Found this great shortcut a little while back:
Control-Shift-P
Brings up Windows Media Player
This is a great way to get it from the start bar (especially if you enabled the WMP Toolbar) without having to use the mouse.
I have also found it is the only way on my Vista laptop to get it to show when it is playing, but there is nothing on start bar!
2009-06-10
2006-12-13
Excel - Keyboard Shortcut between Worksheets
Cntl-PageUp to go back a document, Cntl-PageDn to go forward a document...
How many times have I cursed excel for not letting me tab between worksheets with cntl-tab? Too many to count.
I happy to be one of those people who likes to learn keyboard shortcuts so I don't have to move my hand off the keyboard to the mouse to do an action. So I've learned a lot. There was one way I knew to switch between open worksheets (and charts or whatever else you had open listed at the bottom of excel) with Alt-W and a number. But this was cumbersome and non-intuitive.
Most multiple document programs (aka MDI), including MS Word, let you switch between open documents with cntl-tab, just like you can rotate through open windows with alt-tab. But for some reason, Excel did not follow that pattern.
I was just working on a document, and went to do the keyboard combination to go to the top of the document cntl-home. But I mis-typed - my finger hit Page-up instead of home. I saw a different version of the worksheet I'd been working on - the earlier version under the 'Sheet1' view. Yet, it took me a minute to understand what happened - I thought I'd some dome something to cause excel to lose changes for the last 10 minutes of work.
Then I finally realized I wasn't in Sheet2 anymore, I was in Sheet1. How did I do that. Another few second of experimenting.
Cntl-PageUp to go back a document, Cntl-PageDn to go forward a document.
"Oh my goodness," I said aloud. I couldn't believe it took me so many years to stumble across something I'd really wanted and needed so many, many times.
I'm sure it was hidden somewhere in the help pages. But why couldn't it be more obvious? Why couldn't I have stumbled across it before? How could I have missed it? It work very nicely! Add it to my list of favorite shortcuts!
How many times have I cursed excel for not letting me tab between worksheets with cntl-tab? Too many to count.
I happy to be one of those people who likes to learn keyboard shortcuts so I don't have to move my hand off the keyboard to the mouse to do an action. So I've learned a lot. There was one way I knew to switch between open worksheets (and charts or whatever else you had open listed at the bottom of excel) with Alt-W and a number. But this was cumbersome and non-intuitive.
Most multiple document programs (aka MDI), including MS Word, let you switch between open documents with cntl-tab, just like you can rotate through open windows with alt-tab. But for some reason, Excel did not follow that pattern.
I was just working on a document, and went to do the keyboard combination to go to the top of the document cntl-home. But I mis-typed - my finger hit Page-up instead of home. I saw a different version of the worksheet I'd been working on - the earlier version under the 'Sheet1' view. Yet, it took me a minute to understand what happened - I thought I'd some dome something to cause excel to lose changes for the last 10 minutes of work.
Then I finally realized I wasn't in Sheet2 anymore, I was in Sheet1. How did I do that. Another few second of experimenting.
Cntl-PageUp to go back a document, Cntl-PageDn to go forward a document.
"Oh my goodness," I said aloud. I couldn't believe it took me so many years to stumble across something I'd really wanted and needed so many, many times.
I'm sure it was hidden somewhere in the help pages. But why couldn't it be more obvious? Why couldn't I have stumbled across it before? How could I have missed it? It work very nicely! Add it to my list of favorite shortcuts!
2005-12-21
Outlook + Outlook Express Archiving
I was trying to archive emails the other day. I was trying to figure out the best way to do it.
I tried using the save command. But there were naming issues - having to change the file name if the subject was the same. And it was very labor intensive.
I tried including the emails in one larger email and saving that (worked pretty well, but took a lot of time).
I had even looked at a few different programs on the net. Some of them helped. But there were different solutions for Outlook (I use at work) and outlook express (I use at home). And I was hoping for a method that would work for being able to view the emails in the original program or search/extract with a text method.
At work, I could not use an offline folder (*.PST) file, as this is locked out at work :(
Then a couple of weeks ago at work, I found something. Drag-and-drop. DOH!!
If you drag-and-drop from Outlook to a directory, it saves all the messages to .MSG files, and automatically deals with naming issues by appending (1), (2), etc. to the end of messages with duplicate subjects. You can drag-and-drop the emails back into Outlook to recover the messages and order.
