A. You’re in luck. Not only is there a simple way to do it, but the solution is free. A product called eCleaner strips all those extraneous symbols from the message, leaving the text easy to read. To download eCleaner, go to www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,6492,00.asp.

Although eCleaner is not perfect—it will leave some clutter behind—the few leftovers are easy to erase manually. Also, it works with any e-mail program.

A. It’s not that you’re doing anything wrong; it’s just that you have to reset your defaults in Word and Excel, and that’s easy to do.

Let’s begin with Excel. Click on Tools, Options and then the View tab and check the box next to Windows in Taskbar (see screenshot at right) and click on OK.

Now do the same in Word (and any other Microsoft applications you want to function this way); the View tabs in the other applications will look a little different, but all have the Windows in Taskbar option.

With your new default, you can have many windows open at the same time. However, that solution leads to a different problem: If you have many windows open, the icons representing them won’t fit on the taskbar so it’s hard to access them, or if too many icons are squeezed into that limited space, you may not be able to read the file name. Fortunately, we also have a solution for that: Make the taskbar bigger.

To do this, position your cursor at the upper edge of the blue taskbar until you see a double-headed arrow, as shown above.

Drag the edge upward; that will double the width—and the icon capacity—of the taskbar from this:

To this:

Also notice in the upper screenshot that when I hold my cursor over the Excel icon, a message pops up telling me that three spreadsheet windows are open. However, when I increase the size of the taskbar, that message disappears and now icons for the three windows can be seen in the lower screenshot. The advantage of the larger taskbar is that it’s easier to identify the icons because they are tagged with names of files, as shown in the wider taskbar. But the only way to identify the three icons in the narrow taskbar is to click on one, evoking a list of the open windows (see screenshot below).

The screenshot below shows six open Excel windows—each clearly identified. The disadvantage is that you have to take extra steps to see them, and then you have to click on the icon to bring it on the screen.

Well, there’s a solution for that, too, and this is the method I use because it lets me easily and quickly identify every open window. Hold down the Alt key as you repeatedly press the Tab key; your window will switch from one open application to another, display the opening screen for each so you can easily identify the open file and bring it to the screen (see screenshot below).

A. Yes, you can stop that by resetting the full-menu default. Some people like the abbreviated menu because they need only a few functions. The abbreviated menu has an intelligence of sorts: It remembers the functions you use and only displays them in the short menu.

Here’s what an abbreviated drop-down menu looks like at right):

To get the full menu all the time, click on Tools, Customize and the Options tab and place a check in Always show full menus.

If you leave that box unchecked, you have another choice: Show full menus after a short delay so you don’t have to click on the double arrows.

If you want to eliminate the abbreviated menu in all your applications, you’ll have to make the change in each, using the same method described above.

A. Good question. I’ve also wondered why calendars break up weekend days. Well, you’ll be happy to know you can customize Outlook’s calendar to display the week any way you want—even starting it on a Wednesday, if that’s your choice, as the screenshot below illustrates.

To customize your calendar, go to Outlook and click on Tools and Options, generating this screen:

Now click on Calendar Options, generating the screen below.

As you can see, by checking or unchecking the days of the week and adjusting the other options, not only can you change the First day of the week to any day, you even can customize your calendar to omit certain days and certain hours (by adjusting Start time and End time) and show week numbers of the year (under Calendar options).

In fact, if you work three days a week in one office and two days in another, you may want special calendars for each location.

A second calendar?

That’s right, you can have more than one calendar—even three or more. A new calendar can include all appointments from your primary one or can be a calendar reserved for special dates.

To create an additional calendar, go to your Folder List and right-click on Calendar, producing the screen at right.

If you want the second calendar to include a copy of your primary calendar, click on Copy “Calendar” and if you want a new, blank calendar, click on New Folder and give it a name.

A. That’s an interesting question. If you know the dealer’s reputation, the offer may be a good deal—and that may have less to do with your initial cost savings. Consider this: If a computer is going to break down, it’s likely to happen early in its life because of a faulty component. In fact, back in the 1980s, some computer makers and dealers “burned in” new computers for a day or two to filter out lemons. Today, however, with better-engineered components, there is little need for burn-ins because far fewer computers fail. But on occasion they still do, and the real cost of a breakdown is lost time and lost data. So buying a refurbished machine may not be such a bad idea.

Well, I found a product that not only works nearly flawlessly—it’s free. Software designer Paul Graham engineered SpamBayes, which is based on the probability theorem of the 18th century mathematician Thomas Bayes. Once you load the software, you train it by identifying messages you want blocked. It quickly learns the attributes of your definition of spam and steers suspect messages into a separate folder where you can review them and override any errors. After only one day of training (I get about 100 e-mails a day), SpamBayes began to perform with nearly 100% accuracy.

To download the free 3.2 MB file, go to http://starship.python.net/crew/mhammond/spambayes.

If you want a mathematical explanation on how to works, go to www.paulgraham.com/spam.html.

Click on the one you want and it will replace the default for that message.

STANLEY ZAROWIN is a freelance writer in Zionsville, Indiana. Mr. Zarowin retired from the JofA in 2003. His e-mail address is zarowin@mindspring.com.