Recent Posts

526

General Software Discussion / Web Mail Recommendation?

« Last post by AndyM on May 17, 2007, 02:30 PM »

Friends,

This is sort of a software question, so I thought I'd ask here.

My wife will be losing her work email address, and it seems to me it would be best for her to get a gmail or yahoo account.  I have absolutely no experience with this, so I thought I'd ask for opinions here.

Any opinions?

Thanks,

Andy

527

General Software Discussion / Re: Must-have apps in the System tray?

« Last post by AndyM on May 13, 2007, 10:14 PM »

Curt, why not use a dedicated cpu usage monitoring system instead of running Process Explorer 24/7? just a suggestion..

-lanux128 (May 13, 2007, 08:43 PM)

Ultra CPU Monitor 
www.darmon.de

Graph (or numbers) just sits in the system tray and seems to take 0% of the cpu.

528

Living Room / Re: Solving an hibernation-related problem on a XP Home PC

« Last post by AndyM on May 11, 2007, 07:09 AM »

Mine is a Dell desktop, and I am waking it up with the on/off button.

529

Living Room / Re: Solving an hibernation-related problem on a XP Home PC

« Last post by AndyM on May 10, 2007, 08:06 PM »

Not a feature on my 3 PCs which hibernate fine with XP (when the discs aren't too full to accommodate 2Gb files!)

-Carol Haynes (May 10, 2007, 01:59 PM)

If you wake up your machine from hibernation and then don't touch a key or the mouse, it doesn't re-hibernate after a minute or two?

530

General Software Discussion / Re: Excel plugin to quickly export selection to text file (csv, tab-delimited, e

« Last post by AndyM on May 08, 2007, 10:29 AM »

Thanks AndyM, but the asap-utilities mentioned above were perfect for my needs.  They add an enormous amount of funcionality to Excel.

-superboyac (May 07, 2007, 04:02 PM)

I couldn't do without ASAP utilities (new version just available).  Keep in mind that the functions in ASAP can be used in macros as long as ASAP is active.

531

Living Room / Re: Solving an hibernation-related problem on a XP Home PC

« Last post by AndyM on May 07, 2007, 08:39 PM »

After wake up (using the on/off switch), XP resumes normally, but goes into hibernation again after 2 minutes or so if I don't do anything with it.  On the contrary, if I perform some minimal activities after the waking up like launching an application then the PC won't automatically go into hibernation again.

This is how it's always worked for me (XP Pro SP2) and I figured it was normal behavior.

Skrommel has a utility that keeps a machine from entering sleep mode, should work for your problem if you have it run when the computer wakes up.

532

General Software Discussion / Re: Excel plugin to quickly export selection to text file (csv, tab-delimited, e

« Last post by AndyM on May 07, 2007, 02:08 PM »

I didn't read your original post carefully enough.  You want to save
only the highlighted selection to a new .csv file, and the macro I
gave you saves the entire sheet to a .csv file.

This will save the highlighted selection to a .csv file with the same
name as the original .xls file, and will reload the original .xls
file:

[Select]

Sub SaveSelectionCSV()

Dim fnamexls As String
Dim fnamecsv As String

fnamexls = ActiveWorkbook.FullName
fnamecsv = Replace(fnamexls, ".xls", ".csv")

Selection.Copy
Sheets.Add
ActiveSheet.Paste

    ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs Filename:=fnamecsv, _
        FileFormat:=xlCSV, CreateBackup:=False

ActiveWorkbook.Close SaveChanges:=False
Workbooks.Open Filename:=fnamexls
 
End Sub

In either case, be careful you are not *starting* with a .csv file.  If you answer "yes" to "do you want to overwrite the current file?", that's exactly what will happen.

On the other hand, if you are starting with an .xls file and you already have a .csv file of the same name, you can decide whether or not to overwrite the old .csv file as you see fit.

533

General Software Discussion / Re: Excel plugin to quickly export selection to text file (csv, tab-delimited, e

« Last post by AndyM on May 06, 2007, 02:13 PM »

Try putting this in your personal.xls.  It will save the current .xls file to a .csv file with the same name in the same directory, close the .csv file and re-open the .xls file.

