Quick Tips
& PC Companion Tricks
by Jim Christian
Microsoft's online Knowledge Base is a great source of
technical information and self-help tools for any of Microsoft's
products, including Windows CE. The main search page is located at: http://search.support.microsoft.com/. The Advance Search dialog box is shown in
Screen 1.
Screen 1. Microsoft's online
Knowledge Base is a great source of technical information and self-help
tools for any of Microsoft's products, including Windows CE. Shown here
is the search dialog box filled out to list articles related to Error
Messages on Windows CE devices.
Listed below are a few of the short support articles
found in the Knowledge Base (along with the article ID number).
-
Error Message: Synchronization Cannot Be Started ...
(Q243029)
-
Error Message: Mobile Channel Error (Q242256)
-
Cannot View Entire Program Running Terminal Server
Client (Q241417)
-
Appointment Change on Desktop Computer Not Updated
on Windows CE (Q240223)
-
File or Folder with the Euro Symbol in Its Name Is
Not Copied (Q240188)
-
"Unrecognized Format" Trying to Open
Converted Access Database (Q240074)
-
Multiple Files Are Not Copied from Mobile Device to
Desktop PC (Q239932)
-
Clock and Appointment Times Incorrect After Backup
and Restore (Q239529)
-
Error Message: "Device Not Recognized"
with Serial-to-USB Hub Synch (Q245687)
If you're foolish enough to leave your PC Companion
laying around, it could get lost or stolen. A quick way to make a
document (or any file) a little more secure is to make it disappear --
to hide it from normal view. Most File Explorer programs (desktop PC or
PC Companions) let you do this. On your H/PC, open Windows Explorer or
My Documents and find the file you want to hide. Then hold down Alt, tap
the file once, and select the Properties option (see Screen
2). Tap the check-box labeled "Hidden" and then tap OK. The
file will disappear from view in your File Explorer, but it's still
there.
Screen 2: To hide a file, open
Windows Explorer or My Documents and find the file you want to hide.
Then hold down Alt, tap the file once, and select the Properties option.
Tap the check-box labeled "Hidden" and then tap OK.
To find the file later, open your H/PC's Windows
Explorer, select View, Options, tap on the button labeled "Show all
files" and tap OK. All files you have hidden, and system files with
.DLL and .CPL extensions will appear in Windows Explorer. You can then
Alt-tap any of the now-visible hidden files and de-select the Hidden
option.
The procedure for hiding a file on a Palm-size PC is a
little different. First of all, Palm-size PCs don't have Windows
Explorer built in. You have to download and install a third-party File
Explorer program. A number are available, including the CSI File
Explorer (in the CSI PowerPack, www.casiosoft.com);
EzExplorer (in the EzToolPack, www.ezos.com/);
Tascal Filer Ex (www2r.biglobe.ne.jp/~tascal/) or CCExplore (www.csq.cc/).
Open the File Explorer, find the desired file, tap on it
once to select it, find the File Explorer's Options or Properties menu
(usually on the File or View menus), and select the Hide File or Hidden
selection.
If the person who finds or "borrows" your PC
Companion is computer savvy, he or she will be able to find your hidden
files. But novice snoopers and thieves probably won't think of that. Of
course you have a recent backup to restore your lost information.
If you're thinking about using a mobile phone with the
Cassiopeia E-100/105 to send and receive e-mail, check out Richard F
Cooke's experiences (www.casioe-100.com/journey_5.htm).
He gives excellent, step-by-step instructions on how he configured his
Casio E-105 and a Motorola L7089 (Timeport) mobile phone to do this.
The Palm-size PC is a great way to have important
information with you, to access wherever you are. You can even take Word
documents with you and open them in Note Taker to read or modify. To do
this, however, you have to use ActiveSync to copy them from your desktop
PC to your P/PC and translate them to Note Taker format.
The only drawback is that sometimes the converted Word
document doesn't display well on the 240 x 300 pixel screen of the P/PC.
