A friend of mine works for an international company headquartered in Des Moines. An employee intended to send an email to his office mates, but in a technological haze asked all employees worldwide, “Has anyone seen my 3 hole punch?” While I laughed, I knew deep down, there but for the grace of God, go I. After all, in response to an IT request in my former job, I told hundreds of employees at Hamline University the model number of my printer.

I once discovered I was auto archiving my e-mail Trash. Really. And thanks to the “auto fill” feature in my email program, I sent a silly email to my neighbor that was intended for my nephew. The musings on an old family story would have amused my nephew; my neighbor thought I was nuts.

But that was years ago.  Now I have more technologically impressive mistakes. Recently I attempted to export a probate schematic as a web page to link to the new practicelaw site. My first attempt resulted in a web page so large that it only accommodated a few letters of one word. My second attempt resulted in me creating 46 web pages on my desktop.

So why am I airing my dirty laundry? Because, like you, I am a smart lawyer. But nothing makes me feel dumber faster than trying to select a print range in Excel, only to find out that the resulting nano-print is unreadable and occupies 1/8 of a sheet of paper.

Why am I a member of the online services team at the MSBA? Because I am like a lot of you, and I valiantly represent your interests. When users call and say, “Can you help me? My assistant usually does this but…” I know they’ve called the right person. I get the idea that you just want to practice law, not be the next Bill Gates.

Tech familiarity among lawyers runs the gamut from those who have no idea what a browser is (much less how to tell the help desk which one they are using) to those like the director of MSBA’s online services, Gregory Luce, who is charting a new course for member attorneys to utilize technology. Our newest addition, Andrea Hable, is a new attorney and a Mac user.  Our disparate viewpoints help us help members better utilize technology .

Today we launch our latest effort to help you, one two-minute tip at a time.

So, take two minutes right now and try this:

The Control Family. Remember that, in most programs, the keyboard combination of Ctrl+ Y is redo. “Y” stands for “Yes” — as in, “Yes, I really did want that word in there!”   Undo, or Ctrl+Z, works for all kinds of things, like undoing automatic formatting in Microsoft Word without undoing the most recent text entered. Think Z for “Zoinks, I didn’t want that to happen.” For Mac users, use the Command Key in place of he Ctrl key.

See? Not so bad, and you’re the better for it. Next week we’ll provide another tip (and incorporate some writing tips as well).

In return, please keep an eye out for that 3 hole punch.