If you do this often, it might be worth assigning the macro to a button, put it on a menu, or assign it to a shortcut key.

[Select]

Sub SaveCSV()

'Might have to have Tools>References>MicrosoftScriptingRuntime checked

Dim fnamexls As String
Dim fnamecsv As String

fnamexls = ActiveWorkbook.FullName
fnamecsv = Replace(fnamexls, ".xls", ".csv")

    ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs Filename:=fnamecsv, _
        FileFormat:=xlCSV, CreateBackup:=False

ActiveWorkbook.Close SaveChanges:=False
Workbooks.Open Filename:=fnamexls
 
End Sub

(just realized it might discard any changes you made to the .xls file, so either save that first, or add a line in the code to save the .xls file)

I'm no programmer, so ***use this at your own risk!!!***

534

Official Announcements / Re: Power Supply on my PC just exploded: i'll be mostly offline this week crying

« Last post by AndyM on April 24, 2007, 03:01 PM »

I always make it a point to backup irreplaceable data online.

-nosh (April 24, 2007, 08:26 AM)

I had a bunch of data backed up online. I thought that was the best way to do it until the host's computers crashed and lost all my data. . .

-Deozaan (April 24, 2007, 02:47 PM)

The host didn't back up their own machines???!!!!

535

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: little AHK tool to force Windows to do what it should

« Last post by AndyM on April 23, 2007, 01:45 PM »

Hi App103,

I've been meaning to do something like this when I got around to it.  Now I don't have to, very handy!

Some DonationCredits on the way...

Andy

536

General Software Discussion / Re: To cut or not to cut - The lousy MS Office ribbon

« Last post by AndyM on April 13, 2007, 04:34 PM »

So, 98% of the users do no customization and aren't affected. An additional 1.7% do very minor customization, which is actually easier now than ever before. Only 3 people in 1000 are inconvenienced by the change in customization behaviors. This seems like a big win to me. If you disagree, you should probably take a step back and consider who the primary audience of this software is.

-CWuestefeld (April 13, 2007, 11:59 AM)

I don't disagree because I do understand the software has been (hopefully) engineered to work better for the majority of users.  I'm one of the .3%, so the inconvenience I will experience when/if I upgrade is the time I spend on customization.  I'm sure it will be interesting, and time consuming.

537

General Software Discussion / Re: To cut or not to cut - The lousy MS Office ribbon

« Last post by AndyM on April 13, 2007, 11:14 AM »

The other thing is that you cannot customize the ribbon unlike the old toolbars.

-zridling (April 13, 2007, 01:27 AM)

Why do people keep saying this? Right up above in this same thread I debunked this: https://www.donation...91.msg57106#msg57106

-CWuestefeld (April 13, 2007, 05:24 AM)

Like you said in your post:  "requires manipulating XML files that describe the content of the ribbon, and probably not appropriate for anything less than an extreme power user", this is not customization the old way, and the new way is way too technical for the average user.  So you are not wrong when you say the ribbon can be customized, but the reason "people keep saying this" is that MS has made the customization much more complicated.

I won't have Office 2007 for quite some time, so I don't know what's involved in editing the XML file, but I'm guessing it won't be something done as quickly or easily as Tools>Customize, and dragging some icons around.

538

General Software Discussion / Re: To cut or not to cut - The lousy MS Office ribbon

« Last post by AndyM on April 11, 2007, 01:35 PM »

The second method requires manipulating XML files that describe the content of the ribbon, and probably not appropriate for anything less than an extreme power user.

And that's exactly the nature of my complaint.  Right now I can assign any vba code to any button on any toolbar, or key combination, or modify any menu, generally on the fly.

Now I'd have to edit XML files.  For the moment, fortunately there's no reason for me to upgrade.

539

General Software Discussion / Re: To cut or not to cut - The lousy MS Office ribbon

« Last post by AndyM on April 11, 2007, 09:02 AM »

it sounds like MS might have something that actually works better but is going to be harder to learn in the long run.

-Hirudin (April 11, 2007, 07:11 AM)

As I said, the ribbon may be fine, may even be a better interface, but what does that have to do with taking away the ability to easily customize the interface?

