I have Windows 98 and use Internet Explorer 5 and want to alphabetize my Favorites folder. But all I see is an option to “organize” it, and this does not include arranging the Web site list alphabetically. This lack of order makes for a slow process, wading through my favorites to find the site I’m looking for. Am I overlooking something?

I don’t know if a higher version of IE has that option, but when I had downloaded a higher version before just to upgrade (at that time I didn’t think to see if it had that option), I got too many pop-ups, so I downgraded back to IE 5.

If upgrading IE is the solution to my original problem, then how do I get around the second problem of pop-ups?

Bonnie Britton, Hampton, Va.

If you bite the bullet and upgrade to Internet Explorer 6, you can, indeed, sort those bookmarks alphabetically, Ms. B.

In the latest version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Web browser, there is a Sort by Name tool available by placing the cursor arrow over any item in the Favorites list and giving a right-click. Pick “Sort by name” from the menu that pops up (if you’ll pardon the expression), and the software will arrange them from A to Z.

As to pop-ups, I recommend that you go to www.toolbar.google .com and download the Google Toolbar, which includes a pop-up blocker among a set of useful tools, starting with a Google search window always waiting in the browser’s toolbars.

I have lost the menus from the taskbars in Word 2001 on my PowerMac 6500. I found your column in June 2003 in which you tackled the same problem by having people right-click on the top of the menu. Well, that must be for IBM-type computers, because my Mac mouse doesn’t have a right-click.

George [email protected]

Macintosh computers and Windows machines so closely resemble each other these days that I sometimes forget that Mac makers continue to limit their customers to mice with a single click button. If Captain Hook were a computer, I guess he would be a Mac.

Anyway, the trick to initiating the right-click in software written for Windows but translated into the Mac operating system is to hold down the Control key while clicking.

Apple’s insistence on one-trick mice has deprived most Mac OS users of a number of keen Windows features, like scroll wheels that can quickly move up or down a document, and the ability to issue some commands with a right-click and others with a left one.

Mac users should be delighted to discover, as I have, that the latest versions of the Mac operating system will let you plug a Windows mouse and keyboard in to a USB port and get all of those Windows extras while enjoying the benefits of Mac OS as well.

When I receive new e-mails using Outlook Express, my e-mails arrive in my deleted folder and not my inbox. This happens on about 90 percent of incoming mails.

Ken [email protected]

As a rule, Mr. W., this glitch is caused because somebody or something tinkered with the e-mail rules built in to Outlook Express. To change your rules and accept all incoming notes, do the following:

Open Outlook Express and click on the Tools menu at the rules is the culprit. So look for checked boxes and then remove the checks to restore the computer to its original unruly state.



Jim Coates writes for the Chicago Tribune.



(Contact Jim Coates via e-mail at jcoatestribune.com or via snail mail at the Chicago Tribune, Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago IL 60611. Questions can be answered only through this column. Add your point of view at www.chicagotribune.com/askjim.)

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