I work a lot with text files containing data which is, to some degree or another, structured. Whether a breach file from a published breach, or the result of a powershell query such as Get-ADUser, Get-ADComputer, or Get-ADDirectReports, I need to separate the data into columns so that I can work with it. This is where the Text to Columns feature in Excel comes in handy.
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Whenever I get a new (Windows) computer, one of the very first pieces of software I download and install is Notepad++. It gets used for just about anything, and everything, and takes the concept of Notepad, a simple text editor, up a few hundred notches.
1 CommentMany companies, my employer included, uses spreadsheets on a more or less consistent basis in order to track such things as vacation planning and KPI reporting. For me, as an employee, keeping track of these spreadsheets can, from time to time, be a bit annoying. Much to my surprise, at some point in the past few years, Microsoft added a pin item feature to MS Office.
Leave a CommentIn December of 2016, I discovered Bear Writer. At the time, I had been using a number of different solutions for note-taking and organisation, none of which had really done the trick for me. That all changed with Bear. Arriving to critical acclaim, Bear is certainly a very pretty app, and its iCloud sync feature has served me well enough. There has just been one issue; it is only available on Apple devices.
Leave a CommentShared email boxes are a useful tool for departments needing to have a single point of contact, but whose needs do not extend so far as to need a CRM or ticket management tool. I’ve talked before about how to add them to Outlook, in which I noted that I usually uncheck the box for downloading shared folders to avoid downloading what tends to be a huge mail box, which will lock up Outlook. Another reason to do so, is that a locally cached mail box often does not display all mails and folders, a complaing I see from time to time. It has been my experience that most users leave the settings in their default state, so today, I thought I’d tell you how to disable that retroactively:
Leave a CommentA not infrequent question at work, is how to add a second mailbox in Outlook. Here’s how:
Leave a CommentA user called in, reporting that Word’s Track changes-function tagged her as “Author”, instead of her name. I opened a remote session, and started out by confirming that everything else was working correctly, and that her name had been set as the author in the settings for Microsoft Word. Stalling for time while I researched the issue, I found that it seemed to be a problem affecting particular documents. Knowing this set me on the path to the solution, as follows:
8 CommentsA few months ago, I had a user call in complaining that Excel would freeze and become completely unresponsive when she was working in a specific workbook. It was fairly large (10MB), but well within what the computer should have been able to handle. I opened a remote session to the computer, and started troubleshooting. My first step, as always in these cases, was to look at the event logs, which showed no relevant entries. Next, I inspected one of the files in question.
Leave a CommentFrom time to time, Excel worksheets fill up with blank cells interspersed among the content. While the judicious use of whitespace can be useful, it may also make reading the worksheet somewhat challenging. Luckily, Excel has a tool to help us get rid of the blank cells. Here’s how:
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