CHRISdotTODD

Occasionally I have the need to display umlauts or other non-standard Latin and Kanji characters in my HTML, JavaScript, and as a URL parameter. Each form have their own rules for encoding the characters to display correctly. HTML: Use the HTML name or HTML number. For example & and " for ampersand and quote, respectively. JavaScript: Use the Unicode equivalent. For example \u00E4 and \u00FC to add an umlaut over an 'a' or 'u', respectively. URL Parameter: Use HEX codes. For example, %20 and %2F for a space and forward slash, respectively. Here's a great reference from ascii.cl for the necessary codes.

Excel can be rather confusing. If you try a Print Preview , and then Page Setup , you are unable to set either "Rows to repeat at top" or "Columns to repeat at left". Yet you can set other Page Setup items from this dialog box. To set your row(s) and/or column(s), you need to select Print Titles from the Page Layout ribbon. This will bring up the same dialog box, but now you can choose the row(s) and/or column(s).

I recently had to make a minor edit to an old PDF that I no longer had the source for. For large edits, there are PDF to DOC converters, but for minor edits I just use Acrobat. With this particular file I got an unexpected error message. All or part of the selection has no available system font. You cannot add or delete text using the currently selected font. Through a little searching I discovered that by selecting and then right-clicking the text, and entering the Properties dialog, I could change the font being used. In this particular case though, there were no system fonts embedded in the document and the only choices were from the original computer that created it -- a Mac. Since I was using Windows, this failed too. Fortunately for me I have Adobe Illustrator. With Adobe Illustrator you can open individual pages of a PDF and using the text tool you can make changes. If you don't have Acrobat or Illustrator and need to edit a PDF, PDFEscape -- a browser-based applet -- will

Here's another frustration in learning Microsoft Office's new ribbon interface. I wanted to compress my PowerPoint images -- something I've always done to reduce the file size of my PowerPoint. I searched and searched for some indication of how I might do this. I finally discovered that I must select an image, and magically a new menu appears. The words "Picture Tools" appears in the Title Bar, and below it is a Format menu. Upon clicking Format, I revealed several options for manipulating the image, including "Compress Pictures". The Microsoft website covers file compression and other picture manipulation functions .

I continue to find new and frustrating things when using Excel 2007. For example, in most spreadsheets I want to freeze the top row and sometimes columns. To do this, I need to remember that I first need to go to the View Ribbon. If I want to use a Macro, it's not on the Insert or Data Ribbon, as I expected, but it is also on the View Ribbon. For Print Preview, you need to go to the Office Button and select the Print arrow. Needless to say, some of the most common tasks I perform are now hidden and/or further clicks away. One way to make some of these tasks easier is to use the new Quick Access Toolbar. The Quick Access Toolbar is the toolbar just right of the Office Button, above the Ribbons. By clicking the drop-down arrow to the right of the toolbar, you can customize the toolbar with your favorite shortcuts. Here's how to customize the Quick Access Toolbar. Click the drop-down arrow to the right of the Quick Access Toolbar Click on "More Commands...". This should

Updated May 6, 2010, due to new information. Are you tired of giving Facebook feedback on offensive ads, and yet they keep re-appearing? Just because I'm single doesn't mean I want to continually see ads to meet women! In general, I believe displaying ads in an unobtrusive way is okay, as it is what helps pay for free websites. But why even offer a feedback mechanism, if you're not going to incorporate it into future ads? Well I did some digging, and found a Firefox Add-on, Adblock Plus, that will block ads. Adblock Plus will work well beyond Facebook, but so far I've only configured it to block Facebook ads. The easiest way to make this work is to also install the Element Hiding Helper Add-on too. Here's the steps: Download/install Adblock Plus Add-on . Restart Firefox. Download/install Element Hiding Helper Add-on . Restart Firefox. You should have a new ABP icon to the right of the Firefox Search Box. Login to Facebook. Click the down arrow and click "Select

Remember it used to be easy to look in the File menu and find the document properties of an Office document? This was an easy way to make sure you didn't post documents with personal information you didn't want shared. In Office 2007 the feature still exists, it's just hidden like so many other things. Click the round Office icon in the upper-left Click Prepare Click Properties You will also find in this menu the Inspect Document feature, where you can do further analysis and clean up of a document, including the items found within the document properties.