The only thing I do is that I reverse the order of my emails before I drag-and-drop, so that the (1), (2), etc. come out in matching date order. While the files have some binary information, they are mostly text, and that works for me.
Then I tried this at home a couple of days ago with Outlook Express. It worked great! Drag-and-drop created files just like Outlook. But it seemed to work faster. And the text files were fully-text, no binary control blocks at the top like Outlook. And I could drag-and-drop back, just like Outlook!
And I noticed something else. Outlook must have a memory leak. When I do a bunch of drag-and-drops with Outlook - it eventually runs out of resources, and will not drag-and-drop any more files. I have to LOG-OFF to clear the problem (just shutting down Outlook is not good enough to clear the resource shortage).
Another thing I do with the messages after I archive them to files - I zip them. But I've found a way to zip them that is more efficient: I zip them twice. First I zip all the files to a zip with *no compression*. Then I go back and compress the zip with full compression. When I use WinZip, I'll have to create an empty text file to add with the zip, otherwise WinZip doesn't want to let me zip the zip, it only wants to do some sort of unzip with the file on right-click.
Why does 2 zips work better than 1? Because when you zip the files with no compression, it puts all this data in one file, and the emails often have a lot of redundant information from file-to-file - and by storing them first (no compression) it allows zip to tag the redundant parts of files that it cannot do when you zip all the files separately. And this method works better with the archive Outlook files as compared to the Outlook Express files.
I tried using the save command. But there were naming issues - having to change the file name if the subject was the same. And it was very labor intensive.
I tried including the emails in one larger email and saving that (worked pretty well, but took a lot of time).
I had even looked at a few different programs on the net. Some of them helped. But there were different solutions for Outlook (I use at work) and outlook express (I use at home). And I was hoping for a method that would work for being able to view the emails in the original program or search/extract with a text method.
At work, I could not use an offline folder (*.PST) file, as this is locked out at work :(
Then a couple of weeks ago at work, I found something. Drag-and-drop. DOH!!
If you drag-and-drop from Outlook to a directory, it saves all the messages to .MSG files, and automatically deals with naming issues by appending (1), (2), etc. to the end of messages with duplicate subjects. You can drag-and-drop the emails back into Outlook to recover the messages and order.
The only thing I do is that I reverse the order of my emails before I drag-and-drop, so that the (1), (2), etc. come out in matching date order. While the files have some binary information, they are mostly text, and that works for me.
Then I tried this at home a couple of days ago with Outlook Express. It worked great! Drag-and-drop created files just like Outlook. But it seemed to work faster. And the text files were fully-text, no binary control blocks at the top like Outlook. And I could drag-and-drop back, just like Outlook!
And I noticed something else. Outlook must have a memory leak. When I do a bunch of drag-and-drops with Outlook - it eventually runs out of resources, and will not drag-and-drop any more files. I have to LOG-OFF to clear the problem (just shutting down Outlook is not good enough to clear the resource shortage).
Another thing I do with the messages after I archive them to files - I zip them. But I've found a way to zip them that is more efficient: I zip them twice. First I zip all the files to a zip with *no compression*. Then I go back and compress the zip with full compression. When I use WinZip, I'll have to create an empty text file to add with the zip, otherwise WinZip doesn't want to let me zip the zip, it only wants to do some sort of unzip with the file on right-click.
Why does 2 zips work better than 1? Because when you zip the files with no compression, it puts all this data in one file, and the emails often have a lot of redundant information from file-to-file - and by storing them first (no compression) it allows zip to tag the redundant parts of files that it cannot do when you zip all the files separately. And this method works better with the archive Outlook files as compared to the Outlook Express files.
2005-06-21
2005-05-10
Palm M130 Dim
After I returned from my recient trip to CA, I noticed my Palm seemed a little dim. I wondered if maybe something burned out - like maybe there were 2 florescent lamps, and one lamp or power supply burned out. I was sad to think something broke, but was glad it was very usable.
Then when going to play my favorite solatare game, Yukon, the OS crashed. A memory locked error came up, with a button saying reset. But the button never works. I always have to use the eyeglass screwdriver from my swiss army knife to reset it.
I worry that one of these days it will crash like that, and won't turn off, and I wont be able to reboot it, and the battery will die.
But when it finished rebooting, it was back to being as bright as before! I guess it was some odd soft-setting that made it dim. Glad it is back to normal!
