ANSWER: What Would You Do? (Broken A: Drive)

OK, I got two answers regarding the last What Would You Do?. Both of these answers are different from what I did, but they both would have worked (sort of). Nonetheless, Mary from Children's and Laura from Bartlett are winners of booklights, which they will be receiving shortly.

Basically, our dilemma involved moving a document from one computer to another without the capability to save the file to anything (something that is necessary to send an attachment or upload to a website).

Mary suggested just copying and pasting the document into an email text box (rather than worrying about attachments). The customer could then send the message to themselves and open the document on another computer. Then they could copy and paste that into Word.

This does work, but doing so would probably strip the document of any special formatting features. However, it works. Mary gets a booklight.

And, yes Mary, having Flash Drives at all public service desks would be sweet.

Laura from Bartlett suggested just saving the document to the My Documents folder on the computer. You would not even need to move the file to another computer because then, the customer would have been able to upload the document.

Well, this does work if you are on a computer that happens to allow you to save to the My Documents folder. Also, as Laura points out, finding the My Documents folder can be quite a task. That is why I have pretty much ruled out the possibility of using the My Documents folder. However, if you know how to do it and it works, then awesome. Laura gets a booklight. Laura also suggested the Mary-technique of copying and pasting into an email message.

What I did in this situation now seems like technology overkill, but I was able to move the customer's document from one computer to another without losing any special formatting.

First, we created a Google Docs and Spreadsheets account. If a customer has an existing email, this takes about 2 minutes. We then pasted the Word document into Google Docs. Then we accessed the customers new Google Docs account from another computer. Then, Google Docs has the option to Save as a Word document (again, we do not lose any special formatting). We were then able to upload the document. We did it in a flash.

Of course, this was a fairly savvy teen who was able to go through this process easily. I may not take all customers on this journey. Of course, what is easier, pushing a customer through Google Docs or having them re-format their document?

This brings up another idea, but I'll save it for the next blog post. This one is too long as it is.

What Would You Do? (Broken A: Drive)

Here is the current installment of What Would You Do?. The first installment garnered two responses. Let's see if we can get a larger response this go around. This is a good one. One that will force you to use your Sherlock Holmes skills.

This situation occurred yesterday when I was working my Sunday Service. A student had typed a lengthy report on one of our computers. She needed to upload the report to her school's website.

Much like sending an attachment, in order to upload the report, the document has to be saved somewhere (My Documents, Floppy Disk, Flash Drive, etc.). (See this past post for more information on saving/uploading documents).

However, customers cannot save documents to our computers due to security settings. And this particular computer's A:Drive was busted. And we did not have a flash drive.

How would we upload this document? Or, how would we move this document to another computer with a working A:Drive?

Fundamental Skills: Saving and Opening Documents

If you are not comfortable with Saving and Opening files, please view the presentation below (readers using an aggregator will need to access this original post to view). This is a vital skill that is needed in order to do other fun things like insert attachments, uploading resumes, etc.

Enjoy.

How To Email Documents Without Having an Email Account

YouSendIt allows you to email files without actually having an email account.

Just go to YouSendIt. Enter the email address you would like to send the files to. Click on Browse... and locate the file to be sent. Click on Send It.

So how would this be useful? What if someone needs to send a resume but they do not have an email account? What if someone without an email account wants to send pictures to a relative.

Of course, in many situations (especially with job hunting), the customer probably just needs to go ahead and get that email address. However, there will be times when a customer will admit that they have absolutely no need for an email address except for the current situation. Perhaps this would be a viable option in those situations.

Found on Library Zen.

OWA Attachment Difficulties

Some staff have encountered difficulties opening certain attachments in their Outlook Web Access (OWA) accounts. OWA requests that they right-click on the attachment, then click on Save As... on the menu that appears. This allows the user to save the attachment to a desired drive. The user can then open the document from that point. This occurs because OWA is run through Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer does not know how to open all attachments.

If you cannot right-click, use the Tab key to change your link selection (If you Tab too far, use SHIFT+Tab to move backwards). Once the attachment has been highlighted, press the Menu key found to the right of the Space Bar (in between the CTRL key and the Windows key). Then click on Save As... and save the document to the desired drive. Once saved, you can open the document from that drive. NOTE: Never open attachments from unreliable sources!