Quick View

Quick View is a generic document viewer. Using Quick View can save you some heartache especially in avoiding viruses. QuickView allows you to view a document without actually running the application that the document is associated with. For instance, looking at a .txt file without using NotePad to open the file. What does this do? Prevents viruses attached to documents from initializing because the application that is suppose to open the document was not used. Is Quick View installed? Is QuickView on your computer? Under Windows 95/98, click Start, Programs, Windows Explorer. Right-click any .txt file. If the resulting context menu contains an item called Quick View, it's installed. If you click this menu item, a Quick View window displays the contents of the selected text file. If you're running Windows 98 and you don't see a Quick View menu item, here's how to get it installed from your CD-ROM. Click Start, Settings, Control Panel. Run Add/Remove Programs. Click Windows Setup, then Accessories, then the Details button. Turn on the Quick View check mark, then click two OK buttons to install it. Windows may ask you to place its CD-ROM in your drive. Quick View is installed, now what? Quick View officially supports 36 file types, which are determined by file extension. But many more are actually supported if you know where to look. To beef up your copy of Quick View, click View, Folder Options in Windows Explorer, then select the File Types tab. This opens a dialog box showing every file type that has been registered by applications on your system. You use this dialog box to tell Quick View to expand the file formats available to it. To turn on Quick View for files not already set up for Quick View, select the Registered File Type you are interested in. Then click the Edit button in the File Types dialog box. In the Edit File Type dialog box that appears, click the "Enable Quick View" check box if it isn't already on. Click OK twice, and you are done. After making this change you should be able to right-click the file type of your choice and see the Quick View option on the menu. If you want to edit such a file, you can still click Open to run it within an editor. Turning on "Enable Quick View" doesn't guarantee that Quick View can read a given file format. Leaving the check box turned off, however, guarantees that you won't even be able to give Quick View a chance. For more information on Quick View, click the Windows Start button and choose Help. Select the Index tab and type one of the above in as a keyword. It's that simple! Top of page last modified Monday December 20 2004 © 2000 - David Seibold