With my new Droid, it was extremely easy to get my Gmail, but I found the instructions for getting Exchange email not so clear. It's actually quite easy once you realize what's being asked -- the key is it's the same as your Outlook Webmail. Here's what you need to do: Click/Open the eMail App and choose Add Account. Enter your Outlook email address and password. If you want this to be your default email, be sure to check the box before clicking next. Select Exchange from the account type options. Complete the following Domain\Username : This will likely have your email username as entered in step 2. It may not be the same as your network username, which is required here. Most of us don't have to remember our domain, except when using Webmail, e.g. mydomain\myusername. Password : The password you use to login to your corporate computer, and therefore your email. It should also be the same password you use when retrieving Outlook Webmail. Server: This will likely ha

I recently have had two cases where a portion of a PDF file that I saw on screen didn't print. Both documents had inserted signatures among other things. When I opened the file in Acrobat and Illustrator, I could see there were multiple objects. It was some of the objects that were not printing. I figured I should be able to solve with Illustrator, but never came up with a solution using it. Back in Acrobat, I saved the PDF as a Word document. Then from Word, I created a new PDF. Now my new PDF was complete and it printed everything that I saw on the screen.

Once upon a time, some 5 years ago I got a new Compaq PC. I diligently created restore disks, in case the hard drive ever crashed. Fast forward to the present, and I started having boot problems due to a hard drive problem. Fortunately I had an automated backup running every day and I made my restore disks. Uh oh, I couldn't find my disks. No problem, I'll make more. Err, it wont let me make more! Huh? Google to the rescue! After many searches and poking into newsgroups, I found a promising lead. I either had to delete 3 instances of hpdrcu.prc on the restore drive (D:\) or HPCD.SYS located on the restore drive and in C:\windows\SMINT. Upon looking at the restore drive, it was locked down, so I couldn't get to the file. Fortunately I found a utility, FreeCommander , that ignored the Windows locks and tricks. After renaming the files (never delete until you know you have the right files), I was able to successfully run the CD Creator utility and create a new set of recove

Regardless of the OS, some programs insist on loading themselves every time you start your computer. The most friendly ones will have a configuration option, while others will use the Startup folder. Unfortunately some are even more sneaky. All but the very worst offenders can be managed through msconfig , the same program we used with Windows XP. Go to the Run... dialog and type in msconfig to launch it. If Run... isn't in your Start menu list, try searching for it. This opens a System Configuration dialog box. Within the dialog box, go to the Startup tab. Search through the tab and uncheck any programs you do not want starting up each time you reboot. You're prompted to restart your computer, but its not required. Just manually kill the ones that started the last time, and next time they wont come back.

In moving my music onto a new computer, I copied my backup music folder, which contained my iTunes library definition, onto my new drive. Then when I installed iTunes, I had duplicate entries of each file, with one being a bad link (as the path was different on my new computer). With nearly 4000 files (8000 listed), I didn't want to manually go through my list and delete the Songs that were broken (Exclamation point next to the Name in iTunes.) Fortunately with some searching, I found Paul Mayne , who had a solution. Through the use of 2 Smart Play Lists and a Play List, I was able to quickly remove the dead, duplicate listings. See Paul's post for the specific details. You can may also find yourself in trouble if you let iTunes scan your backup drive and your primary drive. This would actually create duplicates, one pointing to each drive. To correct this, temporarily rename the music folder on your back drive, which will make all the listings on the backup drive to now have i

I may be a little late to the party, but I finally upgraded to Office 2007 a few months back. While I like the new styles and themes, and I can still use the keyboard shortcuts I've learned, I'm still struggling with find other features within the Ribbons. Top of my list has been switching windows (view another open file) within Excel. In prior versions of Excel, I could go to the Windows menu and select another file. With Office 2007, you have to first select the View ribbon and then click Switch Windows, where you can select a different open file. As with many of the changes, I had to hunt for a while to find the Switch Windows option. In the mean time I did learn a new keyboard shortcut for switching windows. Use Ctrl-F6 or Ctrl-Shift-F6 to go in reverse order. As with the View >> Switch Windows menu, this also works in Word and PowerPoint as well as Excel.

Unlike XP, Vista does not provide the same privileges by default, and therefore it can be difficult to repair your PST file. The trick is to run the scan and repair program with Admin privileges. Here are the steps: Close Outlook -- likely it's already closed, because if the PST file is corrupt, Outlook wont run. Find the Command Prompt, right-click, and run as Administrator. At the command prompt, enter "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\SCANPST.EXE", including the quotes. If you have a different version of Outlook, you may still have a repair program -- find it and replace with the string I have here. When prompted to Repair, select Repair. Enter 'Exit" at the command prompt to close the Command Prompt window, and run Outlook again. That should do the trick. Some folks may not have an Admin password for Vista. If that's the case, check out these instructions for further help.

