Daddy Bob

DADDY BOB'S COMPUTER Q & A

 

July 16, 2006

 

Q. Sometime someone sends me a picture and it's so big that you have to scroll over and down in order to see the picture. Is this a problem with the sender or receiver? What can be done to make the whole picture show on the screen?

A. It is most likely a problem with the sender. More than likely he has taken the pictures with a digital camera, and it is set (usually be default) to a high resolution, possibly as high as 1152 X 856 pixels or larger. When a picture taken at a resolution of 1152 X 856  is displayed on a screen with a resolution of 800 X 600, it will appear much larger, making it too large to fit on the screen.

Most older computers have a default display resolution of 640 X 480 or 800 X 600. Newer ones have a much higher default resolution of 1024 X 768, 1152 X 856, 1280 X 960, or even higher. This just means they can display more pixels, and thus larger pictures without scrolling.

 There is a very handy little program from Microsoft, one of the Power Toys, called "Image Resizer". When it has been installed, there is a new entry in the right click menu of a picture file called "Resize Pictures". Right clicking on a picture file name, and then selecting the Resize Picture option, displays this dialog. 

Here, the picture or group of pictures can be resized to any of the four predetermined sizes, or any custom size. You can also choose to make the resized picture smaller but not larger and to resize the originals or make copies.

To download this Image Resizer Power Toy program directly from the Microsoft website, click HERE.  To download all the XP Power Toys, look for the download link on the Download Page in my Topic section.

Q. I am trying to email some files to a friend that I wrote but my email program keeps blocking it. It says that it is blocked because it may have unsafe materials in it which is bologna. How can I override that?

A. Email programs that reject emails because of security reasons rarely check the content of the file to see if it contains something harmful. They look ONLY at the file extension, the .doc, .exe, .mdb, xlm, etc. Since many malware programs are distributed using these kinds of files, it reports that the file COULD contain something harmful, and blocks sending it.

Since ANY .exe file CAN contain something bad, ALL .exe files are automatically rejected. The same thing can hold for .doc files. Since ANY .doc file can contain a destructive macro, ALL are rejected. Most likely, the rejection has absolutely nothing to do with what's in the file.

What you should do is zip the files, then just send the single zip file.  Zip files are usually not rejected by most email filters since they require a deliberate action on the part of the receiving person before they can be used.

Click HERE to view or download as a Microsoft Word document

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