes that they viewed as tablet friendly ignoring the inconvenience and headaches these changes would make to desktop and laptop users. They also made changes with that goal to Microsoft Office 2013. One of these changes was the introduction of a preliminary preview view to Word documents that you download.

When you are using Word 2013 and download a Word document instead of opening up to look like a normal Word document it automatically opens in a preview mode that looks like the screen capture below. This will only happen with files that have been sent as attachments. If you’re only using documents that you have saved on the computer, on flashdrives, etc. you won’t see this preview. It doesn’t matter what version of Word the document was created in.

Preview Word

This preview format really limits what you can do with the document. To get it to the normal fully opened version, in the left hand corner find three words – File – Tools – View.

Preview Word Close UpClick on View. This will open a drop down menu. The top option is Edit. Click on this and it will open the normal way.

Normal WordGood luck and if you have any further problems with opening an attached document in Word 2013, let us know.

Sarah Uthoff is a reference library at Kirkwood Community College. LIKE the Kirkwood Community College Library on Facebook and find links to Sarah all over the web at her About Me Profile.

Disappearing Toolbar 2013

06 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by Sarah Uthoff - Trundlebed Tales in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Disappearing Ribbon, Disappearing Toolbar, Microsoft Office 2013, PowerPoint, PowerPoint 2013, Tech Tip, Toolbar, Word, Word 2013

One of the all time most popular posts on this blog has been the directions on how to stop the toolbar from disappearing on PowerPoint, Word and Excel. Our computers were recently upgraded to Office 2013 and we discovered the new version has changed the way to fix it.

If you are looking for directions for an earlier version of Word or PowerPoint, click here:
https://kirkwoodlibrary.wordpress.com/2011/11/18/disappearing-toolbar

In PowerPoint, Word, or Excel 2013, when the toolbar disappears, it looks a little different than on the older versions of the program. Now the names of the tabs remain, it’s only the thick part of the ribbon ( the inch or so underneath the tab names with all the individual tools) that disappears. The names of the tabs remain so it’s a little easier to deal with, but it’s still annoying. In fact, it may be more annoying because it looks like you fixed it when it temporarily comes back when you click the tab you want, but it doesn’t hold.

To Really Fix It

1. Click on one of the tab names (Home, Insert, Design, etc.). It doesn’t matter which one.

2. This will temporarily restore the ribbon. It will hold longer than a drop down, but will disappear again shortly.

3. While the ribbon  is still visible, look at the top right hand corner of the toolbar close to where the red X which lets you close the program is. You’ll see a symbol of a person next to the name associated with the computer. Under this will be an empty column. At the bottom of the column you’ll see a grayed out icon of a pin.

4. Click on the pin and the ribbon should be restored.

5. If for some reason you want the ribbon to go away, do the same thing, but click on the < pointing upwards that shows when the ribbon is normal.

Find a more detailed description complete with screen captures, here:
http://www.word-2013-tutorials.com/word-2013-ribbon-disappears

Sarah Uthoff is a reference library at Kirkwood Community College. LIKE the Kirkwood Community College Library on Facebook and find links to Sarah all over the web at her About Me Profile.

Featured Database: New York Times Historic

24 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by Sarah Uthoff - Trundlebed Tales in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Databases, Library Databases, New York Times, New York Times Historic, Tech Tip

Library Databases are collections of articles where the library buys the rights for you to access, read, link to, and print the articles. Although EBSCOhost is the best known provider of databases in Iowa, there are many others. Today we highlight another library database. All of our databases can be accessed both directly on any Kirkwood computer or by logging in with k number and password from anywhere off campus.

New York Times Historic (1855-2010)

Many people consider The New York Times the paper of record for the country. We actually have access to the NYT two ways, but today we’re focusing on the historic version. This database has full scans of the paper back to 1855. That means if you want to see what people were reporting as the Battle of Gettysburg happened, if you want to read along as the rescue ships brought the story of the Titanic sinking, or watch the explosion of Beatlemania you can. Since it was written at the time it happened these news articles count as primary documents, always a plus to include in a paper or speech.

The historic version of the New York Times is also handy if you need to pull up the issue of the New York Times to see what was going on in the world on your birthday either out of curiosity or an assignment.

Some Tech Tips

Click on this link to find the database or click on the All Kirkwood Databases link on the Kirkwood Library Services home page and scroll to N for New York Times. If you are accessing it from off campus you will have to log in with your K number and password at this point.

Once the database search screen opens, click on the words ADVANCED SEARCH over the search box. Going to the advanced search option gives you a chance to control the date range better which is very helpful to make sure you get what you want. For example, if you want articles contemporary to when the Titanic sank, you don’t want anniversary articles, reviews of the movies or books that came later, articles about the discovery the wreckage, legal issues over the possession of the wreck, etc. To help focus your Titanic search, you’d want to limit your search to 1912. You can also sort results not just by relevance, but also by date bringing up either the newest or oldest article on top.

Birthday Assignments

It’s also from the advanced search page that you can change the date selector to “On this date” and bring up a single issue (like your birthday).

Date Selector on Advanced Search Page

Date Selector

This limit by date search will bring up a results list in fairly random order unless you’ve also entered a search term. Choose any one of these articles on the list and click on the title. It will bring up a PDF of that particular article. Under the title of the article at the top of the page will be a choice of other ways to open it. Choose Page View by clicking on it. This brings up the entire page the article appears on. Just above this page image will be a row of hyperlink numbers. Click on 1 to get to the front page.

From the front page, you can flip through the paper page by page. If an article catches your eye, you can click on the article and it will open up as an individual article that you can read and print.

Printing Problems

One problem with the NYT is that articles tend to be long and skinny to properly lay out on the newspaper page. The program defaults to fitting as much of a single article as possible on one page and reduces it to fit on an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper. This can mean some articles print with very small type. A lot of time the best way to deal with this is to print them as is anyway and make them bigger on the photocopier. If you have any problems be sure to contact us and ask for help.

Sarah Uthoff is a reference library at Kirkwood Community College. LIKE the Kirkwood Community College Library on Facebook and find links to Sarah all over the web at her About Me Profile.

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Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, IA
319-398-5696 or Toll Free: 866-452-8504
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