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Note: This article was published in the UK Legal Journal New Law Journal on March 8th 2002, so some of the advice is a little dated.
"E-lementary, My Dear Watson . . ."
I was still an articled clerk (trainee solicitor/lawyer) when the salesman came into the office with something out of my science fiction books - a tiny box which could do any mathematical calculation in a split second. Of course, the boss (he was a sole practitioner) bought it. By coincidence, the assistant solicitor had urgent need of it as he was just about to prepare some complicated estate accounts . . .
That was 30 years ago. Now not only are electronic calculators indispensable for legal practice, but so are fax machines, mobile phones and networked laptop computers, among other things. But office technology, and especially computer systems, needs looking after. So let's start with a few basic, but occasionally necessary, chores.
Back to Basics
If your mouse pointer starts behaving erratically, turn the mouse upside down and unscrew the ball retainer. Remove the ball and scrape any deposits off the rollers using your fingernails or a plastic biro cap, and your PC should be back to normal.
Make sure all PC users regularly clean their keyboards. Hold upside down and shake vigorously. You'll be surprised at how much dust and dirt comes out. Make it a strict rule that no food or drinks are allowed near keyboards.
Every six months or so PCs should be cleaned internally. The IT manager's assistant should unscrew the lid and remove the dust build-up with a can of compressed air or a vacuum cleaner hose extension. Ensure all PCs have their power-saving mode enabled for when the user is away from his desk.
When you switch your PC on in the morning, give it a little time to "warm up", like a motor engine, before giving it any work. This applies especially if your office has been very cold the previous night, so switch it on before having your early morning coffee, not after. Keep all your computer equipment, including printers, out of direct sunlight and away from radiators. Simply following these basic rules can save a lot of money in the long term in call-out fees.
Sometimes your operating system can freeze and crash, resulting in loss of data, downtime and repair costs. Or after several hours of running a few programmes, it can slow down and even refuse to function. This happens when there are too many demands on the machine's RAM (memory).
If you detect this happening, try emptying your Windows clipboard of data. In a word processing or text document type a blank carriage space, highlight it and press Ctrl+C. If you want to view what's in your clipboard from time to time, put a shortcut to it on your desktop. Click Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Clipboard Viewer. Right click on it and drag it onto your desktop. Select "Create Shortcut". Then, by double clicking on the icon, you open the clipboard and view its current contents. Click "Edit" and "Delete" to empty it.
If this doesn't solve the problem, save all your data, systematically close all open programmes, and re-boot. If you can't close your programmes, try pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete to close each open programme in turn. Click on Start > Settings > Taskbar and Start Menu, select the Start Menu Programs tab and click on the Clear button (this, plus clearing the Clipboard, is a useful procedure to perform each time you shut down). Then click on Start > Shutdown > Restart. Pressing the shift key while clicking on Restart speeds up the process.
Save and Back Up
Now for saving your work and backing up data. Most people are lax in this because modern hardware is so reliable. But it can fail on occasion and when it does it's usually when you've failed to back up or save your work recently. Make it a habit to save your work to disk every few minutes. Back-ups can be made to each PC's hard drive or to the server in a local area network. Use a CD-R or zip drive to make regular back-ups of all your firm's data. Large and important cases should be fully backed up on floppy disk as well. The important thing is to have at least two back-ups of all important data, one of which is taken away from the office overnight.
One thing that's often overlooked when backing up data is your e-mail address book. If you use Microsoft's Outlook Express, here's how to back it up. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to C:\Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book. Check for a file with a .WAB extension. Back this up like any other file, to another drive, preferably a floppy disk.
Still on the subject of backing up, Send-to is one of the most useful functions of Windows. It provides a quick way of backing up your data files. Open Windows Explorer (Windows key + E) and scroll to the folder where the document is that you wish to back up. Right click on the document in the right hand window and select Send To. A list of places you can copy the document to appears, but if you have a zip drive or other means of backing up data (e.g. a separate hard drive) then you will want to add this to the list of options.
Here's how to do it. Open Windows Explorer and scroll down to the Windows folder. Open it and double click on Send To. Go to the Menu bar and select File > New > Shortcut. Then click on Browse to find the application, drive, etc that you wish to add to the list of options. Open the folder and look for the .exe file. Highlight it and select Open. You will have to name the programme. Click Next and then Finish and the item will be added to the Send To list.
