USB Drives and Opening Files

USB drives have become commonplace for students these days and the ability to be able to help them access their data has become very important.

The following are some tips and tricks for dealing with USB drives and our computers.

• Many USB drives will not fit properly in the front USB port of the InfoCommons computer. To make sure they have a good connection, use the USB ports in the back of the computer.

• If the USB drive is not detecting properly, restart the computer. Many times that will fix an array of problems caused by previous students.

• If a student is trying to open a file from the USB Drive and it cannot, try copying the file to the desktop. Then try and open the file.

• Some WordPerfect files (those with the .WPS extension) cannot seem to be opened by WordPerfect program on our computers.
• To get around this copy the file to the Desktop and then right click on it.
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• From the menu that appears click, choose Open With.
• Then Choose Microsoft Office Word, this should then open the file.
• If Microsoft Office Word is not on the list, click on Choose Program to find it from a list of programs.

Blackboard Vista Tips and Tricks

There seems to be some computer shenanigans going on when it comes to opening a document from Blackboard Vista.

The problem lies in the fact that Internet Explorer and Firefox are trying to protect us from Evil popups, but because the inbuilt popup blockers cannot discriminate between a good and bad popup, we are left document-less.

The Solution!
If a patron is having this problem then check for a new message bar below the address bar.
Click on the bar and choose Download File (as shown above).
This will take you back to the Blackboard Vista class listing, just go back to the class with the document the patron wishes to open and click on the link to it again.

This is the window that should now come up.
Now the patron is free to choose what he or she would want to do with the document.

Info Commons Tips & Tricks

Here are some tips to help you help our patrons, if I'm not around ... "Knowledge is Power".

1. If the keyboard or mouse on a computer does not work properly try the following.
a) Shut down the computer
b) Check the keyboard and mouse connections on the back of the computer, make sure that they are plugged in all the way.
c) Turn the computer back on again.

2. If a patron is having problems with printing from a document, try printing it as a PDF first. Then the patron will have a PDF copy of a document that is smaller than the original.
To do print to a PDF, do the following.
a) Go to File, then Print from the File Menu Options.

b) From the Print menu, choose CutePDF Writer from the Printer Name drop down menu.
C) Then click OK to print as normal.