Technology Tips

Dan Comden

Transferring files between home and hawking

A few people have asked for instructions on transferring documents created in Word to their accounts on hawking.

Overview

If you have a document you've created on your home machine that you want to mail to someone, you need to convert it to text, upload to your hawking account, and then import it into the mail message your are sending. If you wish to retain the formatting (bold, underlining, different fonts, etc.) you only need to upload the file and send it as an attachment to your electronic mail message.

Procedure for Sending a Document as the Text of a Mail Message

  1. While in your Word Processor (Word, for most of you), load the document you wish to transfer.
  2. From the File menu, choose Save As. This should bring up the Save Dialog Box.
  3. Choose Text Only. You should change the filename so you don't overwrite your original document. Adding ".txt" to the end of the file name is a standard method of naming text files. NOTE: if you are using a Macintosh, make sure that there are no spaces in the filename!
  4. Click on Save to save the Document. Make note of the directory or folder in which the file is saved. For this example, we'll say the file is named BLEGGA.TXT and is in the \WINWORD directory on a PC.
  5. Quit your word processor and start your communication software (Zterm for the Mac users, Telix or Commo for PC users).
  6. Log in to hawking by your normal method. Don't start Pine yet!
    • Zterm Users (Mac): In the File menu, choose Send Zmodem (command-S). This brings up a dialog box where you can change folders and select the file to upload. When a file has been selected, click on the Add button, and then on the Start button to begin the transfer. Hawking should recognize that a file is being sent and begin to receive it.
    • Telix Users (PC): Hit Alt-S and select the Zmodem protocol from the popup box. Next, enter the path and file name of the document you wish to transfer (e.g. \WINWORD\ BLEGGA.TXT) and hit return. Hawking should recognize that a file is being sent and begin to receive it.
  8. After the file has been received, start up Pine. Get into Compose Message mode, and when your cursor is in the body of your message, hit Ctrl-R (for Read File). Enter the file name (e.g. "blegga.txt") and hit return. That's all there is to it!

Procedure for Sending a Document as an Attachment

Begin with Step 5 and work your way through the remainder of the steps. NOTE: Mac users: it is very important that the file name has no spaces!

For Step 8, instead of reading the file into the body of your mail message, you can use the attach feature of Pine to send your document. After the file has been correctly received, go ahead and start Pine. While in Compose Message mode, move the cursor to the Attchmnt: line, and hit Ctrl-J. When prompted for the file name, enter it here. You don't need to send an attachment comment, unless you wish to indicate the original format of the document (Mac vs. PC, word processor format, etc.) but you can do this just as well in the body of your message.