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Below is much of the feedback we received during the last month...

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Ebbe Sønderhousen from Denmark writes...

I have with greate pleasure read your articles about subject. I missed one thing. Some code returning all available printers.

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Jonathan West, author of Controlling the Printer in Word with VBA writes...

Code returning a list of all available printers can be found in the following article by Astrid Zeelenberg

Getting names of available printers
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/AvailablePrinters.htm

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Elizabeth Neely from Oakland, CA, USA writes...

Dian, Received my winnings from SnagIt last week and have used it several times. Trying now how to figure out how to get the image of an error message embedded into an e-mail rather than as an attachment. SnagIt also enclosed a t-shirt, a calculator and a very nice note. Thanks for the contest!

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Dian Chapman, editor of TechTrax writes...

Set the format to HTML to display images. But realize, the person who receives it must also have HTML enabled to view it. Just wanted to pass that quick info along. If you have it enabled, you should see a screen shot of your email below.

Thanks for letting me know you got it and cool that Betsy added the extra goodies!

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Lou Melton writes...

When I read your opening comments in the March issue of TechTrax, I felt so sorry for you.  Problems always seem to come in bunches!  I have often wondered how you manage to do all you do.

Although I have sent my thanks before, I just want to tell you that TechTrax is something I look forward to each month.  On the first of the month I start looking for your e-mail announcing the new issue!  I have learned so much from the articles--many things I would not know how to do except for the articles and your online class I took.  I really appreciate the time you and the other writers put into each article.  I know that it must be very rewarding to you all to know that you are helping so many folks.

Even though I am anxious to get the new issue each month, I will gladly take it whenever you have time to prepare it. Keep up the great work!

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Dian Chapman, editor of TechTrax writes...

Thanks SO much for your kind words and understanding. Yes, it is cool to know so many people appreciate what we do to try to help the community!

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A reader writes...

I have received your March issue & Thanks for it. Please tell me the way to get the last months issues of tech trax.

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Dian Chapman, editor of TechTrax writes...

We've created a new archive page for TechTrax that will allow you to browse all previous issues and download any Word doc version you want. Realize, however, that the Word doc version has had all the images removed for easy manipulation by our blind subscribers. But links are there to allow others to quickly get to the online version to view any images for articles they are particularly interested in. And TechTrax itself does have many ways to find and view previous issues within it's online archives.

You can reach the TechTrax online archives through the Archive link on the menu bar within TechTrax. For the download Word doc archives, hit this new link:

http://www.mousetrax.com/TechTrax/TechTrax_DocDownloads.html

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A reader writes...

could you please change my email to.....

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Dian Chapman, editor of TechTrax writes...

We don't change anyone's email address here, but you can do it yourself, fairly easily. Go to our main page at www.mousetrax.com/techtrax. Down the page a bit, you'll see a spot to Change Your Subscription. Enter the email you used to subscribe and click Submit. You will see a list of all subscriptions you have entered, such as Text, HTML or Doc. Click the Delete button under any you wish to remove.

The page will refresh and show any remaining subscriptions. If you get a message that there are no subscriptions under that email address, that means that all your listings for that email are now gone from our database. You can then go back to the main subscription page and enter a new subscription that's added with your new choices under your new address.

Note that you will receive a warning whenever your name is removed from our database. This will help avoid someone removing your name in error. However, we will remove names that bounce due to bad addresses. We will not remove you due to temporarily overloaded inbox bounces. Due to all the spams, we know keeping them clear is getting harder and harder!<sigh>

Also, a reader suggested that we send an email notice confirming that you wanted to be removed ONLY when the LAST name has been removed, so multi-subscribers don't get multi-notices should they change their subscription address. That's a great idea. But it will require a little reprogramming, so we'll get to it as soon as we can!

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A reader writes...

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!
Vic Perry saved my life with his Administration password fix.
Wow! Thanks so much!

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Dian Chapman, editor of TechTrax writes...

Thanks for the thanks. And I'm sure Vic FERRI, author of I Forgot My Administrator Password! will appreciate that his article was useful, too!<smile>

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Frances Stewart, West Union, WV, writes...

Regarding the March 2004 issues, it's one of your best yet, Diane - Especially enjoyed the "Email Isn't Much Fun, Any More!" and Linda's "I'm Old and Can't Remember Keyboard Shortcuts ... So I've Found a Solution That Works for Me!" hehehehehee <although she's nowhere near my age class yet!!>

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Dian Chapman, editor of TechTrax writes...

Thanks so much for taking the time to pass along your comments, Frances. I'm currently working on setting up a rating system for all TechTrax articles that will easily allow you to rate your favorite articles and add your comments. We hope you'll continue to let us know what you think!

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A reader writes...

I stumbled into your second SnagIt article a week after discovering I can't load Hijaak under Windows XP. Sounds like it will be a happy change if I go to SnagIt.

A quick question about saving documents to the SnagIt print driver: will hyperlinks in the original document work? Wouldn't that be nice.

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Dian Chapman, editor of TechTrax writes...

Yes, it would be nice...but it won't work. What you get when you use the printer is an image. So it's just like taking a screen shot...but the cool thing is that it takes the full image. I know I've had full doc pages that I
couldn't get to fill my screen well enough and large enough to take a decent shot. So I had to resort to enlarging the doc and taking a shot of the top...then the bottom and using Paint Shop Pro to cut and paste one half onto another...after enlarging the canvas to make room for the rest.

