Reports from 2020

3rd JUNE 2020

Over the past year, members of the computer group have spent many a happy hour(!) investigating ways to edit pdf files.
Thanks to u3a Beacon Forum I have been alerted to AbleWord as a way of importing pdf files into word format.
The program is about 5 years old but works as well, if not better. than any other pdf conversion program I have tried.

Details at http://www.ableword.net/pdfeditor.html.

Well worth investigating if you have few spare minutes during the lockdown.

Regards and keep safe,

Keith

11th MAY 2020

No meetings currently being held.

Group members are welcome to contact Keith if they have any PC related problems or questions.

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Report from Meeting on 4th March 2020

A very different meeting from usual, we covered two topics for the first time in over five years of running the computer group.

1) Anne has to apply for settled status so we looked at the application process on the Government Website. The first part of the process involves scanning a passport using a Smartphone application. Ann does not own a smartphone so we attempted to download the App on Keith's phone which didn't work because Keith's phone doesn't have an NFC facility.

We then successfully downloaded the App on an old smartphone with NFC function, but because we needed to charge the phone first we ran out of time! The saga continues - watch this space.

2) Recently Jenny visited an Auction house which featured in a BBC TV programme about antiques. Jenny and her friend appeared on TV for a few seconds. We discussed capturing, saving and emailing a still image of Jenny which was extracted from iPlayer.

The next meeting takes place on Wednesday 18th March 2020 at 2pm.

Report from Meeting on 19th February 2020

Only two people gathered around the kitchen table at our meeting yesterday. The person who came to Keith's has just moved house and we discussed setting up a new hub, PC plus a couple of mobile phones at the new location.

We also looked at various ways of reading emails via a PC using both the built-in Windows 10 App and via a web browser.

Finally, we downloaded and installed Libre Office as an alternative to Microsoft Word. We were careful to ensure the site we used for downloading was https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/ Other download sites such as softonic are full of adverts and confusing download buttons which do not relate to Libre Office and can easily result in the unwary downloading unwanted programs.

The next meeting takes place on Wednesday 4th March 2020 at 2pm.

Report from Meeting on 5th February 2020

We looked at a number of small topics at this meeting rather than one major subject as is often the case.

Aspects covered include:-

Clearing the print queue when using Ubuntu operating system
Updating GMail Contact lists and producing a Mailing List based on these contacts
Retrieving deleted emails
Ways of adding read receipts to emails. (A possible solution at https://www.boomeranggmail.com)
Uploading photos attached to emails to Google Photos

The next meeting will take place on Wednesday 19th February at 2pm

Report from Meeting on 8th January 2020

Three members of the group attended the meeting on Wednesday 8th January, our first meeting for over a month.

- Two members of the group had recently received messages from Lloyds Bank advising that the passwords they were using no longer satisfied the bank's updated security requirement and more sophisticated passwords were needed. We updated passwords as requested. We also deleted an unwanted payee from one of the bank accounts.

- We then looked at the work round needed when sharing photos stored in Google Photos with a person who does not hold a google account.

- One of our members has the role of a Group co-ordinator and we updated details of some of her Group Members on Beacon and subsequently downloaded a partially redacted spreadsheet /pdf version of the membership list, which we emailed to Group members.

The next meeting will be held on 5th February at 2pm.

Update 7th January 2020

The first Computer Group meeting of 2020 will be on 8th January at the usual time of 2pm. The first and third Wednesday routine will resume on Wednesday 5th February 2020.