Author Archives

    Bryan Sims

    Posted on

    So Close, But Not Quite There Yet

    by

    A few weeks ago I received an email from one of the bankruptcy courts to which I am admitted. The email announced that they will be doing an “ECF Tip of the Month.” The idea is to address problems commonly encountered with the ECF system.

    For example, the first tip is for filing an amended creditor matrix. From viewing the materials in the tip, it appears that people are filing the amended matrix as an original matrix.

    The tip contains good information and includes a tutorial in Adobe Captivate that shows how to properly upload the creditor matrix. I think this is a good idea and eventualy it will provide a good source of archived tips.

    I have two issues with how they have implimented it, however. First, there is no RSS feed. This is the perfect type of material to have an RSS feed with. Why make it difficult for people to find the tips when they are released. Second, there is no separate landing page for the Tip of the Month. Instead there is a blinking title over the link to the tip of the month, that takes you to the particular demo. Once again, if this is something you want people to access regularly, it should have its own page on the website.

    Posted on

    Excel Tips

    by

    Nerino Petro has identified a great article revealing some hidden gems in Microsoft Excel 2007. I believe that Excel is one of the most under used programs in a law office. There are so many things that you can do in Excel must easier than you can do in any other manner.

    I use it daily to keep track of my expense report. I also use it quite frequently to calcuate amounts due for preparing a judgment or a affidavit for collection proceedings. The program is quite powerful.

    I owe a tip of the hat to my wife, because without her, I would likely have never understood the true power of Excel. Like many attorneys, I am not a math person. Because of this, I simply avoided Excel. Once I saw how it easy it was to calcuate postjudgment amounts due, however, I was hooked.

    If you are looking for some great tips on using Excel, I urge you to check out this article. If you are not using Excel, I encourage you to try it out. On my Files page, I have several Excel templates that I talked about when I did a presentation on Excel for the Chicago Bar Association. These template predate my new computer. Thus they are in Excel 2003 format.

    Posted on

    TinyURL Creator Rocks (Again)

    by

    A few posts ago I knocked TinyURL Creator (a Firefox extension) for the fact that it made me go through an unnecessary mouse click everytime that I used it. Because of this, I named Shrinkify my favorite URL shrinker.

    Today I admit my error. Yes, in its default mode, TinyURL still makes you click a box everytime that it generates a tiny URL. However, stopping the extension from doing this is a simple as selecting: Tools > Add Ons > Extensions > TinyURL Creator > Options.  In the Options dialog box, select the box next to “Do not show confirmation dialog apon [sic] TinyURL creation.” Once you have done this, you no longer have to deal with the annoying dialog box again.

    Now TinyURL Creator is back to being my favorite Firefox extension that shrinks URLs. The main reason that it moves back into first place is that the extension has been updated to work with Firefox 3. Shrinkify has not yet updated its extension.

    If you are still using Firefox 2, either extension should work fine for you. If you are using Firefox 3, I would go with TinyURL Creator simply beacuse you can install and use it without any difficulty.

    Posted on

    Fixing iTunes Library Problem

    by

    We are getting ready to go on a short road trip. This means that I wanted to add some music to my wife’s iPod (it’s what we use for music on the trip). While selecting songs to add to the iPod (checking the little boxes in iTunes), I accidentally selected all of the songs in the iTunes library.

    Given that we have over 5,000 songs in our library, this can be a bit of a problem. No one wanted to go back through the the library and select the songs that we actually wanted to synch to the iPod. Fortunately, we had recently synchronized the iPod and it had our currently selected songs on it. After some Googling, my wife found a solution that allowed us to reselect our desired songs without spending hours going through the library again.

    Her solution is as follows.

    1. On the iPod, create an On the Go Playlist.
    2. Go to Genres.
    3. Hold the select button down for each genre until it flashes blue three times. This should add the songs in that genre to the playlist.
    4. Go back to playlists and open the On the Go Playlist.
    5. Scroll to bottom.
    6. The last option is save. Select that.
    7. Uncheck all music in iTunes.
    8. Synch iPod
    9. The synch will wipe all the music off the iPod. However, the playlist will show up in iTunes.
    10. Open the new playlist in iTunes. Select all of the songs. Right click, and choose check selected.
    11. Check any other other playlists you might have to make sure that all songs were selected.
    12. Synch again.
    13. Problem solved.
    Posted on

    A Mobiliti Solution

    by

    One of my favorite programs is Mobiliti which is now owned by Packeteer, Inc. When I first started using the program it was called Network Ungplugged. I actually prefer that name, because it is a great description of what it does. The program allows me to synchronize my network files to my laptop so that I can work on the files when I am away from the network. Not only is this program easy to use, but it also preserves the file paths of the files, so that working on the files on my laptop is just like working on the files on my network.

