Move it
Is it possible to transfer text stored on old 5.25 inch floppy disks on to 3.5in disks for use on a more modern computer?
Keith Marder
marder1234@marder.fsbusiness.co.uk

Jack Schofield replies: It should be very easy, but it depends on three things. First, physical compatibility. You need to have a 5.25 inch floppy drive and a 3.5in floppy drive. Hardly any PCs have 5.25in disks these days but you may find a friend has one. In extremis, you can fit a 5.25in drive to your PC, if there is room. Second, operating system compatibility.

The operating system has to be able to read the data sectors on the 5.25in disk. This is not usually a problem as the 5.25in disk will probably be in DOS format which, one way or another, can be read by almost any operating system on many different types of hardware. Third, application compatibility.

You may be able to move the file but do you have an application that can read it? If the file is in plain text format, then almost any program will read it. If it is a proprietary file format, it may be impossible to read it without the software used to create it.

Some programs, such as Microsoft Word, have large sets of filters that will suck data out of a wide range of different formats. It may therefore be possible to use Microsoft Office to read data from an obscure application and then save it in a format that you can use in a new one.

Remember Jack's First Law: Never put data into any application unless you know exactly how you are going to get it out again. Data is expensive (if only in terms of the time needed to create it) and lasts forever, whereas hardware and software are cheap and rarely last more than a couple of years.

Double take
When I bought my PC it came with Outlook Express installed, so I used this to send and receive emails. Later I purchased Microsoft Office and switched to Outlook as my default mail client. From then on, I never had cause to use Outlook Express again.

However, a few weeks ago one of my sons opened Outlook Express, just to see how it varied from Outlook, only to discover two or three unread emails - one of which was quite important. In what circumstances are emails sent to a secondary mail client? Would I need to remove Outlook Express to ensure this doesn't happen in future?
Margaret Smith
msmith51@supanet.com

JS: Mail is not sent to an application, such as Outlook or Outlook Express, it is sent to a mailbox storage area on a host computer. You can then collect it with the software of your choice. Someone may have used OE to collect messages without noticing, or OE may be set up to send and receive messages automatically on start-up. You can find the tick-box for doing this by going to Tools|Options and selecting the tab marked General.

It is in the middle, under Send/Receive Messages. You can prevent OE from fetching any more messages by removing its ability to access your email accounts. Select Tools| Accounts and click the Mail tab. Highlight each email service and click the Remove button. Outlook is a personal information manager designed to work with other Microsoft Office programs, and it also synchronises with handheld computers.

However, it does not have the ability to read Usenet newsgroups, which OE does. Also, OE is part of Internet Explorer. For these reasons, it is not usually removed.

Outclassed
I help run a small school network that uses MS Networking to share directories from a server so each class and child can have their own directory for their work. However, the children keep accidentally moving or deleting theirs (or other children's) directories. Is there any way of locking the directories in place while allowing files within them to be written/changed/deleted?
Mike McLoughlin
mmclough@yahoo.com

JS: Using the Windows System Policy Editor (Poledit) provides some security, and there is a useful tutorial about it at www.elkantler.net/security/security.htm. You could also try some file/directory protection tools such as Mikko Technology's File Protector or Softpile's Easy File Protector. You might also find Roxio's GoBack 3 useful. This allows you to "roll back" what users have done to return a PC to an earlier state, without losing files created in the meantime. However, Windows 9x was not designed with security in mind, and in the long term, you should be thinking about moving to a system that enables an administrator to control the set-up for many separate users. For Windows users, the obvious candidates are Windows NT, 2000 and XP.

Talkback
William Allen responded to last week's memory lapse problem with information about another way to find a hidden internet password. The idea is to get Dial-up Networking to keep a record of what happens when you log on. Open the Ppplog.txt file and about 50 lines down, "just after the point where your Username is sent in plain text, you can read your password as sent in plain text".

For details, see http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q140/7/91.ASP and http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q156/4/35.asp

· Earlier, John Wood had built a website using Microsoft FrontPage 2000, and wanted to include a quiz with multiple-choice questions. I suggested Score, a free Microsoft quiz-making utility. Unfortunately, this disappeared in the vandalism, sorry, in the redesigning of Microsoft's website. However, Richard Nice, Neil Smith and Matthew Nilan all suggested Hot Potatoes instead.

Nilan says: "It's very flexible and very easy to use. It's not freeware but it is free of charge for non-profit educational users who make their pages available on the web." Stephen Spiro suggested the Castle toolkit which does exactly what is wanted. For other ideas, see Sunil Hazari's page at the University of Maryland: http://sunil.umd.edu/documents/assess.htm