Blog: General

If Control C will not capture text from a popup message window, you can use Alt-PrtScn, paste into Paint, save to a TIF file, open that with Microsoft Office Document Imaging, choose Recognize Text using OCR, and then Send Text to Word.  Here is an AutoIt script to do that.  Several assumptions are made:  An image is already in your paste buffer, c:\temp\ocr.tif exists, location of %windir% and %ProgramFiles%, etc.  You may have to tweak the sleep statements and as always, your mileage may vary.  [more]

<script language="AutoIt">
; Do OCR on paste buffer
Run("c:\windows\System32\mspaint.exe")
WinWait ("untitled - Paint")
WinActivate("untitled - Paint")
Sleep(500)
Send("^v")   ; Paste in image
Sleep(2000)
Send("!FA")   ; Save as a TIF file
Sleep(1000)
Send("c:\temp\ocr1.tif{TAB}T{ENTER}")
Sleep(1000)
Send("Y")   ; Yes to replace file
Send("!FX")   ; Exit Paint
Sleep(1000)
Run("C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MODI\11.0\MSPVIEW.EXE")
WinWait("Document1 - Microsoft Office Document Imaging")
WinActivate("Document1 - Microsoft Office Document Imaging")
Send("!FO")   ; Open in Microsoft Office Document Imaging
Sleep(1000)
Send("c:\temp\ocr1.tif{ENTER}")
Sleep(1000)
Send("!TR")   ; Recognize Text
Sleep(3000)
Send("!TT")   ; Send Text to Word
Sleep(1000)
Send("{ENTER}")
</script>

Do you like to use 411 directory services on your telephone but don’t like to pay $1.50 per call? Well, Google has a free 411 service for business listings, It will connect you hands free to any company you would like, it will give you a list of businesses in the category that you specify, and it will give you any details you are inquiring such as the address. You can have it send the information to you on your phone via a text message and all sorts of other cool stuff. The number you dial instead of 411 is 1-800-GOOG411 and you can find out more about it at this link: http://www.google.com/goog411/

In Microsoft Office 2007, you can adjust the size of the menu "ribbon" (term used by Microsoft) at the top of Word, Excel, etc. by changing the font size of the "Menu" item under your Display properties.  Reducing the font size reduces not only the size of the font, but the size of the ribbon icons as well which give you more real estate when working in Office 2007 apps.  To get there, right-click on your Desktop -> Properties -> Appearance tab -> Advanced button -> choose "Menu" in the "Item" pull-down box -> change the "Size" pull-down box next to the Font name.  Note that since you are changing the general Display properties, the change will affect menus other than just Office.  [more]

For example:

A font size of 8 ...

Looks like this in Word:

 And a font size of 14 ...

Looks like this in Word (notice that for reference purposes the "This is a test" is the same font and size in both screen shots):

I've had problems before where drive mappings to computers that were shutdown/no longer available caused a long timeout when trying to open files in Microsoft Office applications (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313937).  I recently was having the same symptoms for a user, but they didn't have any strange drive mappings and we even cleared all their "Network Places" that weren’t available.  We had also unchecked the Tools -> Folder Options… ->View -> Automatically search for network folders and printers, which has also been known to cause delays.  I used RegMon to try to see what was causing the delay.  I found that whenever a file was opened or right clicked on (when the delay was occurring), the machine was processing the "Open With…" list and eventually getting to a EXE that was located on a networked machine that was no longer available.  I could see the registry keys associated with the network interfaces and TCP start to be accessed and this is when the delay was occurring.  I went and removed the registry entries that were for the remote machine and this fixed the delay.

If you need to run something quickly as administrator in Vista, you can just hit the Windows key, type the name of the program and press
Ctrl-Shift-Enter instead of just Enter.  This will bring up the confirmation dialog and allow you to run the program as administrator.

Not everyone agrees that there should be two spaces between sentences.  That being the case, not everyone puts two spaces between the sentences, making it a very time consuming task for those of us prefer two spaces.  In Word 2007, there is an option to have this marked as a grammatical error; therefore, making it very easy to identify and fix in documents.  This feature is located in Word Options, which is found when you click on the Microsoft icon.  Then select proofing.  About 2/3 the way down the page is a drop down box for Writing Style.  If you select “Grammar & Style”, and then click on Settings, you’ll have an option to select how many spaces are required between sentences.  Any more or any less will show as a grammatical error.

Writing scripts in Visual Basis for Applications (VBA) is convenient for automating tasks within Word, Excel, etc.  However, if you then want to be able to run any of those scripts as VBScript there are functions of VBA that are not supported in VBScript that you will have to modify before the script will compile.  A list of VBA functions that are not supported in VBScript can be found here.  The Control Flow functions (e.g. GoTo command) got me recently.

I guess this is annoying to some and not a big deal to others.  (“this” being the fact that Windows Vista IE/WE and file browser dialogs do not have an “up directory” button).  Besides just being weird it can be a hassle when you still work a lot on WinXP/Win2003 and are use to the convention of having an up button.  Of course MS allows you to use the “directory tree buttons” to easily navigate to a higher directory – which is pretty good, but not a complete solution in some cases.  If you click in the location area and start to type a new directory, there’s not an obvious way to restore the buttons (because now it’s just a text box containing the file path).  By the way, pressing Esc twice with focus on this text box does restore the buttons.  However, the thing I was interested in sharing was the ability to press Alt-Up Arrow and just go up a directory like normal.  So, the next time you notice the up button is missing just remember that Alt-Up Arrow in Vista does the same thing.

I recently ran into an issue whre I connected to an XP machine with remote desktop and the background would not repaint when windows were closed or moved.  I found that the Windows Security Center and the system tray notification about the Antivirus not working were running (wscpui.cpl and wscntfy.exe) under another user's account.  When I stopped those processes, then the background would repaint again.  So, if you see this behavior, you might check for processes running under another user's session.