Weekly Maintenance
Now for system maintenance. Make sure all staff and fee-earners have a weekly routine of maintaining their PCs. This will save time and money in the form of PC engineers' fees later on. PCs running Microsoft Windows should have ScanDisk and Defragment routines monthly. Or use the Maintenance Wizard (Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Maintenance Wizard), and set it up to maintain your PC once a week, e.g. one lunchtime when your PC is on but you're not using it.
If you have problems with ScanDisk or Defragment, turn off your screensaver and anti-virus programmes temporarily. If that fails then re-boot while pressing F8. This will run Windows in "safe mode", and you should then be able to run ScanDisk without any trouble.
Talking of viruses, whatever anti-virus software you have, update it and perform a virus check at least once a week. Viruses spread mostly via the internet and e-mail. Instruct your staff never to open e-mail attachments, even from people they know and trust, unless they are certain they know what they are. Viruses attached to e-mails are usually passed on unintentionally by trustworthy people. Virus hoaxes are nearly as bad. One recent hoax, if acted upon, would have had you deleting a vital file in your Windows folder. Best to leave everything to your anti-virus software.
Danger on the Line
When you download anything from the internet, that is when your system is at its most vulnerable as far as viruses are concerned. You have the option of 'Save to Disk' or 'Run the Program from its current location'. My advice is always to 'Save to Disk', and specify a folder (preferably on a separate drive to that which your operating system is on). If it has a virus, it is at least quarantined. Then immediately run a virus check on it before opening it or unzipping.
You should seriously consider investing in a "firewall", if you have not done so already. This will protect you and your practice from the activities of hackers and others whose mission in life is to cause problems online for everyone else. There's a download available from http://www.zonelabs.com at a very reasonable price.
Incidentally, if you're carrying out research on the Internet that doesn't involve accessing graphics, why not increase your speed by disabling the graphics on your browser? If you're using Internet Explorer, go to Tools, Options, click on the Advanced tab, and scroll down to where it says Multimedia. Uncheck the box by "Pictures", and click Apply and OK. Empty boxes will replace any graphics, but the pages will load much faster.
Junk e-mail, or "spam", can be dealt with by using "filters". If you use Microsoft Outlook Express as your e-mail programme, go to Tools > Options > Filters and set up the rules for dumping most unsolicited commercial e-mails in the Deleted Folder. But be careful not to set the criteria so wide that legitimate mail is also lost.
Amazingly, some employees spend as much as two hours per day using e-mail and the internet for purely personal purposes, according to a recent study. Make sure you keep the loss of staff hours to a minimum by making your policy clear as far as employee use of the internet and office PCs is concerned. And e-mails disparaging of another person or company are, of course, absolutely out.
Microsoft Word Tips
Show this article to your staff and make sure they learn the basics as set out here. Encourage them to learn all about the software they use, to experiment with it and explore new ways of doing things. Modern programmes have such vast capabilities that it is easy to overlook some valuable timesaving routines and stick to long, slow but more familiar routines.
Taking my own favourite programme, Microsoft Word, as an example, the powers of automation are considerable. Using the tools on the menubar, you can customise your documents automatically. The header and footer function lets you put a reference number on each page of the document. AutoText and AutoCorrect let you store whole paragraphs and recall them by typing just two or three keys. If you're preparing a long document with frequent repetitions of a particularly difficult and lengthy word, simply place it in AutoCorrect as being the proper spelling of the first two or three consonants and see how much lighter the swear box is at the end of the week!
When copying and pasting text which extends beyond the bottom of the screen you often have a problem in controlling how much text is selected. When you get to the bottom the document suddenly zooms up at the speed of light and you have no chance of stopping the highlighting where you want.
To overcome this, do one of the following. Select Shift + Up/Down Arrow to highlight one line at a time, or Ctrl + Shift + Up/Down Arrow to highlight one paragraph at a time, or Shift + Page Up/Down to highlight a page at a time. This is assuming, of course, that you don't own one of those expensive wheel mice which give very precise control over scrolling speed.
Take some time to find out your own time-saving techniques. It will be well worth it. I wonder what my boss of 30 years ago thinks of modern office technology?
Here's to the next thirty years of office automation!
Copyright © 2002-2008 Philip Gegan, Leicester, England.