Start menu catastrophe in Vista

I'm starting to face facts - very soon, I'll have to replace my production computer and that means it will need to be Vista. Until now, I've used a laptop running Vista when I needed to write something Vista related but frankly I don't like Vista at all. Part of this is I don't like the dummed down interface. I need to move around my programs and network fast, and using the default settings is like walking in treacle.

One thing I hate is the new Start menu - give me back the Windows XP Start menu please! If you know how to do it, you can get it back - Yeah! Right click the taskbar and choose Properties to display the Taskbar and Start Menu dialog. Click the Start Menu tab and click Classic Start Menu - this gives you a faux Windows XP version of the start menu - it's not perfect but it beats the Vista version hands down.

Next up - Windows Search sucks big time and what I do to avoid using it!

Pause a Word macro

Sometimes you need tp pause a macro and, when you do, try the Sleep function.

This involves a call to the Windows API - sounds much more difficult than it is.

In your macro, go to the General Declarations area (the top part of the module) and type this, verbatim:

Private Declare Sub Sleep Lib "kernel32" (ByVal dwMilliseconds As Long)

Now, in your routine, when you want to put a pause, type:

sleep n where n is the number of milliseconds to pause for.

So, this macro will beep, pause for 1000 milliseconds and beep again.. it does it twice just in case you missed it the first time:

sub testMyAPIcall()
beep
sleep 1000
beep
sleep 1000
beep
end sub

Easy when you know how!