How to activate the screen saver without jumping out to the accou.

[Greg2001]

Older versions of Office included a shortcut to activate the screen saver.
The "Flag key" + L locks the desktop and jumps out to the account selection
screen. I would like to stay in the active account and scure the session with
the screen saver. It would be the same as going into screen saver settings
windo and pressing Preview.

 

[IanRoy]

Hi, Greg2001;

This is an operating system question, rather than an Office question. That
said, Windows Key + L does not log you out, at least on XP. Your session is
still running and any processes will continue behind the login screen. I'm
not sure what you mean by "scure the session with the screen saver." Unless
you have selected "On resume, display Welcome screen" or something similar, a
screen saver does not secure anything. Not sure it's universal, but I ran
into a problem with that screen saver option. If I had it selected, and
pressed Win+L because I did not want to leave the machine unlocked during the
interval before the screen saver kicked in, when I came back to the machine
it would be displaying an "out of memory" error. So I did a lot of fiddling
with virtual memory settings before I turned off the "On resume, display
Welcome screen" option. That fixed the "memory" problem.

So this is my suggestion: Just use Win+L if you want to secure your session.
If you just want a shortcut to a screensaver, I did that once on Windows 95,
but have forgotten what I did. (I don't think it was a shortcut to the
screensaver (.scr) itself, atlhough that might work.)

Regards,
Ian.

 

[Greg2001]

Thanks for the reply, it was informative. )
fyi: The shortcut I was refering was part of the older office suites. and it
had a shortcut part that could be installed. On the shortcut bar te screen
saver could be selected. That is why I posted on the Office group.

 

[IanRoy]

Hi, Greg2001;
I see. The whole shortcut bar is no longer there in Office 2003. However,
according to a post in another forum, the shortcut to a .scr that I mentioned
should work:

"In Windows XP...
1. Open Windows Explorer and move the window around so you can see part of
the desktop around it.
2. Locate the Windows/system folder.
3. Find your screensaver file (it will have the .scr extension.)
4. Right click the file and drag it (using the right mouse button) onto the
desktop. From the menu that appears, choose Create Shortcut(s) Here.
5. Close Windows Explorer and return to your desktop. (you now have a
shortcut to the screensaver that you can start any time by clicking it)
6. Assign a keyboard shortcut to it by right clicking the shortcut and
choose Properties, Shortcut tab.
7. Click in the Shortcut key area and press the key combination you want to
assign to the screensaver.
8. Click Apply
9. Click Close to finish"

I don't intend to try this as I see no point in it. (Win+L does not log you
out or stop any processes you have going on. Once a week I start a full
system antivirus scan press Win+L, and leave the machine for an hour. The
scan will be finished when I get back.) But there above is a way to get your
screensaver shortcut, if you still want to do that.
Regards,
Ian.

 

[Gary Smith]

Older versions of Office included a shortcut to activate the screen saver.
The "Flag key" + L locks the desktop and jumps out to the account selection
screen. I would like to stay in the active account and scure the session with
the screen saver. It would be the same as going into screen saver settings
windo and pressing Preview.

To create a shortcut which behaves the same way that the Screen Saver
shortcut from the Office Shortcut BAR did, locate OSA.EXE on your system
and create a shortcut to it. Then right-click on that shortcut, select
Properties, go to the Shortcut tab, and append "-s" (without the quotes)
to to end of the Target string. On my system, the result looks like this:

"D:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\OSA.EXE" -s

The resulting shortcut will invoke whatever screen saver is currently
designated.