Then when going to play my favorite solatare game, Yukon, the OS crashed. A memory locked error came up, with a button saying reset. But the button never works. I always have to use the eyeglass screwdriver from my swiss army knife to reset it.
I worry that one of these days it will crash like that, and won't turn off, and I wont be able to reboot it, and the battery will die.
But when it finished rebooting, it was back to being as bright as before! I guess it was some odd soft-setting that made it dim. Glad it is back to normal!
2005-04-24
Windows XP Recovery
Friends of our asked if they could bring over their computer. They said their laptop was going to the welcome screen, but the logon icons would not come up.
This sounded odd - but it did not sound like a corrupted hard drive, because it did go through the boot-up process.
Well, I tried it. It went through the boot-up, go to the blue welcome screen with the line, and no logon icons. I tried a few keystrokes - Enter; Esc; Ctrl-C; Ctrl-Break; Ctrl-Alt-Delete. Nothing.
I tried rebooting. I tried Alt-Tab at the welcome screen. I was able to Alt-Tab through 2 windows - one was logon - but it didn't help. As soon as I typed anything else, like Enter, then it would stop doing anything useful. Even Alt-Tab wouldn't do anything anymore. But the mouse was still active. So I knew the OS hadn't fully crashed.
I tried a few more things. I did the old F8 trick. I selected safe-mode - but after showing the safe logon - with the words 'safe mode' in all 4 corners - it just went to the blank logon screen.
F8 - boot to command prompt - blank logon screen.
F8 - boot to network safe mode - blank logon screen.
F8 - boot with debug - more messages - but blank logon screen.
F8 - restore to last known good configuration - a message about restoring - but blank logon screen.
I knew they had data - like digital pictures they had not backed up, so I knew it was important to try to get to the data before considering a rebuild of the OS if needed.
The friends did mention they had installed software just before the problem started. They also said they've had problems with blue screens [of death] (BSOD) running The Sims. So it did sounds like a wacky configuration problem.
So I knew I needed to do more work. I hoped I could get it on my network - or at least back-up data via a PCMCIA drive.
I could not get it online. So it was time to try to operating system disk. I knew I had to be extra careful, because XP likes to resinstall the operating system - not help you get back your data.
I pressed a mouse key to boot from the CD. I selected R - repair. This boots to the recovery console.
First time I tried my PCMCIA drive, it did not come up - on reboot it was there. SO I figured I could get to the data.
But as I tried to navigate on the hard drive, I was blocked. IT seems the recovery console did not want me to get to the data. I remember this from when I added recovery console to my laptop's boot selection. There is some special way to open the files up, but I did not remember.
So I googled it. I found a reference to recovering XP. I knew XP liked to keep a lot of backups of configuration information in the "System Volume Information" [hidden] directory on the hard drive.
Looking at the directions on the page: 307545 - How to Recover from a Corrupted Registry that Prevents Windows XP from Starting I was able to know which 5 files I needed to backup and recover from an earlier recovery point than the last. (If the last was good, the F8 use last configuration would have worked).
So I looked at the directories, and picked one a couple up from the bottom - maybe a week ago.
I had already done the backup of the 5 files.
Then I went through and copied the 5 files from the recovery directory back to windows.
Reboot.
ICONS!!! YAY!!!
I logged on. There was a warning message about not being able to find a file. I was pretty sure the app that wanted the file was one that AIM installs, and is considered spyware.
I immediately copied the files to my desktop.
I had finally upgraded the network for my desktop earlier in the day for just such reason. I had found a cheap 10/100 switch and a cheap 10/100 card for the unit - just waiting to be installed. So I swapped out the 10mb hub, and the 10mb ISA card. It took a few tries to get w2k to play nice with the network card. After a few reboots where it kept saying 'new hardware', I deleted all the old network card hardware. Let it search the floppy of the drivers, and it told me that it liked NT4 drivers better than w2k - so I let it take it. In a few seconds it was done. I waited for the reboot. No reboot asked for. Then I figured it would want it when I closed the network config window. Nope, didn't ask to reboot. I figured it forgot to ask to reboot. But then I checked - it looked like the network was configured. I opened up IE - and it was online! No reboot. After being asked to reboot 5 times before! Weird - but I was happy.
So I was able to copy about 2G of data in about 10-15 minutes instead of the much longer time it would have taken at 10mb (especially on the hub, which would have meant even slower for the packet collisions).