This is especially true if you have a lot of formatting in the document.
To deal with this problem, I created a "blank note" for my
desktop PC version of MS Word. I use this note when I'm creating
documents on my desktop PC that I know I will copy over to my P/PC.
Here's how you do it. (I used Word 2000's default metric units.)
1. Open a new blank document in MS Word on your desktop
PC
2. Go to 'Page Settings'
3. Change paper margins to:
Upper margin = 0 cm
Lower margin = 0 cm
Left margin = 0.2 cm
Right margin = 0.2 cm
(choose "ignore" when a message appears about
the upper margin)
4. Change paper size to:
Width = 6.4 cm
Height = 5.5 cm
5. Leave the settings menu
6. Change the font to TAHOMA and Font size to 8.
7. Choose Save As, go to the Save as type: field and
select Document Template from the pull-down list.
8. Save the document as "Blank Note."
Any time you want to create a Word document that is
formatted correctly for Note Taker on your P/PC, go to Word's File menu,
select New and open the Blank Note template. When you're finished, save
the document under a different name. When you use ActiveSync to copy it
to your P/PC and translate it to Note Taker format, it will display
properly.
Mike B (I don't have his last name) figured out a way to
connect his Palm-size PC to the Internet using his desktop PC as the
middleman. The Palm-size PC is connected to the desktop PC via data
cradle and serial cable. The desktop PC is connected to the Internet.
For his step-by-step instructions, go to http://clubs.in-touch.net/heartwalk/Proxy.html.
Some of you oldtimers may remember all the great games
written for the Sinclair/Timex Spectrum computer in the 1980's. They're
still lots of fun to play, and someone has written an emulator program
for Windows CE devices that lets you run those games on an H/PC, H/PC
Pro, or Palm-size PC. You can get the emulator for free at www.palmtop.nl/ce/ppc_spectrum.html.
You'll also find links to over 6,000 Spectrum games, including H.A.T.E.
and W.C.E. Le Mans (see Screen 3), Elite, Boulderdash and more.
Screen 3: The Spectrum emulator
lets you play H.A.T.E. & W.C.E. Le Mans (shown here) and over 6,000
other game programs written for the old Sinclair/Timex Spectrum
computer.
Microsoft recently announced UpLink (www.microsoft.com/windowsce/uplink/),
a new user-community Web site for Pocket PC (formerly "Palm-size
PC") users. The goal of UpLink is to showcase the innovative things
people are doing with their Pocket PCs and to share these experiences
with others. What makes UpLink unique is that the editorial content for
the site comes almost entirely from Palm-size PC enthusiasts who are
highly regarded in the industry; Microsoft merely hosts the pages.
Visitors to UpLink will have access to extensive resources and free
downloads, but UpLink will combine these resources with the knowledge,
ideas and experiences from authors of the site to help users get the
most from their Palm-size PCs.
If you're traveling in another country, it's good to be
aware of the local holidays. The desktop PC version of Outlook lets you
add a country's holidays to Calendar. Once the holidays are in Calendar
on your desktop PC, you can synchronize with your PC Companion and carry
them with you in Pocket Calendar. Here's how you do it:
1. Open the desktop version of Outlook.
2. Go to the Tools menu, select Options and from the
Preferences tab click on the Calendar Options button.
3. Click on the Add Holidays button and a checklist with
over 70 countries is displayed.
4. Select the desired country (or countries) and press
OK. The holidays celebrated in those countries are added to Outlook's
Calendar on your desktop PC.
5. Synchronize your PC Companion with your desktop PC to
copy the holidays over to Pocket Calendar. That's all there is to it.
Economist Diary Companion helps you keep up to date with
public holidays, sporting events, culture, business and finance, etc.
You can also get instant access to reference data, including
measurement, time, travel, communication, science, economics, finance,
etc. Download and install the free trial version for Outlook 97/98/2000.
