President's Corner:  There is an Easier Way to Handle Bookmarks

 

       by David Robbins     February 2005

    If you are like me and you have bookmarks for scores of your favorite stops on the Internet, this can lead to a headache trying to manage them so you can return to that location at a later time. There is an easy way to get and keep this situation under control if you have Word (or probably any word processor program that can handle html).
    When you want to add a bookmark, open Word and grab the icon to the left of the URL and drag it to the open document and drop it. If the word program and the browser are not side by side on the desktop, drag the bookmark to the box representing your word processing program on your taskbar and wait for the document to pop up. Copy and Paste may cause you to go through extra steps to reestablish the Hyper link to the Internet.
    Make headers with titles for the category and drop the bookmark under the appropriate category. Add a couple of lines to describe what is on the site. Make it as complicated or as simple as necessary. These bookmarks are shortcuts or links to the Web page that they represent and work just as well here as they do in your Favorites folder, and are easier to manage.
    There is one more thing; if you need to put some or all of your bookmarks temporarily on another computer, this can be done by putting the document on a removable media and then opening the file from that media. This will keep the shortcuts from being put on the hard drive of the other computer, although the Web sites visited will be listed in the History folder.

Example:
Windows Updates and other shortcuts to the Internet concerning Windows
    Extended support 98, 98SE and ME
    http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=LifeAn1
Wordpad security update
    http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS04-041.mspx
Hyperterminal update
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/873339

    If you try to copy the bookmarks already in the Favorites folder you will end up with something totally different. This will also work, but you will probably have to direct the shortcuts to their intended location on the Internet. You may also notice a problem if the icon has a long name.

 

 

David Robbins is President of the Computer Club of Oklahoma City. David can be reached at   David Robbins