I copied the data. Then I decided it was time to do a little hunting.
New version of AdAware, Spybot Search & Destroy and BHODemon.
There were some nasties in the system. A couple of BHOs to go with a bunch of other references.
Kill them all. I'm becoming a PC exterminator.
I'm glad I can help out my friends!
This sounded odd - but it did not sound like a corrupted hard drive, because it did go through the boot-up process.
Well, I tried it. It went through the boot-up, go to the blue welcome screen with the line, and no logon icons. I tried a few keystrokes - Enter; Esc; Ctrl-C; Ctrl-Break; Ctrl-Alt-Delete. Nothing.
I tried rebooting. I tried Alt-Tab at the welcome screen. I was able to Alt-Tab through 2 windows - one was logon - but it didn't help. As soon as I typed anything else, like Enter, then it would stop doing anything useful. Even Alt-Tab wouldn't do anything anymore. But the mouse was still active. So I knew the OS hadn't fully crashed.
I tried a few more things. I did the old F8 trick. I selected safe-mode - but after showing the safe logon - with the words 'safe mode' in all 4 corners - it just went to the blank logon screen.
F8 - boot to command prompt - blank logon screen.
F8 - boot to network safe mode - blank logon screen.
F8 - boot with debug - more messages - but blank logon screen.
F8 - restore to last known good configuration - a message about restoring - but blank logon screen.
I knew they had data - like digital pictures they had not backed up, so I knew it was important to try to get to the data before considering a rebuild of the OS if needed.
The friends did mention they had installed software just before the problem started. They also said they've had problems with blue screens [of death] (BSOD) running The Sims. So it did sounds like a wacky configuration problem.
So I knew I needed to do more work. I hoped I could get it on my network - or at least back-up data via a PCMCIA drive.
I could not get it online. So it was time to try to operating system disk. I knew I had to be extra careful, because XP likes to resinstall the operating system - not help you get back your data.
I pressed a mouse key to boot from the CD. I selected R - repair. This boots to the recovery console.
First time I tried my PCMCIA drive, it did not come up - on reboot it was there. SO I figured I could get to the data.
But as I tried to navigate on the hard drive, I was blocked. IT seems the recovery console did not want me to get to the data. I remember this from when I added recovery console to my laptop's boot selection. There is some special way to open the files up, but I did not remember.
So I googled it. I found a reference to recovering XP. I knew XP liked to keep a lot of backups of configuration information in the "System Volume Information" [hidden] directory on the hard drive.
Looking at the directions on the page: 307545 - How to Recover from a Corrupted Registry that Prevents Windows XP from Starting I was able to know which 5 files I needed to backup and recover from an earlier recovery point than the last. (If the last was good, the F8 use last configuration would have worked).
So I looked at the directories, and picked one a couple up from the bottom - maybe a week ago.
I had already done the backup of the 5 files.
Then I went through and copied the 5 files from the recovery directory back to windows.
Reboot.
ICONS!!! YAY!!!
I logged on. There was a warning message about not being able to find a file. I was pretty sure the app that wanted the file was one that AIM installs, and is considered spyware.
I immediately copied the files to my desktop.
I had finally upgraded the network for my desktop earlier in the day for just such reason. I had found a cheap 10/100 switch and a cheap 10/100 card for the unit - just waiting to be installed. So I swapped out the 10mb hub, and the 10mb ISA card. It took a few tries to get w2k to play nice with the network card. After a few reboots where it kept saying 'new hardware', I deleted all the old network card hardware. Let it search the floppy of the drivers, and it told me that it liked NT4 drivers better than w2k - so I let it take it. In a few seconds it was done. I waited for the reboot. No reboot asked for. Then I figured it would want it when I closed the network config window. Nope, didn't ask to reboot. I figured it forgot to ask to reboot. But then I checked - it looked like the network was configured. I opened up IE - and it was online! No reboot. After being asked to reboot 5 times before! Weird - but I was happy.
So I was able to copy about 2G of data in about 10-15 minutes instead of the much longer time it would have taken at 10mb (especially on the hub, which would have meant even slower for the packet collisions).
I copied the data. Then I decided it was time to do a little hunting.
New version of AdAware, Spybot Search & Destroy and BHODemon.
There were some nasties in the system. A couple of BHOs to go with a bunch of other references.
Kill them all. I'm becoming a PC exterminator.
I'm glad I can help out my friends!
2005-03-01
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
