Create a Playlist in Windows Media Player (Windows 7)

If you've ripped your CD music onto your computer or downloaded music to your computer, you can customize a Playlist in Windows Media Player to group your music by your own personal selection.  Here's how:

1. Open Windows Media Player - click the Start button and type: "Media Player" in the Search box.  When you see Windows Media Player in the search list, click on it.
2. From Library view (in Windows Media Player), click Music in the navigation pane on the left.
3. Locate the music files that you want to use in your playlist and drag them to the playlist section on the right.
4. When you have all the music files that you want in your playlist, click "Save List" at the top of the playlist.
5. Type a name for the playlist and press the ENTER key on your keyboard.
6. To play your new playlist, double-click on the playlist name in the navigation pane on the left under Playlists.

Note:  Windows Media Player has two different views, "Library" and "Now Playing".  To switch from one view to the other, click the icon (as shown below) while in Windows Media Player.  The icon will display on the bottom right while in "Library" view and top right when in "Now Playing" view.

Icon to switch views in WMP

• See my Blog Archive list (on the right) for January 2012 to learn how to Automatically rip (copy) a music CD to your Windows 7 computer.

Paste Column Width along with Excel Data

When you paste data into an Excel worksheet, do you find yourself resizing each column width to match the original width?

Excel 2010 allows you to quickly paste the column width along with your data.  This formatting can also be accomplished in earlier versions of Excel; however, it requires some additional steps.

Excel 2010

1. Select the Excel data to be copied.
2. Press Ctrl+c (to copy the data)
3. Right-click in the cell where you want to paste the data.
4. Select "Paste Special" and then click "Keep source column widths" in the context menu.

Excel 2007 or 2010

1. Select the Excel data to be copied.
2. Press Ctrl+c (to copy the data)
3. Click in the cell where you want to paste the data.
4. Press Ctrl+v (to paste the data).
5. Click the Paste Options icon and click "Keep Source Column Widths".

Note: The Paste Options icon appears near the bottom right corner of the pasted data.
Excel 2003

1. Select the Excel data to be copied.
2. Press Ctrl+c (to copy the data)
3. Right-click in the cell where you want to paste the data.
4. Click "Paste Special".
5. Select "Column Widths" and then click "OK".
6. Press Ctrl+v (to paste the data).