It worked that way, but was quite time consuming to fiddle with. Now a quick click and a large (usually very large) image is printed in it's entirety. I can then adjust the size, which I usually do, so it's just right. But I can still keep the page size so the text is clear and readable.

But no...being a picture, no part of the text is active. Like any other screen shot...it's just a picture.

However, if you plopped the picture onto an HTML page and have a program such as Dreamweaver, you can use the Image Map tool to draw a little box around the area. Then that area would become the hot spot, so the cursor would turn into a finger just like a hyperlink. The color would still be there...so users should be prompted by the color to ASSUME it's a hyperlink and might try clicking. Once they mouseover it, the hotspot from the image map would cause the cursor to change...so the link WOULD work that way.

I'm sure Front Page and other HTML editors have built in image map tools for this feature. However, I don't use Front Page (never had the patience to get those darn Extensions setup correctly) so I only know about Dreamweaver, which makes image maps easy to create. Hope this helps.

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Dawn Crosier from Wichita, KS USA writes...

I have to tell you that since last month's issue, I tried out both Snag-It and Camtasia Studio. I liked them so well, that I convinced my boss that I needed them. (Actually Camtasia was the one approved, but when I went to purchase - Snag-It was included in a package so I got both!) I have been happily documenting new training material MUCH faster. I already have several AVI training files documented on my internal application support website. Of course our users are loving the idea of being able to "watch" me explain a process as well as print out the steps with the appropriate screen shots.

THANKS for introducing TechSmith's products!

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Dian Chapman, editor of TechTrax writes...

Thanks for the thanks, Dawn. Yup, TechSmith has created some great stuff! And from what I've seen so far, they're also pretty darn nice people over at that company. Makes you feel even better about tossing them your cash!<smile>

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A reader writes...

i just stumbled on a problem with the search option for the techtrax archives. i wanted to extract dian chapman's article on break time presentations in powerpoint, which i only remembered vaguely, so i tried the search word "powerpoint" but yielding NO result. this happened regardless of the capitalization i tried, i.e. "powerPoint" and "PowerPoint" (as it ist employed in the original article's heading).

as using the word "break" immediately yields the correct result i reckon that your search engine experiences a problem with the mid-word capitalization in "PowerPoint", so maybe you want to look into that ...

independently of this specific problem it would deem me a good idea to give a little more help on the search facility, possibly on an extra (pop-up) page.

keep up the good work!

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Dian Chapman, editor of TechTrax writes...

Thanks much for your comments and suggestions. (And I WISH all you folks with these great suggestions wouldn't be so shy about letting us add your names to the list! Heck, you should take credit for your terrific comments!)

Yes, the search capabilities have some issues. But they have nothing to do with the web application I use. The problem is in my inability to properly code the pages with all the correct words. You see, each article has a section for adding META tags...words that will be used for searching within TechTrax and also within other web search engines like Google. Most the time I get them right...but sometimes I miss a good search term or in the rush to get the magazine out, I neglect to add all that should be added to each article. It didn't seem like a big issue before, but now that TechTrax has grown so much, I see that I have some additional work to do to bring all the articles up to a higher search hit level.

What I think I may do in the future is ask each author to add their own META tags to each article as they write them. After all, they should be the best reference for knowing what words would be best to search on the information in which they specialize. Hopefully, this will improve the search capabilities in the future.

However, do know that, in an effort to give you other ways of you (and ME<g>) finding what you need, I've added new links to the document download page on MouseTrax (the mothership for TechTrax). We'll continue to add new article links to the one page. So if nothing else, you can use your browser to search for a specific word on that page. With luck, that'll help you find what you need when my search tags fail you. You can browse our new download page and complete archive listing here: http://www.mousetrax.com/TechTrax/TechTrax_DocDownloads.html

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Michelle Kelleher from Hampshire, England writes...

Hi...I found your article of MS Photo Editor very interesting as i to have spent the entire morning trying to locate the program but obviously with no luck. You, however weher lucky aswhen we bought our computer, XP came pre-installed and therefore we do not have the disc to re-install it....any ideas????

Cheers Michelle

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Herb Tyson, author of MS Photo Editor, Wherefore Art Thou?, writes...

Here's about all I can suggest:

If you don't have the installation CD for a version of Office that contains MS PhotoEditor, or at least an older computer that still has PhotoEditor on it, then I'm afraid that you're probably out of luck.

If you still have an older computer that had MS PhotoEditor on it, try manually copying the files to your new computer. Try looking in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\PhotoEd. Copy the files from that folder to your new folder, create a shortcut to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\PhotoEd\PHOTOED.EXE, and run it. It is self-registering, and will create the necessary registry entries the first time it's run.

Good luck!

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A reader writes...

Thankyou Thankyou Thankyou for solving my baffling problem. I too installed Office 2003 and was bitterly disapointed when photo editor did not appear. Now thanks to you I can once again spend many nights to the wee hours editing graphics for web pages. Pity Microsoft can't get their act together and advise consumers of these changes, I have searched many sights looking for answers before finding yours. Once again thankyou.

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Herb Tyson, author of MS Photo Editor, Wherefore Art Thou?, writes...

Those of us who used and enjoyed MS PhotoDraw, which Microsoft abandoned, and now MS PhotoEditor, which Microsoft abandoned, might be starting to wonder. Perhaps the drawing/graphics/picture software market is one of those segments that Microsoft is willing to cede to Adobe and Corel. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.