A setup wizard allows you to choose from over 5,000 worldwide dates,
anything from the next election day in Panama to the next performance of
Madame Butterfly in San Francisco. You can save this information in a
text file or transfer to your desktop version of Outlook. When you
synchronize your PC Companion with your desktop PC, the Economist Diary
Companion information gets downloaded to Pocket Outlook. Download the
trial version of Economist Diary Companion from the Microsoft Office
Update Web site at http://officeup
date.microsoft.com/2000/downloadDetails/
ediary99.htm?s=/downloadCatalog/dldoutlook.asp.
ActiveSync 3.0 is a great improvement over the last
version of Windows CE Services. You can download it for free at www.microsoft.com/windowsce/Products/download/list.asp.
The ActiveSync installation file is over 3 MB in size
and may take a while to download. It should be downloaded to and
installed on your desktop PC. If you have a slow Internet connection,
start downloading the ActiveSync file after work or when you're heading
off to lunch. If you have a really slow connection or don't want to
bother with the download, or if you don't have an Internet connection,
you can get ActiveSync 3.0 on CD ROM directly from Microsoft by calling
800-565-3061. There's no charge for the CD, but you have to pay $8.95
for shipping and handling.
Finding the right message can be a problem, especially
if you keep a lot of e-mail in your Inbox, Deleted folder, or archived
in a separate Inbox folder. One way to find the message is to go to the
Inbox, or the appropriate folder and press (Ctrl+I) to activate Find
Message. Type in a unique bit of text from the message you're looking
for. For example, if it's about ActiveSync, type in "ActiveS"
and hit the Find Now button. You'll go to the first e-mail message with
that word. Note: you don't have to type out the full word, just that
portion that will uniquely identify the phrase. Keep it short the
Find goes faster.
Another way to find a message is to go to the message
folder and sort the columns (From, Subject, Date, and Size). For
example, if you're looking for messages from a particular person (i.e.,
Rich Hall) tap the "From" column label once and the entire
list of messages will be sorted alphabetically (A to Z) by the first
name of the originator. Go down the list until you get to the R's and
all of Rich's messages will be organized together. Tap the
"From" column header a second time and the message list is
sorted in reverse order (Z to A). Since "Rich" is towards the
end of the alphabet, sorting the From column Z to A brings his messages
closer to the top of the list. You can sort by the description in the
Subject header of the message, the date and time the message was
received, and the size of the message.
Finally, if you receive a lot of attachments with your
e-mail, you might want to save internal storage space by saving the
attachments to your PC or CF storage card. Open Inbox, go to the
Services menu, tap on Options, and go to the Storage tab. Select the
button labeled "External Storage Card" and choose the card
from the drop-down list.
Microsoft's Windows CE Plus! Pack for the H/PC Pro comes
with an Inbox spell checker that allows you to check messages before you
send them. You can download it free at:
www.microsoft.com/windowsce/Products/download/list.asp
If you regularly send the same e-mail message to a
specific group of people, you need to create a "distribution
list." It can be done relatively easily in Outlook (or almost any
e-mail program) on your desktop PC. This feature is not included in
Pocket Outlook, but there is a simple workaround to create one or more
distribution lists on your PC Companion.
Go to your Contacts list and create a new contact. Name
it "DistribList" or whatever you want. Then, go to the data
field labeled "Email1" and type in the e-mail address of each
person you want on the distribution list (separate each address by a
semicolon). If the names are already in your Contact list, you can
simply type in their last names into the Email1 field (separate each by
a semicolon; see Screen 4). If you have two contacts with the same last
name, you'll have to type in the complete name (i.e., Smith; Jones;
Hall, Richard; Hall, Anna; etc.).
When you want to send a message to your distribution
list, open Contacts, highlight DistribList, pull down the Tools menu and
select Send Mail to Contact. It will insert all the names you entered.
