Inbox

Compiled by MICHAEL FOREMAN

Welcome to Inbox, where we attempt to answer your internet questions.

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Barry was forwarded a virus warning from a friend with the subject line "Virus Alert!! Please check," which urged him to remove a file called sulfnbk.exe from his hard disk. "I was sceptical, but I found the file hiding on my C drive. It deleted successfully according to the instructions, but do you know anything about it?"

You shouldn't have deleted that file Barry. This is not a virus, it's a hoax. Some say these sorts of messages are "behavioural viruses" because they make people do things they shouldn't - like send the bogus warning on to their friends. This particular one is a bit complicated - as in some rare cases a virus can exist in the sulfnbk.exe file. But it is a standard Windows system file and if deleted will cause some problems. Read about it Urban Legends - a great site for checking out the accuracy of e-mails you're not sure about.

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Ron, a tutor for SeniorNet internet classes, was recently asked by a student whether there was a quick way of changing text from upper case to lower case, or vice versa, after the caps lock key has been accidentally activated.

So this happens to other people too? I've lost count of the times I have merrily typed away with my head down, only to discover my words are appearing in capitals. If you are using Microsoft Word there's a handy shortcut to fix this problem - simply select the affected text and keep pressing shift-F3 until the correct case is displayed. To stop it happening again, go to tools/autocorrect and under the autocorrect tab, check the box marked "correct accidental use of caps lock key" and click OK.

Word Perfect users will find a similar facility at tools/quickcorrect. Click on the format-as-you-go tab, and check the capsfix box. There are also a number of shareware programs that deactivate the Caps Lock and Insert keys - one of the best known for Windows is SmartCaps (available at Phoebus), while Mac users could try CapsOff.

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Jacqueline writes: "The messages in my in-box for the last few days appear in mixed date order and what is far worse - new messages appear scattered throughout the read messages instead of last and I have to scroll to find them. What can I do to correct this?"

If you look at the top of the messages pane, you'll find tabs marked From, Subject and Received. If you click on the Received tab, your messages will be sorted according to the date received in either ascending or descending order (click again to change from ascending to descending order and vice versa).

Links:


Urban Legends

Phoebus

Capsoff

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If there's anything you want to know about the exciting world of the web, just e-mail inbox@herald.co.nz.