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received an email from Ben in Arizona last week.  First of all you may ask, "Are you published in Arizona?"  The answer is nope, but I sure wish I was. Maybe then Kim Komando would discover me and I would be on my way to fame and fortune…yeah, right.  I have had people write to me in the past from all over the world. I have heard from several countries; Switzerland, Japan and one fellow in Greenland to name a few.  The internet provides access everywhere, with the exception of certain countries for various political reasons.  But that’s enough of that.  Let’s get back to Ben.

Ben wanted to know how he could change his user account picture in Windows XP.  He did not want to change it to those standard pictures in XP.  You know…the butterfly, chess pieces, rubber ducky or frog.  He wanted something of his own.  Well he (and maybe you) didn’t realize it but you can change your user account picture to any picture on your computer.  It is very simple to do and works the same on XP, Vista and 7.

First, in order to get to your User Accounts screen for XP you have to go to Start, Control Panel and User Accounts.  However, Vista and especially Windows 7 are much easier. All you have to do is click the Start button and type, "User Accounts", wait a couple of seconds and press enter.

First, you must have rights to change your user account.  If you go to the following locations and they are grayed out or you cannot access them, you need to get with your computer’s administrator and have them give you permission

Once on the User Accounts screen click on your picture/account.  You will see a link that says, "Change my picture".  Pretty easy so far, isn’t it?

Click the "Browse for more pictures" link.  Scroll to the very bottom of the screen if you cannot see it already.  Now, navigate to the folder containing the picture you wish to use.  Most likely it will be in your "My Pictures" folder.

Click the picture and click the open button.  You may also double click on the picture to add it to your account.  The picture will now be the "avatar" for your user account.

Picture size is important to an extent. If you want your pictures to fit perfectly, size them to 128 x 128 pixels.  If they are larger Windows will crop them as it sees fit, with the center in the middle of the graphic; however, you may lose the edges.  Windows does a good job of fitting a larger picture into the smaller space automatically.

Be aware that the computer’s administrator can change all users’ pictures.  However, a user with a limited account or someone using a guest account can only change their own picture.

Check out the video of this at "bit.ly/gcIdj1" and let me know what you think (of course since you are reading this here, online, all you have to do is look below).  Let me know what you would like to learn in the Double Click columns.  I always like to hear from you.  Thanks in advance for the feedback.

Tags: avatar, butterfly, chess, chess pieces, Email, fame and fortune, fellow, frog, japan, kim komando, picture, rubber ducky, switzerland, Tips, tricks, User Account, vista, windows 7, xp

Before I get into today’s discussion I wanted to mention the Bit.ly column from last week.  If you missed last week’s column you will have to buy last week’s paper or go to DoubleClicks.info to check it out.  The link that I mentioned about County Codes, bit.ly/a7Vmpo, was visited by 41 readers.  Thanks for looking!

Today Brian asked how he could change a desktop icon graphic for another graphic.  Keep in mind this can only be performed on your shortcuts.

It isn’t hard to do and it’s sometimes fun to change these tiny graphics to something else.

First, you right click on your shortcut and left click “Properties” at the bottom of the menu list.  Look at the bottom of the window that opens up and click the obvious box, “Change icon…”

The next window displays all of Window’s basic secondary icons.  You will have over 150 icons to choose from, depending on which version of windows you are using.

Once you select the one you like, clicks “OK” at the bottom of the window.  The window will close and the icon on your desktop will change almost immediately.

You can do this with any shortcut icon on your computer, not just the ones on your desktop.  However, it is easier to change those on the desktop until you are a professional…which takes about two tries.  I told you it was easy!

Now don’t go around changing them on your spouse’s computer.  I had a friend who did.  She changed her husband’s icon for Word to Internet Explorer’s so when he thought he was going to open Word he was browsing the net.  Funny trick; however, it was a bit frustrating after he tried it a few times and thought his computer was broken.

Now I didn’t tell you how to change Word to MSIE but if you wanted to try that, click the “Browse” button under “Properties” again.  Then find any other program’s icons and choose that one…not that anyone who reads this would do it – muhahaha!

When you shutdown your computer for the night and restart the next time the icon remains.

Brian asked another good question about changing an icon to a picture he had of himself.  That is trickier but still doable.  Unless you are a real techie-artist I recommend you download a small program which will do it for you.

Pixel Toolbox is a neat little app that will do other small graphics but you need to read the directions to work it smoothly.  It is easy once you figure it out but at first glance it may scare you.  Here is a hint… check the “Icon” picture and import the picture.

If you go to my site and look to the left of the URL you will see a picture of me that I made using Pixel Toolbox.  Have fun and let me know if you enjoyed trying this method out.

Tags: change icon, grahics, picture, pixel toolbox, tricks

I had a great email from AP telling me about someone teaching her a great windows feature this week.  I thought I had written about this hidden feature long ago.  In searching through all of my columns I found that I had not, so today we will take a look.

You know how it works… you are emailing a friend about something strange happening on your computer.  It would be much easier to put a picture of what is happening in the email instead of trying to describe it.  Or take my example, when writing a training manual; pictures are always needed for the step-by-step explanations.  Or you just made that big score playing online scrabble.

Wouldn’t it be neat if Microsoft provided a free tool to allow us to grab a “screenshot” of what we needed? The answer to that is, “Yes!” They have and it has been available in most all Windows versions.   It  is still available in Windows 7.

The perceived worthless “Print Screen” button on your keyboard used to do something slick in the old “DOS days”, back before Windows ever put in an appearance.  By pressing the “Print Screen” button you could print out the screen that was displayed.  That is very boring by today’s standards; however, in those days it was high-tech.

To get a picture of your window all you have to do is press and hold down (for a second or two) the “Print Screen” button.  This key is usually found on your keyboard in the upper right corner labeled, “Prnt Scrn”.

Try it now.  Go to your computer and open a window of anything on your computer.  Press the “Prnt Scrn” button a hold it for a count of “two”.  There you have it; you have just copied whatever was on your desktop into your system’s clipboard.  If you are using two monitors you just copied both windows.

How can you prove it?  Simply open a program like Word that allows graphics and paste as you normally would paste text.  The easy way to paste is to use the “Ctrl-V” button combination.  There it is, your screenshot is now in your document.  You can paste the graphic in most programs including email; though, you will have to check to make sure yours will allow this.

Now let’s look at one last print screen trick.  Use, the “Alt-Prnt Scrn” keys if you only want to copy one active window and not your entire desktop.  The only rule here is that the window you want to copy is active, i.e., you click on that window before copying.

This screenshot remains in your clipboard until you copy something else into it or you restart windows.

Tags: computer, picture, Print, screen