Internet Explorer 8

How do I get Internet Explorer 8?

Internet Explorer 8 is not automatically installed on your PC via Windows Update. If you want to install it on your PC, you will need to go to the Microsoft Download site at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/worldwide-sites.aspx

Exporting from Outlook to Excel

You can export addresses from Microsoft Outlook to Excel as follows:

1. Opening Outlook
2. Choose File, Import and Export
3. Choose "Export to a File"
4. Click "Next"
5. Choose "Microsoft Excel"
6. Click "Next"
7. Choose "Contacts" as the folder to export from
8. Click "Next"
9. "Save exported file as" and choose a name for your file
10.Click "Next" and then Finish

You might need to delete some of the columns from Excel that aren't relevant.

Cookies

What is a cookie?

A cookie is a small text file on your computer that stores your preferences. This means that when you visit a website, the site remembers information and uses it to offer a personalised experience, for example, Amazon when making recommendations for you and ecommerce websites where items can be stored in the shopping cart until you return to the website.

Websites will normally provide details about how they use cookies - these can usually be found within their privacy policy.

It is possible to block cookies - here's how to do it in Internet Explorer and Firefox.

• Internet Explorer - select Tools, Internet Options, choosing the Privacy tab and moving the bar up to Block All Cookies.
• Firefox - select Tools, Options, Privacy and untick the Accept cookies from sites.

Search Engine Optimisation Companies

We've been contacted by an SEO company who say they know someone who works at Google and they can guarantee good rankings for us - is this true?

No!

Google states "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever."

Google suggests some questions when looking to hire a search engine optimisation company:

• Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?
• Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?
• Do you offer any online marketing services or advice to complement your organic search business?
• What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe?
• How do you measure your success?
• What's your experience in my industry?
• What's your experience in my country/city?
• What's your experience developing international sites?
• What are your most important SEO techniques?
• How long have you been in business?
• How can I expect to communicate with you?
• Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?

GIF or JPEG?

I have no idea when to save a file as a gif or a jpeg - help!

GIF format is usually used for saving logos and graphics and JPEG is for photographs. There are a number of full explanations on the internet - just Google for "jpeg or gif".

Adding symbols to Word documents

I need to type some French words but can’t see how to add the accents on my keyboard – how do I do this?

There are a number of ways you can type letters for different languages, for example, if you open Word, and choose Insert, Symbol, click the drop down menu labelled Font to choose the font you want and click the drop down menu labelled Subset eg Latin-1 Supplement. The symbols will appear underneath – choose the one you want eg é and click insert.

If you regularly type in a different language, it may be useful to learn the shortcut codes – here are a couple:

[Hold down the Alt key and on the number key pad type the number and release the keys]

• Alt and 130 = é (é can also be typed by holding down the Alt Gr key and typing e)
• Alt and 135 = ç

Have a look in the Symbols menu on Word for more (the shortcut code is also displayed).

Email Spam's Carbon Footprint

The Carbon Footprint of Email Spam Report by McAfee and ICF International published this year reports that "an estimated worldwide total of 62 trillion spam emails were sent in 2008" and "the annual global spam footprint is equivalent to 3 million passenger vehicles on the road annually".

This is because of the amount of time users spend on searching for and deleting spam.
The full report can be found at http://img.en25.com/Web/McAfee/CarbonFootprint_12pg_web_REV_NA.pdf

Remove Program from PC

I want to remove a program from my computer that I have installed - how do I do this?

This is a straightforward process in Windows:

1. Start
2. Control Panel
3. Add or Remove Programs
4. Choose the program from the list that you want to remove
5. Click Change/Remove button

How Google works

We’re interested in finding out more about Google and how it works. We know that within Google there are areas for developers, where else can we get information about Google?

YouTube contains the official Google channel, called ‘Webmaster Central’ and in this there are resources for webmasters to help you with your crawling and indexing questions, introduce you to offerings that can enhance and increase traffic to your site and connect you with your visitors.

Recent videos include

• Does the position of keywords in the URL affect ranking?
• Will Google use non-link references as a signal?

There is a special area inside Google.com which is also called Google Webmaster Central. This contains a help area, blog and lots of tools.