A guide to your PC's mouse

It's hard to imagine using a PC without the mouse and the little angled pointer it controls.

The keyboard is king when it comes to entering information but for everything else the mouse rules - yet many people don't make the most of it.

In this Back to Basics article we will explain how the mouse controls the pointer and show you how to use both more effectively. We will look inside the pointer's engine room in XP, Vista and Windows 7 and then show how to scroll automatically through everyday applications Word and Excel.

What is a mouse?
All anyone really needs to know about the mechanics of using a mouse is that rolling the device across your desk or dedicated mousepad translates into a signal that dictates the movement of the on-screen mouse pointer.

Similarly, clicking a mouse button or twiddling the scroll wheel (if your mouse has one) will result in some action on the PC – perhaps opening a menu. Notebook computers, incidentally, typically come with a touchpad, which is a small flat area in front of the keyboard on which a finger is used to control the pointer.

Srtting up a mouse
Most mice are controlled through the Mouse Properties dialogue box. To access this in Windows XP, click the Start button followed by Control Panel then double-click the Mouse icon. Vista users should click Start followed by Control Panel, then find the Hardware and Sound heading and click Mouse underneath it.

Windows 7 users, meanwhile, should click Start, then Control Panel, then click Hardware and Sound, find the Devices and Printers heading and click Mouse underneath that. From here on in, the dialogue box is almost identical between all three versions of Windows, so what works in one will work in another.

We should point out at this juncture that fancier mice - the ones with loads of extra buttons – usually come with special software to control their extra functions and features. Typically, these dedicated tools will be accessed from the Notification Area at the bottom right of the Windows Taskbar - try right-clicking on the icon that looks like the device, whether it's a mouse, trackball or touchpad.

Mouse buttons and pointer styles
There are lots of settings that can be changed in the Mouse Properties dialogue box. Start by selecting the Buttons tab. Left handers, for example, can transpose the left and right mouse buttons by putting a tick in the top box. If you have trouble performing the double-click action, try slowing the click speed down by dragging the slider to the left – and practice by double-clicking on the little folder icon next to it.

Having problems holding down the left mouse button to select text or drag and drop files? Try turning on ClickLock: this allows the left mouse button to be clicked for just a second or two to highlight or drag, rather than having to keep it held down the whole time.

The style of the mouse pointer (and its variants, like the hourglass and text-selection cursor) can be changed. To try this click the Pointers tab and then open the dropdown menu under the Scheme heading to see a selection of different styles. To see what each one looks like, click it. To try one out properly, just click the Apply button; to revert to the standard pointer icons, click the Use Default button.

Pointer and wheel control
To control the pointer movement, check out the Pointer Options tab for setting the speed and visibility. Many people find that the pointer moves too quickly: dragging the Motion slider to the left slows things down.

Similarly, for anyone who routinely loses track of the pointer, turning on either mouse trails or putting a tick next to the Show Location option may be useful: the first prompts the pointer to leave a virtual ‘contrail' while the second highlights the pointer whenever the Ctrl key is pressed.

Finally, put the scroll wheel, if your mouse has one, to good use. Click the Wheel tab to see the options. By default a turn of the wheel will scroll through a document or web page three lines at a time but this can be changed by increasing or decreasing the number with the cursor (arrow) keys. Windows Vista and 7 users can set horizontal scrolling in the same way.

Scrolling in Word and Excel
All recent versions of Microsoft Word and Excel include useful extra scrolling modes that take advantage of the extra button that lurks under the scroll wheel of most mice.

Try this: open a long Word document and then click once anywhere in the text by pushing down on the scroll wheel until it clicks. The pointer changes from the traditional arrow to a large double-headed pointer with a dot in the middle.

Now move the whole mouse forwards or backwards slightly and watch what happens: the text scrolls in the relevant direction. You can increase or decrease the rate at which the page scrolls by moving the mouse gently up or down.

The same trick can be used to scroll in any direction around a large spreadsheet.

Get setting
It's often the small things that make the difference. Now that you know where to find the mouse settings, we strongly recommend spending a bit of time tweaking them to find a way of working that suits you.