HelpLine

I WORK with Windows 3.11 and do all my word processing with Works for Windows 3. I have no problem converting files to other formats and sending them as attachments to e-mails, but when I receive attachments in Word or WordPerfect I cannot read them. If I do get them on the screen, I am confronted with gobbledegook.

I suspect that this version of Works for Windows simply has out-of-date file import filters. Every version of Microsoft Word saves files with a .DOC extension, even though the file format has changed several times since that version was released. You can either upgrade Works for Windows, or make sure that people send you documents in a file format it understands - something like Word for Windows 2.0 or WordPerfect 5.1.

IS IT possible for multiple users to have access to one Microsoft Outlook account on Windows NT, so that the Outlook is not for an individual on the network but rather a common identity that any user has access to?

No, Outlook is only a single-user application. But it can be used as a front-end client to Microsoft's Exchange Server, which would run on your NT server and function as the central point for all your e-mail. Each user would still have to have their own user name and password, but Exchange allows for public folders which can contain shared information.

ON THE Apple Mac, it is very easy to copy any image on to a file icon, but I have been unable to find out how to do this in Windows 95. I would like to add an image to some of my HTML file icons. Can you help?

Windows 95 can have any image for file icons, but there is no built- in way to translate the contents of an image file into its own "thumbnail" icon. There is an option in Windows 98 for this, but Windows 95 users are out of luck, unless you want to buy a third-party program such as Visioneer's Visual Explorer document manager.

Daniel Robinson is technical editor of `PC Direct' magazine

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