Home Office: More Help, Free for the Asking

Become a tech-help maven with minimal time and effort.

Steve Bass

Last week I helped you find tech support by poking around the Internet using search engines and specific help sites. This week I go into detail about how to manage and share your tech support info--or how to appear incredibly helpful with minimal time and effort.

Store and Organize Your Info

In my magazine column about sharing help, I mentioned that I use AskSam to store and sort lots of the useful tips I collect from Web sites.

AskSam's a big program and it takes a couple of weeks to really get the hang of it. Once you do, though, you'll find it indispensable for plowing through tons of notes. Contributing editor Lincoln Spector reviews the most current version of AskSam in "Revamped AskSam Supports E-Mail, Web." If you like what you read about AskSam and want to try it, you can grab a copy at our Downloads site.

OTOH, A few readers told me that Micro Logic's Info Select was their favorite tool for just this kind of task. It's a $150 product we gave a World Class award to in 2001. You can get a copy of the program at our Downloads site.

Another searching and organizing product I've toyed with is Scopeware's Vision, a free, ad-sponsored tool that indexes files, including images, e-mail (provided you use Outlook or Outlook Express), PDFs, music--well, most everything. The free version is fully functional but riddled with pop-ups that nag you to buy the registered version, which is $30.

A Simpler Alternative

Both AskSam and Info Select might be overkill for your needs. Before you take the plunge, you may want try out Microsoft Word's Work menu. No, it's not anything like either program. It's simply a nifty, undocumented feature in Word that lets you add a small pull-down menu onto the toolbar for instant access to often-used docs. For example, you might have a document explaining what someone should do if their PC won't boot. For directions on how to create the Work menu, read Jim Welp's "Office XP Tips: Fast Access to Key Files; Outlook Time-Savers."

Want more details about the Work menu--and some more cool Word tips? Visit the Add Balance site.

Dig This: It's hard to visualize a 150-story virtual high-rise, but there is indeed such a thing. Visit MrWong's Soup'Partments and be fascinated by seeing what some people do when they're supposed to be earning a living. You, too, can add to the building--but not on company time, okay?

Dig This, Too: Trend Micro, which sells antivirus software, had a little trouble with the alphabet recently. The company e-mail security program gobbled up every message that contained the letter p. No lie.

Dispersing Your Expertise

To save time responding to tech-support questions from coworkers and loved ones, let your e-mail program help streamline the process. When someone writes and calmly asks a virus question (I THINK I HAVE THE I-Worm/Palyh.A!!! WHAT SHOULD I DO????), I use my e-mail program's boilerplate feature to generate a soothing reply (MAYBE!!! HERE'S HOW TO FIND OUT!!!).

Boilerplates are essentially text files, so my strategy is to organize them with file names that let me quickly find the right one. For instance, many questions about viruses really have to do with virus hoaxes, so one response is named "Virus-hoax," while another is named "Virus-real." I have others for "Problem-systray," "Problem-DLL," and so on. I've posted some of my boilerplate messages online; you're welcome to use them (you'll have to unzip the file first, though).

Here's how to create your own boilerplates in three popular programs:

• Outlook Express. Lincoln Spector shows how to set up boilerplates in one of his Answer Line columns.
• Outlook 2000 and 2002. Choose Tools, Options, Mail Format and mark the "Use Microsoft Word to Edit E-Mail Messages" check box. Create a new message, type your boilerplate message and select it, and choose Insert, AutoText, New. Enter an abbreviation and click OK. Ready to reply? Choose Insert Autotext and select your boilerplate in the list of entries. (Hint: Name the AutoText items "1-trouble," "1-systray" to quickly find them.)
• Eudora. Create a message, choose File and select Save as Stationery. Reply by choosing Message, selecting Reply With, and picking the appropriate stationery.

Rumor Control: Many of you have written asking if PC World magazine used the same photo for me and Bugs and Fixes columnist Stuart J. Johnston. While I think some of you need to get a life, I will admit there's some resemblance. However, my wife says I have more hair and I'm much better looking than Stu.

Dig This: Feel like you haven't been away from your PC for a while? If you see this error message when you're online, it must be time for a break.

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