Tooling Around

Dealing with Onscreen Clutter

by Gloria McConnell

Clutter - don’t you hate it? Whether it’s that stack of papers on the desk, too many tasks in your task list, or an overabundance of app’s onscreen, it detracts from reading, writing, planning, organizing, doing.

Let’s take a cue from Herr Einstein, who said: “…Out of clutter find simplicity…” Following are some tips to make your onscreen life as a technical communicator less cluttered—and hopefully more efficient.

Note that unless otherwise noted, these tips apply to Windows XP Professional.

Adobe Acrobat

Toolbars, icons, menus all spell clutter. They can really get in the way when you giving that final once-over to that PDF document, proposal, or brochure before sending it to the printer (or CD maker). Or, perhaps you are ready to relax with an e-book. Planet PDF (“the home of the PDF community”) calls this “immersive onscreen reading,” and anything other than the online content is a distraction. For the cleanest Acrobat environment, consider these tips from Dan Shea at Planet PDF:

• Use full-screen mode. Full-screen mode can be toggled with a keyboard shortcut: CTRL+L on Windows or FUNCTION-L on Mac systems. When full-screen mode is active, you won't see anything other than your document. To move through the document,  use the scroll button on your mouse, PAGE UP and PAGE DOWN keys, or auto scrolling (see below); press ESC to leave full-screen mode.

• Hide toolbars. For a bit more control on streamlining the Acrobat window, press F8 to hide toolbars. Toggle this key to bring back toolbars when needed.  

• Hide menu bar. For even more streamlining of the Acrobat window, press F9 to hide the menu bar. Toggle this key to bring back the menu bar when needed.  

Microsoft Windows

Close All

Ever find yourself in this spot: you have a ka-zillion applications and windows open and you just want to close them all and start over? (Or go home…)

You can quickly shut down all running applications at the same time (at least on Windows XP Professional), without fear of losing work—here’s how:

1.      Press the CTRL key, then successively click each of the task icons on the taskbar.

2.      Right-click the last task icon, and choose Close Group. Windows XP initiates a standard exit procedure for each open application. If any application has unsaved information in an open file, you will be prompted to save the file before it closes. One exception that will interrupt this process: if you have any dialog boxes open in an application, the “Close All” procedure will be interrupted.

Clean up the Desktop

If you are the type of person who likes to save files to the Desktop for easy access and create shortcuts on the Desktop for easy access, you may one day notice that you have created a cluttered mess instead of a helpful onscreen environment, clean up that Desktop now! To do so:

1. Right-click on the Desktop and choose Properties.
2. Click the Desktop tab.
3. Click Customize Desktop.
4. Click Clean Desktop Now. The Desktop Cleanup Wizard begins; it checks for Desktop icons older than 60 days, and allows you to decide whether or not to remove them. (Note that even if you remove them, the icons are moved to a folder, where you can recover them any time. Where is that folder located? On the Desktop, naturally!)
5. Complete the Desktop Cleanup Wizard. Note: This Wizard lists all Desktop icons and pre-selects the older ones. There is no Clear All button for these selections and you cannot resize the Wizard, so be prepared to scroll and review all items in your unruly list.

 

Microsoft Outlook

Is your Inbox overflowing? Are you asking yourself “Where is that email with the changes from the engineer in Boise?” “What happened to the brochure mark-up from the Sales Department?” “Where’s that email with my mother’s birthday “wish list”?”

Outlook includes many features to can help you tame that email. Read this great article from Microsoft: 7 Ways to Organize Your E-Mail.

One Outlook feature that I really like is also discussed in another Microsoft article: Recruiters save time, stay organized using Outlook Quick Flags. Using flags is incredibly easy, and will help you identify email by project, action required, or any other scheme that makes sense. Outlook 2003 (v. 11) has basic flags that will serve most purposes. You can set flags from within an email, or while in your Inbox:

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For more info, watch Microsoft’s short demo on some of the features: Demo: Flag it, file it, find it fast in Outlook. Outlook 12 has even more features and versatility for flags.