The PC corner: resources for economists on the Internet - web sites of the guide on 'Resources for Economists on the Internet'

Business Economics, Oct, 1997 by John H. Qualls

While an RTF file loads OK into earlier versions of Word, certain types of formatting are lost in the transition. Also, embedded Excel OLE (object link edited) graphs are stored as bit-mapped picture objects and can no longer be edited directly in Word. To add insult to injury, RTF files with embedded Excel graphics are more than twice as big as the native Word files.

That's the bad news. The good news is that Microsoft supposedly did a running fix of this problem, so new versions of Office 97 should be OK. Also, they have fixes for the problem on their WWW site (http://www.microsoft.com). Two fixes are available. One modifies copies of Word 97 so that it works as advertised and saves Word 6.0/7.0 files in their native format when told to do so. The other fix changes the old Word 6.0/7.0 programs so that they can read Word 97 documents directly. I have installed that version on my copy of Word 7.0 on my office PC, and it works like a charm. Just download WRD97CNV.EXE from Microsoft's web site, and your Word 6.0/7.0 version will be able to read Word 97 files and avoid all of these compatibility problems.

I occasionally have need to put leading zeros in numbers in an Excel spreadsheet. One way of doing this is to enter the numbers as alphanumeric characters by typing a single apostrophe followed by the number (e.g., '01). Unfortunately, Excel no longer recognizes the entry as being a number. For instance, if you sum a column of numbers entered in this fashion, you will get 0 (zero) as the answer.

The easiest way of getting around this problem is to enter the numbers normally, without the leading zeros. Then, format the numbers with a custom format, using 00 (zero zero) as the custom format code. If you are formatting three digit numbers, just use 000 (three zeros) as the code. To define a new custom code, first highlight the numbers that you want to reformat. Click on the Format Cells menu item. Then, click the Number tab and select the Custom category. Enter 00 (or as many zeros as you desire) in the Format Codes box.

There appears to be an annoying bug in Windows 95. I have created a shortcut to the Oxford world model, which is a DOS program. I want to be able to run this program in the background while doing other work, so I selected the appropriate option when creating the shortcut. Unfortunately, this option gets deselected if I exit the program while it is running in full-screen DOS mode. I have to remember to stick the program back into a window (using the "alt-Enter" sequence) and exit from the program while it is residing in this window. This problem also exists with other DOS shortcuts to such programs as my old version of Lotus 1-2-3.

This problem did not exist in Windows 3.1. Does anyone out there know how to make the background processing choice permanent in Windows 95?

John H. Qualls is Senior Economist, National Center for Financial and Economic Information, Ministry of Finance, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.