I'm sure you've received an email from time to time that you need to save in Word or publish online, and there were carriage returns every line as if it was entered using a typewriter (you remember those). It can be very time consuming to manually delete each Carriage Return on every line. But thanks to a Word Macro, the job is easier. Note that once they are all removed, you still need to re-enter the appropriate paragraph marks. Create a new Macro and use code: Sub NameOfMacro() For Each Xpara In ActiveDocument.Paragraphs Xpara.Range.Select Selection.Characters(Selection.Characters.Count).Delete Next End Sub After saving, run the macro.

When you first apply an Auto-Filter in Excel, the Status Bar indicates the number of records in the filter (e.g. 517 of 8614). In many cases when you start performing other manipulations, the number disappears. Using a simple formula, you can calculate the filtered total. Assume you want to count all rows that are not empty -- the CountA function -- and assume you want to count the rows in column A. The formula would be SUBTOTAL(103,A:A)-1 . The syntax is as follows: subtotal(function_number, reference) , where function_number is 1 of many possible options as illustrated below. I included the "-1" to remove the count for the column heading row. function_num (includes hidden values) function_num (ignores hidden values) function 1 101 AVERAGE 2 102 COUNT 3 103 COUNTA 4 104 MAX 5 105 MIN 6 106 PRODUCT 7 107 STDEV 8 108 STDEVP 9 109 SUM 10 110 VAR 11 111 VARP Note: I used Excel 2003 for this example.

I've been doing quite a bit of research lately on technical topics, where the results would frequently include results from a pay site, Expert Exchange. If you;re familiar with Expert Exchange, they've been very successful in getting their pages to return high in the list of Google results. I have found it very frustrating when I inadvertently click-through on one of their pages. With a little research, I found that Google has a custom search option, where you can include and exclude certain websites. I have created a custom search that includes all Google results with the exception of Expert Exchange. To make it really useful though, I needed it to be in my search bar in Firefox, which I use almost exclusively for new searches. I found a Firefox Add-on to do that too. Here's how you can make your own custom search. If you don't already have one, you must have a Google account. Go to the Google Custom Search page and click "Create a Custom Search" I had to

Sometimes when I get data from systems in CSV format, it includes a leading apostrophe ('). When viewing the data in a cell, the apostrophe does not appear, but when I look at it in the formula bar, it does. Without removing the leading apostrophe, any comparisons come up false. I tried removing the first character, but it removed the first displayed character. If you have a numeric field, you can divide the it by 1 (=c2/1), but that doesn't solve the problem for text fields. The solution is a built-in function Clean: =CLEAN(C2).

Most of us have Contacts spread among many systems and it takes a lot of effort to keep them in sync or they're not in sync and you find yourself re-entering contacts in each system. With the help of Outlook (2003), LinkedIn , Gmail , My Digital Life , and Contact Scrubber for Outlook , I was able to sync a majority of my Contacts. Here are the steps I used: I downloaded and installed the LinkedIn Toolbar for Outlook . With the toolbar app, I was able to add Contacts from LinkedIn into my Outlook Contacts -- the master list. Then I used TeamScope's Contact Scrubber for Outlook to merge any duplicates that Outlook hadn't already picked up. Next with the help of My Digital Life blog, I exported my Gmail Contacts and imported them into Outlook. Again I used Contact Scrubber for Outlook to merge duplicates. Then with the help of My Digital Life again, I exported my Outlook Contacts and imported them into Gmail. Notes: Contact Scrubber for Outlook is a Trial that works wi

Here's a simple trick. Some times I have data results in Excel, if combined with other URL data, it would take me to a specific record. For example, if I extracted Contact Record IDs from Salesforce.com and combined it with the URL prefix, I could view the record that corresponds to the ID. There are a few different approaches, but it all ends up using the same function: Hyperlink. Hyperlink takes two parameters: link_location and friendly_name (optional). Here are some examples: =HYPERLINK("https://na2.salesforce.com/" & B2) =HYPERLINK(CONCATENATE(A2, B2)) =HYPERLINK(CONCATENATE("https://na2.salesforce.com/", B2, C2)) =HYPERLINK("https://na2.salesforce.com/" & B2,"Joe Smith") The link location, in addition to being a URL could be a drive path (c:\foo\), a UNC path (\\Server1\folder1\), or even a "mailto:" (=HYPERLINK("mailto:" & H2)).