Featured Tips and How-Tos

Microsoft made a customized Home Page for Internet Explorer on Windows Mobile devices that featured a search bar and a drop-down list for Favorites and History. Some of the newer devices come set up with a default carrier version of the Home Page which may not be as useful as Microsoft’s. If you want to set up your device to use Microsoft’s Home Page, do the following (for touch screen devices):

Most HP iPAQs have a built-in feature called “USB Charging,” which enables the ability to charge your device from your PC’s USB port and allows you to set the rate of charge to “Slow” or “Fast.” To activate this feature, go to Start >Settings >System tab, tap on the Power icon, and select the tab labeled “USB Charging.” Check the box labeled “Use USB Charging” if you want your iPAQ to charge while it is connected to a desktop PC via a USB sync cable.

Windows Mobile smartphones have a variety of ways that you can make phone calls. Here are the three primary ways:

In WM Standard and Professional, you have the option of changing your Home Page in Internet Explorer to either the default or one that you specify. In Internet Explorer, go Menu >Tools >Options >(WM Standard): Home Page. You can then pick from Default or Custom (WM Professional: Navigate to the page you want to set as your Home Page and then tap on Use Current in the Home Page menu).

Windows Mobile 6 Standard Edition for smartphones includes the ability to edit Office (Word and Excel) documents, which was not available in previous versions of Windows Mobile for smartphones. However, the ability to create new documents is not built into WM 6 Standard. Here is an easy workaround for this:

Microsoft released a free, comprehensive Windows Mobile 6 reference guide in Acrobat PDF format (click here). The 61-page document includes detailed descriptions and graphics that cover all the improvements and changes that were made to the operating system.

Non-touch screen smartphones have a “Profiles” menu that allows you to switch your phone into different sound modes, depending upon how you want your phone to sound when you are receiving a call or another notification. To view or change these sound modes, or "Profiles," go to Start >Settings >Profiles. Note that different smartphones have different Profiles built in, depending on the make and model. The following Profiles are the ones shared by most smartphones:

There are thousands of inexpensive or free ringtones available on the Web, which you can download and install on your Windows Mobile device. After you have downloaded a ringtone to your desktop PC, follow these steps to install it on your device:

The green Talk key has three different functions:

• While the phone is ringing, press Talk to answer the call.
• If you press Talk when there is no call in progress, the Call History screen will open where you can select a call to bring up the person’s contact information (if available).
• During a call, you can press and hold Talk to switch to speakerphone mode if your phone has this capability.

On WM 6 Standard and Professional devices, you can search your e-mail in Messaging simply by typing letters on your keyboard (if you have one). Messaging will sort and display corresponding messages and highlight what you type in both the From and Subject lines.

When you open an application or program on a touch screen device or access one of the configuration utilities, you'll see an "X" or "OK" in the upper right corner of the display. You can tap on this button with your stylus to exit the application/screen. If you have a phone-enabled touch screen device with a physical "OK" button, you can press that button to exit. This saves you the bother of pulling out your stylus, and combined with the D-pad, allows you to perform most common tasks on your device with one hand.

If you use the Transcriber option for entering text into your touch screen device, you can make the process easier by using the Shorthand feature so that any shorthand text that you write on the screen (e.g. “app”) will appear as the full (longhand) word typed out (“application”). Here’s how you do it:

Just as on desktop PCs, you can use the Tab key on touch screen devices (on either the soft keyboard or an external keyboard) to move between data fields in any menu. For example, you can use Tab to move from a username field to a password field on a Web site open in Internet Explorer Mobile. (Note that you can also move from one hyperlink to the next using the Tab key.)

When receiving new e-mail and MMS messages or if you have a missed phone call on your Windows Mobile device, a “Notification” may appear in the lower left corner of the Today screen. Once you tap on the notification, you will have the option to either “Hide” or “Dismiss” it—tapping Hide will place it in the background, and it will remain on the bottom task bar; tapping Dismiss will permanently get rid of it.