A colleague came into my room with a frustrated look on her face. "Do you have a minute to help me?"
"What's the problem?" I asked.
She had copied a Word document with a data table, and she was having trouble removing the information so that she could reuse the table. "Can't you just highlight it and hit Delete?" I suggested.
"You would think," she sighed.
I went to her laptop and tried it myself, but she seemed to be right. "Hmmm," I said as I thought about the possible causes of the issue. I like to think of myself as pretty tech-savvy, but my know-how is all experiential: I figure it out as I go, building on whatever skills I've developed along the way. This particular problem-solving was slightly complicated by the fact that she uses a PC and I am team Apple, all the way. Even so, solutions to those kinds of things are usually pretty intuitive.
Of course, my next move was to search it up, and I found loads of fixes, none of which made any sense. They all involved Function this or Shift Left that. Finally, I approached her keyboard myself to examine the situation, and scanning the top row of function keys, I noticed a tiny one labeled "Delete" right next to F12 and above Backspace. I tapped it and all the onerous old data disappeared!
As it turns out? Delete and Backspace are not the same thing. (Except on an Apple keyboard!)
I know why the colleague came to you- you weren't going to give up until you figured it out! That's persistence. Who would have thought delete and backspace were different?
ReplyDeleteAnyone who has been at TJ more than a minute knows the doctor is always in.
ReplyDeleteOh, my goodness, I remember that. I have always been a PC person, but for six years I had an Apple during one teaching job. I thought that was one of the weirdest parts of the Apple--no delete button. Good for you using your intuition to figure this problem out for your friend.
ReplyDelete