    Mobiliti is a great program and one I recommend for anyone often has to work when disconnected from the network.

    Recently, I had some files on our network that were deleted. I had local copies of the files on my laptop and I needed to synchronize them back to the network. The way that the synchronization is set up, if a file is deleted from either the network or the local drive, the other file is deleted upon synchronization. In this case, I did not want that to happen. Instead, I wanted certain local files to be copied back to the network.

    I looked in the configuration settings and did not find a way to do that. I checked the online Knowledge Base and still found no solution. So I contacted customer support via email and got my answer. I am posting it here in case others need the info and so that I can find it again.

    1. Go to File\Synchronization settings\synchronization tab and set it to fully interactive mode. Save changes by clicking OK.
    2. Sync.
    3. At the preview, select the file that you don’t want to be deleted from the real network. Right click and choose “Change sync action”
    4. Set the sync action to the new desired action and proceed with sync.
    Posted on

    Another Office 2007 Conversion Solution

    by

    A couple of days ago I wrote about the fact that many people still use Office 2003 and are unable to read documents created in Office 2007. The solution that I suggested was that if you are using Office 2003, you should download the compatability pack that allows you to read Office 2007 documents.

    Of course, not everyone will download the compatability pack. Tom Mighell, of Inter Alia, has a different solution. He suggests using Scribed.

    Tom explains:

    Here’s how it works. Take your document and attach it to an email. Address it to the members of your team, and CC ipaper@scribd.com on the message. Scribd will take your document, convert it to iPaper, and send your collaborators a copy of the link to the online document. And if you haven’t viewed a document in Scribd yet, you’re missing out. Scribd supports a lot of document formats, too — in addition to all Office files (both 2003 and 2007), it will convert PDF, PS, .TXT, .RTF, and open document formats.

    The great thing about Tom’s solution is that you are simply adding an additional email address to your message. You do not have to take the time to manually upload the file a to a service such as Scribed or Google Docs.

    As always, when using a service such as this, you must be cognizant of their terms of use to make sure that you are not disclosing confidential information to third parties. However, this is a great simple solution for sharing documents with others without worrying about what software program your recipient is using.

    Posted on

    Another Great Acrobat Feature

    by

    For years, I have done the majority of my research online. Until a couple of years ago, I would identify the cases that helped me, email those cases to myself, print them out, and then highlight/take notes on the hard copy. A couple of years ago, I realized that it made no sense for me to keep all of my documents electronically, but keep my research in hard copy.

    After coming to this realization, I switched to printing my cases to PDF and then commenting and highlighting the cases in Adobe Acrobat. If I have a big project, however, I can end up with several cases to print to PDF. This can be a time consuming task if it is done one case at a time.

    Using Adobe Acroabt 8 Professional (no, I do not yet have 9), I can take advantage of the Batch Processing feature. I simple select Advanced > Document Processing > Save as PDF. I then identify the files that I want converted to PDF. Acrobat will open the files and convert them to PDf for me.

    Last week I had about a dozen cases to convert to PDF. I simply started the batch processing and ran out to grab some lunch. When I returned, all of the work had been done and the files had all been saved as PDFs.

    Posted on

    Fuzzy Navel Released

    by

    I recently reviewed an electronic ARC of Fuzzy Navel by JA Konrath. I enjoyed the book and would certainly recommend it if you have read and enjoyed his other novels.

    Anyway, the book’s release date is today. If you have been waiting for it, wait no more. If you have questions, check out my earlier review. In either instance, Fuzzy Navel is now available for purchase.

    Posted on

    MS Office 2007 Compatibility

    by

    When I got my new computer recently, it came with Office 2007. It took me a while to get used to 2007. The reality is that I was perfectly happy with Office 2003 and I felt no overwhelming reason to change. Since getting Office 2007, I have realized that many other share my opinion in this. It seems that relatively few people have moved to Office 2007.

    The problem is that Microsoft changed the file format in Office 2007, and users of Office 2003 cannot read files created in Office 2007. Fortunately, there is an easy and free fix for this. Unfortunately, it seems as though very few people know about this fix.

    Simply go here and download the compatibility pack. After you install this, you will be able to work with Office 2007, even though you still use only Office 2003.