Tips & Tricks

  • Selecting random files or folders in a PDA
    • Just tap the Ctrl key on the keyboard , it would "stick" and tap multiple items.
  • Conserve power while listening to music
    • Open Windows Media Player and select "Options..." from the "Tools" menu.
      1. Select "Screen Toggle" from the "Select Function" drop down menu.
      2. Now, push the button on your Pocket PC that you would like to use.
      3. I selected my first hardware button, but you can choose whatever button you wish.
      4. Click "Ok" in the top right corner of the screen.
      Now, when you're listening to music, press the hot key to turn off the screen and save power. (Note: Any buttons you map will not launch their normal application while Media Player is open. For example, if you set the Contacts hardware button to toggle screen, it will no longer open the Contacts window until Media Player is closed.)
  • Convert AVI videos to MPEG to view them on Pocket and Handheld PCs
    • PocketTV (www.mpegtv.com) is a great little MPEG movie player for Pocket, Palm-size and Handheld PCs (not yet available for the H/PC 2000). Unfortunately, many short videos are saved in AVI format. The good news is that you can get utilities that convert AVI to MPEG formats. I found two freeware programs at (www.mnsi.net/~jschlic1). Avi2mpg1 and Wav2mp run on Windows '95 and NT machines. They are not GUI applications. You have to open up a DOS window and run them from the C:\> command prompt. Avi2mpg1 is an .AVI to MPEG-1 (.mpg) video/audio encoder, while Wav2mp is a .wav to mpeg (.mp2) audio layer 1 & 2 encoder.
  • Adding or Subtracting a Series of Number
    • If you are adding or subtracting a series of numbers on the calculator, it might be a pain to enter all of them and the possibility of a typographic error also increases. An easy way to do such a calculation is to just use excel to type in the long string of calculation.
  • Display Contacts in larger font
    • To ease a potential eye strain by increasing the size of the font for items in your Contacts list, follow the steps below:
      Contacts>Tools>Options>Use large font>OK
      The difference isn’t huge; however it does help a bit. The same thing can be done in Tasks and Calendar.
  • How to Get E-mail Service
    • If you want to read and respond to Hotmail e-mails from your Pocket PC, go to http://mobile.msn.com/pocketpc/ and sign in, and then click the Hotmail link. You will then see a list of your e-mails with the “From” and “Subject fields”. Tap on any item to read that e-mail. You can also reply to any e-mail.
      If you want to synchronize your Hotmail e-mails directly to Pocket Outlook, then you can try the Pocket Hotmail application at http://www.frieger.com/photmail/index.html.
      To check your emails on yahoo use the link wap.oa.yahoo.com
  • Save more space with Word documents
    • Documents saved in Word.doc format take up a lot of file storage space on your Pocket PC. Use ActiveSync, which will convert the Word document to Pocket Word (.psw or .pwd) format, which saves a lot of space. By default, ActiveSync is set to convert Word document to Pocket Word format. But it will not convert .rtf or .txt files to Pocket Word. To do so, change settings in the ActiveSync. Connect ActiveSync to the device, then go to Tools>Options>Rules>Conversion Settings menu.
      However, there is a down side with .txt files; they cannot have image files embedded in them.
  • Clear picture on Today screen background
    • It is often noticed that while using a picture on Today screen background the picture display is faded, grayish look. To get rid of this problem, do the following:
      Start > Programs > Pictures> Tools > Set as Today Wallpaper> Choose 'Crop to Fit' or 'Fit to Screen' > Choose 'Transparency Level'> Click “OK”> Click “OK”.
  • Make a Live Link to a Document from an Appointment or Contact
    • To make a Live Link to a document from an Appointment or Contact using the built-in Pocket Outlook application, follow the steps below:

      a) Open an existing Appointment or Contact, or create a new one. Tap on the notes tab in the Appointment or Contact screen to open the Notes screen.

      b) Type a link to the file in the Notes screen in the following format:
      file://\My Documents\filename.*
      where filename is the name of the file and * is the file extension.

      c) In the link that you have typed, replace the empty space between the words "My" and "Documents" with "%20" as following:
      file://\My%20Documents\filename.*

      d) Put a space after the file path or hit Enter using the soft keyboard. The link will become live immediately.

      You can use the above method to link to any file. However, remember to replace any empty spaces in the file path with "%20".

      (Note: The easiest way to make a live link to a document from an Appointment or Contact is by using a third-party application, such as Agenda Fusion or Pocket Informant.)

  • Conserve Power While Playing Music
    • When you are listening to WMA or MP3 audio files on your Windows Media Player, you can conserve some power by switching off the screen. First you have to map a button to switch off the screen while Windows Media Player is running. To do so follow the tip below:
      In Windows Media Player, go to Tools > Settings > Buttons. In the screen that appears, select the "toggle screen" function from the functions drop-down menu, then choose a hardware button to which you would like to assign the "toggle screen" function. You can then press this button while Windows Media Player is playing to switch off the screen. If the hardware button was originally mapped to run some other application, then it will retain its original mapping once you quit Windows Media Player.
  • Storing Attachments on the Storage Card
    • You can automatically store the attachments in your incoming e-mails to the storage card instead of to main memory. Open the Inbox application on your Pocket PC. Go to Tools > Options > Storage. In the Storage Options screen, check the box which says "Store attachments on storage card."
      But for some devices like the HP iPAQ 2210s it will not work. This option only allows the user to save attachments in the only Storage Card that particular Pocket PC recognizes which is no other than the File Store.
  • Finding the applications hogging valuable memory
    • Often our PDAs slow down and performances get deteriorated due to some heavy applications, files and folders. The software SpaceFinder tells you which applications, folders and files are taking up excessive space and these can then be removed. The software comes in two versions- one is free and the other will cost you around $5(USD) and both can be downloaded from the site www.tillanosoft.com.
 
 

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