Screen 4: To create an e-mail
distribution list on your PC Companion, go to Contacts, create a new
contact with the name "DistribList" (or whatever you choose),
and enter the e-mail addresses in the "Email1" field, each
address or name separated by a semicolon.
I've hassled you before about the importance of backing
up important data that resides on your PC Companion. Perhaps the easiest
way to do this is to synchronize your PC Companion with your desktop PC
on a regular basis. At the very least, once a week, but more often if
you make a lot of changes to Contacts, Tasks or Calendar.
To be completely safe, backup your desktop PCs Outlook
files. True, it's not likely that both your desktop PC and PC Companion
will go bad or get stolen at the same time. But you make backups to
cover unlikely events.
An easy way to backup your desktop PC's Outlook
information is to export the information to a *.csv text file (Comma
Separated Values). You can save this file anywhere and import it back
into any desktop PC version of Outlook if the need ever arises. The
procedure varies slightly depending on which version of Outlook you are
using on your desktop PC. In general, you'll follow these steps:
1. Open the Outlook Contacts application (sometimes
called the address book).
2. From the File menu, select the Import (or Import and
Export) option.
3. If the Export Tool dialog box pops up, select Text
File (Comma Separated Values) and click Export.
3b. If the Import and Export Wizard pops up, select
Export to a file and then Comma Separated Values (DOS).
4. Select the location where you want to save the *.CSV
file (hard drive, floppy drive, network, etc.).
5. Save the file.
Now let's suppose you want to import that information
back into Outlook (on a second system at home or on a new system).
1. Open the Outlook Contacts.
2. From the File menu select the Import (or Import and
Export) option.
3. Select Address Book and then Text File (Comma
Separated Values) options.
3b. If the Import and Export Wizard opens, select
"Import from another program" and then "Comma Separated
Values (DOS)."
4. Use the browser that pops up to find the *.csv file
you want to import. Select this file and click Open and then Next. You
are presented with a screen that lets you map data fields (i.e., tell
the program where to put certain information).
5. If necessary, map any fields. Then click Finish. When
you see a message telling you that the Address Book import has completed
successfully, you may...
6. Click OK, then close.
You can also import *.csv files into Excel and Access.
Increase viewing space
hide the Taskbar
The Taskbar is the gray bar at the bottom of the screen
with the Start menu button (on the left) and the time (on the right).
Open applications also appear on the H/PC and H/PC Pro's Taskbar. Screen
space is scarce on your PC Companion. To give you more, configure the
Taskbar to "auto hide" when you're not using it.
1. From the Start menu, select Settings and then
Taskbar.
2. Check the "Auto hide" box. Tap OK.
The Taskbar should immediately disappear. Whenever you
need it, tap your stylus on the very bottom of the screen and it will
appear. On the H/PC or H/PC Pro you can press the Windows Start key
(bottom left of the keyboard) to bring up the Start menu and Taskbar. As
long as the Start menu is up, the Taskbar will be displayed.
You may not need to activate Auto Hide on the larger
screened H/PC Pros, but the added display space is welcome on the
smaller H/PCs and P/PCs.
Numbers and bullets are a great way to organize a list
of items in any document. Use bullets when the sequence is not
important. For example, a well-organized document is...
Use numbers when the sequence of items is important. For
example, a list of sequential steps involved in writing a well-organized
document might be:
1. Write the main thing you want to accomplish in the
document in one clear sentence.
2. Write out the the document's three to five main
points.
3. Sketch out a rough outline of the article.
4. Write the document.
5. Read the document, have a friend read it, collect
feedback, and write the final version.
You can use numbers instead of bullets in some cases,
even if the sequence is unimportant (i.e., a list of 10
"must-have" applications for your PC Companion). But whenever
you use a numbered list, readers may make an assumption about sequence
or order of importance.
