Her Magazine is New Zealand’s only women’s business lifestyle magazine! Her Magazine highlights the achievements of successful and rising New Zealand businesswomen. Her Magazine encourages a healthy work/life balance.
Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/76572
:channelling your inner nerd MASTER CLASS No longer is it solely up to the nerds to know the ins and outs of computers! IT IS TEMPTING TO think that because you have used a computer for a long time you are computer literate, but there may be some ways you could improve your computer use even more. Here are my top eight ways to make yourself a better computer user. If you already know these then you should be helping others learn them as well. 1. USING THE WEB BROWSER Using techniques like opening links in new windows, using bookmarks, editing URLs for navigation, clearing the browser cache, and understanding common error messages will increase efficiencies when using the Internet browser. 2. SEARCHING ON THE INTERNET Using a search engine is more than typing in the address, putting a couple of keywords into the big text box, clicking Search, and choosing the first result. While that may work, it won't give you the best results most of the time. Here are a few ideas for improving the results of your Internet searches: 1. Use specific words rather than generic categories. For example, instead of searching for "flower", search for a specific type of flower. 2. Use quotation marks to search for specific phrases. Surrounding terms with quotation marks limits the search results to only those web pages that contain the exact phrase you've specified. Without the quotation marks the results will include any page that contains the words you've used, regardless of what order those words are in. 3. Use the minus (-) sign before a keyword to tell search providers to exclude pages with that keyword on them. 3. WORD PROCESSING Word processing is one of the oldest uses for a computer, and it continues to be extremely important. Don't just type and save, look to add something to each document you create, for example table 66 | www.hermagazine.co.nz creation, headers and footers, bullet points and pictures with text wrapped around them. Browse the toolbars of the word processor programme for features and learn to add these features to your documents. 4. SPREADSHEETS Spreadsheets can be incredibly powerful tools for analysing and comparing data if you know how to use them. Being able to use formulas, references, and macros can turn a "grid of numbers" into actionable information. Browse the toolbars of the spreadsheet programme for features and learn to use these features. There are also many free online tutorials for learning how to make the most of your spreadsheets. 5. LEARN TO TOUCH TYPE Are you still typing with two fingers? Do you still need to look at your keyboard before every keystroke? Once you can touch type you will not need to look at the keyboard to find the letters you want to type and you will also be able to type at a much faster speed. There are plenty of free online training tools for this, however you do need to stick at it. If you are a fast two finger typist then the transition will seem painful and at first slower, but it is worth the effort in the end. 6. LEARN KEYBOARD COMMANDS AND SHORTCUTS Since computers with a mouse attached were introduced almost every user has become dependent on the mouse. Learn to use your keyboard for navigating instead of using the mouse. One time saver is the Tab key. What the Tab key allows you to do is to move your cursor from field to field. This is especially efficient for navigating fields in a form – hold down your Shift key and then hit the Tab key once to go back one field. Channelling your inner nerd