Posts tagged windows
How can I identify my mainboard without opening the case?
Mar 11th
I’ll keep this short and sweet. If you’re re-installing your OS, and need to know the motherboard model number, to grab the drivers online, check out CPU-Z. It beats opening your PC case and trying to find that tiny number hidden amongst the cables and drives :).
Moving Emails from Outlook (Windows) to Entourage (Mac)
Mar 9th
Given:
Microsoft Outlook – created by Microsoft. Platform: Windows.
Microsoft Entourage – created by Microsoft. Platform: OS X.
Requirement:
Move emails from Microsoft Outlook to Microsoft Entourage.
Common sense suggests:
In Windows, launch Microsoft Outlook, export everything to a .pst file. Copy this file to a USB drive or burn it to a disc. Copy it to Mac OS X, launch Entourage in Mac OS X and import the .pst file.
Well, that’s what I thought.
The real solution:
It turns out Microsoft does NOT support email interchange between Outlook and Entourage. I was horrified shocked Not Surprised to learn about this lack of interoperability.
Entourage can only import from it’s own archive format .rge or mbox files (text format files). Unfortunately, Outlook can NOT export to either of the two.
After doing some research and reading about convoluted methods of exporting one folder at a time from Outlook, converting those to mbox format and importing it in Entourage, I stumbled upon this excellent utility.
It’s a Windows application and costs $10. You can download it and pay for it online.
Simply install it on your Windows OS and launch it. It will automatically read your Outlook files and convert them to Mbox format, and PRESERVE the attachments!!
Once the export is over, copy the newly created mbox files and port them to Mac OS X. Launch Entourage and import the files. You will lose Outlook Rules though. Also, the folders will be renamed per ASCII standards i.e. no blank spaces. Blank Spaces will be replaced with underscores.
It’s possible that Entourage may suddenly not recognize mbox files either but don’t worry – there’s a work around. Import the mbox files in iMail. Then, import iMail emails into Entourage.
Another Microsoft horror story? What’s your take.
Have you ever wanted to create your own font from your handwriting?
Feb 12th
(NOTE: They started to charge for this. You can try pilothandwriting.com while it is still free! Please post alternatives in the comments below. Thanks for everyone who let me know about this!)
This is a cool little 10-15 minute activity that will keep on giving back to you for years to come. That’s right add that final customizing touch to your Windows, Linux or Mac machine – Your handwriting as a font!
With some free time a visit to a website called YourFonts.com, a scanner and a printer you can create a font for use in any application on your computer. To me this sounded way too cool to pass up. I went and downloaded the printable template from here and carefully followed the steps.
The template looks like this:
You print it out and add your letters to each corresponding box. What you see above is the first page. There are two pages but the second one contains only special characters. Anything that you omit will not be included in your font.
So if you just wanted to have a font contain numbers, letters or characters just fill in those. The font file will be smaller for it.
I was pretty excited, I grabbed a sharpie and went to work on my page. Here is what it looked like when I was done:
Now I messed around with the scanning properties and decided to use the grey scale you see above at 200dpi. It gave it a pretty cool look. You can of course scan in color as the site recommends. You will have to convert that scan to a JPG, GIF or PNG file (If yours spits back a PDF).
Most scanning programs can save as for you. Now that I had my template filled out I was ready to upload it and have YourFonts recognize each of my characters and spit back a font.
They ask you for your file and to name your font and add a copyright line to the file as you can see below:
You are not required to fill in these fields and you can leave the default if you don’t want to be identified as the author of this font.
I filled in the fields uploaded and then waited about a minute to be show this:
That add custom text line at the top will add just that to your font file. This will be displayed when someone previews the font. Again it is not necessary to complete your Font. I clicked on Download and was ready to rock and roll.
You hit that download your font now button to do just that. You can grab my font here. (It is a rapidshare link) After you click on the button to Install & Use you will see brief information on how to use your newly created font on your computer. Share your fonts with us in the comments!
We would love to see what you guys come up with!!
Windows Tip: Access The Windows Security Window In a Remote Desktop Connection (Control-Alt-Delete Doesn’t Work)
Jan 22nd
I get asked all the time how the hell do I bring up the security box (control + alt + delete) in a remote desktop session and here is the answer:
To use Control + Alt + Delete in a Remote Desktop Connection terminal, use Ctrl + Alt + End instead.
I tested it and it works beautifully on two Windows XP machines, 1 2003 server but on remoting in (What I can’t make up words??) to my Windows XP Pro SP2 Laptop it only brought up the task manager.
Any ideas?
And for those of you that don’t know Control + Shift + Escape opens you directly to the task manager. And you can alt + tab through tabs on your remote desktop if it is opened full screen.
Got some good shortcuts for us? Tips at askTheAdmin dot com! I am off to my data center today. Should be interesting as we prepare for impending doom upcoming upgrades.
_TheShortcutingAdmiN_
Is there an easy way to copy a file or folder path in Vista?
Jan 22nd
Brought Back Up Top By Popular Demand…
Have you ever wanted to copy the path of a file located deep in your hard drive’s under belly (that you call a hard drive structure)? We are pretty sure you have one time or another, seeming that you are here at AskTheAdmin.com reading this article…
We previously covered how to copy a full error message to the clipboard to be googled here. That made your life easier, Right? So here is another goodie for you guys and girls running Vista.
Their are lots of reasons you could have wanted to copy that path. Looking to send the path on to share a folder or file, need to pop the full path into another application or simply for documentation purposes. No matter what you tried to use it for you know its a pain in the ass to:
- Launch Explorer
- Navigate to the directory
- Then to the file
- Select the contents of the address bar
- Copy the path
- Paste it in Notepad
- Then add the filename to the end of the path.
Now that’s just too many steps for something that should be simple.
Fortunately, the boys in Redmond stepped up with Windows Vista. You no longer have to jump through hoops just to copy the path to that file. [TechRepublic]
All you have to do is hold down the [Shift] key, right-click on the file or folder, and select the new command titled Copy as Path, as shown below:
When you do this, the path to the file or folder you selected is copied to the Windows Clipboard. Then you can simply paste it anywhere your copy/pasting heart desires…
What The Hell Happened To My Task Managers Tabs and Options?
Jan 13th
A reader from Idaho was seriously freaked out after a late night at the computer and sent us a picture of their task manager in a strange state.
They asked for their identity to be with held so here is a screen-shot of a random person’s task manager in a similar mode.
Have you seen this before? Take a look over on your right. You probably have see it and had to idea how you did it.
This is what is called “Tiny Foot Print” mode. Don’t worry its nothing to get all frantic about dude.
It happens by double clicking (usually by accident) on the gray border which we have so kindly dotted and pointed an arrow at for you in the picture on the right.
Here is the Microsoft KB article on it here. They say you can also hit, CTRL+ALT+SHIFT at the same time, and while holding them down press ENTER CTRL+ALT+SHIFT at the same time, and while holding them down press ENTER, to remedy your issue as well.
Hope that helps Idaho! Keep those question coming in!