You can create a numbered or bulleted list in Pocket
Word by opening the Format menu, tapping on Paragraph and checking the
appropriate style button. You'll also find buttons on the Formatting
toolbar that let you select bulleted or numbered lists (they come right
before the spell checking button in Pocket Word). To create a list, tap
on the bullet or number button, create your list of items, and then tap
on the bullet or number button one more time to return to normal typing.
A quicker way to start a numbered list in Pocket Word is to press
Ctrl-Shift-J.
If you've just received an e-mail message from someone
who is important enough to add to your Contacts list, Outlook makes it
easy to do. If you're on a Handheld or Palm-size PC, open the e-mail
message in Inbox, pull down the Compose menu and select Add Sender to
Contacts. A new Contact card pops up with the individual's name and
e-mail address already filled in. Sometimes the name will be missing or
bracketed in quotation marks. Edit the Contact card, cut and paste
missing information (from the body of the message) and tap OK.
The process is a bit easier in the desktop PC version of
Outlook. Open the message in Inbox, right-click on the e-mail address of
the sender and select Add To Contacts. Fill in the rest of the Contact
information and then click the Save And Close button. You can use this
technique for any e-mail address listed in the message header -- not
just the sender's.
Windows CE devices come with a built-in terminal program
that should work for packet operations with, say, PK-88. Check out www.qsl.net/kc7gnm/packet_hpc.html
for setup instructions. Also, WinAPRS (Automatic Position Reporting
System) for Windows CE will be coming soon, if that will help you.
The folks at www.foliage.com/ce
have created Poof, an unsupported program that powers off your Windows
CE device whenever you tap its Icon just like pressing the power off
button. Poof may be helpful if you have a hard time finding the Off
button, particularly on a Palm-size PC. It might even save a little wear
and tear on that button.
Unicorn is cool game console emulator suite for Windows
CE. It consists of the following four emulators (only the first,
Unicorn/MG, is available at this time). Get it at: www.jimmy.com/Unicorn/index.html.
Unicorn/MG -- GameGear and Sega Master System (SMS)
emulators.
Unicorn/GB -- GameBoy emulator.
Unicorn/NES -- Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)
emulator.
Unicorn/Pro -- Include all of the above emulators and
Colecovision emulator combined into a single emulator.
I carry around a lot of e-photos with me, including
pictures of my family, friends, pets, vacation stuff, and cool images
I've found. Electronic images (JPGs, Tiffs, bitmaps and the like) can
take up a lot of storage space. So I archive them in ZIP files. Usually,
I ZIP the files on my desktop PC and transfer the single archive file to
my PC Companion. Then, I use Steve Miller's Pocket UnZip
(http://stevemiller.net/apps.html) to view the images directly from the Zip
archive file. I can extract them if I want, but I don't have to. Again,
it is free! A Jim's "Must Have."
Another free utility is CCZip (www.csq.cc/).
CCZip is a compression tool viewer for Palm-size PCs running Windows CE
2.11 or higher. CCZip can open ZIP archives created on your desktop PC.
You can extract and remove files from the archive. You can even create
new archives and add files to existing or new archives. Note, however,
that due to a P/PC's memory and speed limitations, CCZip will usually
yield somewhat lower (about 20-30%) compression ratios than compression
software on a desktop PC. CCZip does not run on H/PCs, as Pocket UnZip
does.
After I upgraded to Office 2000 on my desktop PC, I
couldn't synchronize my Access and Pocket Access files. The solution was
to delete my ActiveSync partnership, reconnect my PC Companion to my
desktop PC, and re-establish the partnership. Everything was fine after
that.
PC and CF Card modems and PC/CF Card devices draw a
little power when in use. You can save power by not inserting them in
the Card slot. But then you've got to carry the card around and you
might lose it. There's another solution. Each time you insert a PC or CF
Card, your PC Companion asks you if you want to use the card. To
conserve battery power, just say "No!" The card won't draw any
power, but you won't be able to use it until you take it out and
re-insert it. The battery power you conserve won't be much, but it might
come in useful on a long international flight.
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