The Raging Tech

Make Headers Stay Across Pages on Tables in Word

A quick Microsoft Word tip: if you’re working with a table you’ve created in Word, and your table spans multiple pages, it can be annoying to flip back and forth to remember what each column represents. Ideally, you’d like to be able to keep the column headers on the table in Word across each page, much like splitting a worksheet in Excel.

Here’s how that works in Office 2003:

1. Highlight the first row of your table, or whichever row contains your headers.
2. Right-click on one of the highlighted cells.
3. Select “Table Properties.”
4. Select the “Row” tab.
5. Check “Repeat as header row at the top of each page.”
6. Click OK.

Now, each page your table spans should have your headers conveniently located at the top of the page.

Got other Microsoft Office problems? Leave a comment and it could be featured here on The Raging Tech.

D & D Tip: Take a Photo of Your Party & Clean Up

I am not currently involved in a Dungeons & Dragons (D & D) game, as we have only been able to meet about 4 times this year, and the game I was Dungeon Master (DM) for was put on hiatus so that I could focus on other things, and maybe get more regular attendees.

However, one thing I found particularly useful was my cell phone’s digital camera feature. I would take my cardboard tiles that have landscape printed on them and lay them out to create a place for the miniatures to fight creatures, when I was planning for a gaming session. The problem was trying to remember where to put everything later.

I started taking pictures of my layouts while planning. Especially if the landscape needed to change and I had to re-use some of the pieces, I’d need to take photos of each stage of the landscape. This came incredibly handy, because I didn’t have to pull it up on my laptop where the players might see things and spoil the fun. I’d just pull out my cell phone and take a look at my photos there and have things laid out exactly as I wanted.

This isn’t just handy for planning - you can also photograph exactly which squares your player’s miniature figures are in during a battle that has to pause because you’ve run out of time to play for that session. That makes it easy to break down and clean-up, and then set it all back up exactly as-is for the next session’s continuation of that same battle.

I know this isn’t an original idea; I’ve heard of guys using Polaroids and other such tricks to keep their setups from session to session. This is easy and convenient, and I hope any of you still playing D & D find this tip useful.

For more tips that are practical and useful, check out MyThings.com.

Grand Theft Button: Windows Tips

Those of you who have not yet upgraded to Vista, or are like me and dwindle between XP and Vista lands, you probably encounter this problem whenever you copy files: if you’re copying files into a folder where those files already exist, you get a dialog box.

This box usually says something along the lines of “Are you sure you want to copy this file? It’s going to overwrite an existing file. Are you sure?” followed by “Yes,” “Yes to All,” and “No.” But what if you want to say “No” to all of the files you are copying? There’s no “No to All” button. If you’re in Vista, this has been taken care of with a redesigned and more specific and helpful dialog box.

On XP, you can simply hold down the “Shift” key while clicking on “No,” and it magically knows you mean “No to All” and will take action accordingly. I ran into this tip on Lifehacker today, and it struck me as useful.

Also, my friend has an article over on his blog about using CTRL+ALT+END during a remote desktop session since CTRL+ALT+DEL will bring up the task manager on the local machine instead of the remote session. Alternatively, you can load up the “Run” dialog from the start menu and type in “taskmgr” and get the same thing. Check out that post for more windows tips.