Ever notice how eventually, your list of “Favorites” or “Bookmarked” sites gets to be a mile long and it takes forever to locate stuff, even alphabetically? Well, there’s an easier way.

Just make your own Microsoft Word Favorites page that has all your links. (You can put the e-mail addresses of all your contacts there, too.) After all, the URLs you use most every day you can remember, or else they’re handily available in the memory of the browser’s location box. The URLs and e-mail addresses that you should type onto the Word doc page would be those that usually elude you because of infrequent use of them.

For example, I sometimes wonder if it’s Mailstart.com, Webbox.com or Mailbox.com where I go to handle my e-mail when I’m out of town.

If I’ve taken my computer, I pull up the Word doc to tell me the correct URLs I need. If I left my computer home and am checking e-mail in an Internet café or at a hotel or friend’s home, I can do one of two things:

1. Use the “Favorites” Word document on a disk that I brought along.

2. I can have e-mailed the page to myself earlier, and then when I go to www.webbox.com or a similar web-based e-mail service, I could just get my e-mail, open that particular e-mail message and then proceed to click on the links or open up e-mail addresses to my contacts. By the way, WebBox.com is a terrific place to handle your e-mail when you are away from your office or main computer. For only $6/year you get fast access to six of your family’s e-mail addresses.

Take the time to make your “Favorites” list of URLS and e-mail addresses on a Word or other word processing document and copy it to a disk that you’ll take with you on trips. And be sure to save some of the above links and instructions on how to find key data. Next time you’re frantically writing an offer and need help, you’ll be glad you did.

Finding links to local schools

Many of your visitors ask about the quality of local education. Now you can have a Web site, or a packet all prepared to mail or e-mail them when they ask.

To find the sites from which you can gain such information, go to www.google.com and search for the following terms.

• City = “(Your cityname) school district”
• County = “(Your countyname) school district”
• State = “(Your statename school district”
• U.S. = “National School Information News”

Use "Cut," not "Delete" to avoid ugly data loss

When getting rid of text or images always use Cut instead of Delete. Why? Because when you use Cut, the material is saved temporarily on your clipboard and not lost forever as it is with Delete.

Thus, if you had eliminated something by mistake, you could always replace or retrieve it by simply locating your curser where it originally had been and hitting Paste.

The excised material will appear right where it used to be. Alternatively, you can move it to any other file and by clicking on Paste, the material will appear. At least until you Cut something else—doing so replaces any earlier material stored on the clipboard.