540

General Software Discussion / Re: To cut or not to cut - The lousy MS Office ribbon

« Last post by AndyM on April 11, 2007, 12:36 AM »

ok, once in a while there will be moments like "where is that command?" but if you use pre-Office2007 keyboard shortcuts, there is a prompt that guides you into continuing the shortcut combo..

-lanux128 (April 09, 2007, 09:53 PM)

What about custom toolbars, buttons, and customized menus?

541

General Software Discussion / Re: To cut or not to cut - The lousy MS Office ribbon

« Last post by AndyM on April 09, 2007, 09:52 PM »

You can't argue for an interface with menus nested 5 levels deep and hundreds of tabbed dialog boxes just because its familiar!

-MrCrispy (April 09, 2007, 09:23 PM)

What you can argue with is the discontinuation of all the customizations that have been possible in Office up until now.  Sure, the ribbon might be nice for people who don't use most of the features available, but what's been good until now is that one can customize the interface to suit one's needs, using those features relevant to the work at hand.  This has made me fast and productive.  Why would I want to change to an interface that no longer allowed that?

542

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows Picture and Fax Viewer

« Last post by AndyM on April 03, 2007, 09:50 AM »

...it is a dll. So you can invoke it as such:

rundll32.exe C:\WINDOWS\system32\shimgvw.dll,ImageView_Fullscreen %1

-tinjaw (April 02, 2007, 02:05 PM)

Surprisingly, I have to leave off the %1 to get this to work, but now the shortcut is in my Send To folder, and works fine.

543

General Software Discussion / Re: join operations with excel tables (free?)

« Last post by AndyM on March 19, 2007, 06:59 PM »

This one  shows an empty page with the forum header only. Even after signing up. But thanks, the other one looks good.

try

http://vbaexpress.com/forum/

or

http://vbaexpress.co...orumdisplay.php?f=17

544

General Software Discussion / Re: join operations with excel tables (free?)

« Last post by AndyM on March 17, 2007, 03:02 PM »

for help w/ excel & vba:

http://vbaexpress.com/

and the microsoft.public.excel.programming newsgroup

very helpful people, just like around here

545

General Software Discussion / Re: nostalgia hour: old software you loved

« Last post by AndyM on March 04, 2007, 08:55 PM »

HotLine (phonebook, dialer, call log).  Ran it on our 8088 PCs and Compaq Portable, ran it for years under OS/2, and still run it under XP.  It's got to be pushing 20 years now.

And I still run SuperKey in the command window I use for HotLine.  Works better than AutoHotkey in this one situation.  Pretty sure I bought and registered SuperKey a bit before Hotline, so I guess that's my oldest still in use.

546

General Software Discussion / Re: Firewalls - please, i can't be bothered.

« Last post by AndyM on February 25, 2007, 12:09 PM »

i think i'll just not bother with a firewall

Why not just use the Windows firewall?  No outbound blocking but surely better than nothing, no?

It's what I use.  I will say that every now and then I see outbound activity that I'm not sure about, but the trouble I see people going thru dealing with the other firewalls is not attractive.

547

General Software Discussion / Re: fit to witdth in firefox? (Opera feature)

« Last post by AndyM on January 28, 2007, 01:19 PM »

automatically shrinks a web page to the current width of the browser. No more scrolling to the left and right.

I would like something like this also.

548

Official Announcements / Re: Announcing The New DonationCoder.com Help Desk

« Last post by AndyM on January 27, 2007, 08:52 PM »

That is very cool!!!

549

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: move small dialog windows to cursor position

« Last post by AndyM on January 22, 2007, 07:30 AM »

So far so good.

Thanks jgpaiva!

550

General Software Discussion / Re: My favorite software! What's yours?

« Last post by AndyM on January 16, 2007, 12:13 PM »

I have dozens of favorite utilities, tools, shell extensions, etc. most that I couldn't live without.

But I have to say that my two favorite programs, the one's I use the most to get the bulk of my work done are Excel and Word (both 2002).  Incredibly customizable (Excel needs a little AutoHotkey to fully customize well) and extremely powerful.  Yes, to get the most out of them involves a long learning curve, but the time invested has been worthwhile.