Carly Bond

Geeky Stuff

Helpful hints & tips about technology & the like…

Updating Safari On Windows

Mar 13th, 2012
by Carly Bond.
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If like me, you like Apple products but can’t afford them, you’ll be using Safari & iTunes on a windows machine.  Now with iTunes, it always pops up when a new update is available, however, Safari doesn’t.

Having trawled through the menu options I couldn’t find anything to use & considered downloading it all over again to get it to update.

Look no further…all you need to do is find the Apple Software Update tool that will have been downloaded automatically to your machine.

Mine was just under All Programs, but the icon looks a little like this.

AppleUpdate

Once clicked, it will check for updates & give you the same options as if you were in iTunes. Happy updating!

VB.Net – Connection to Microsoft Excel Issue

Aug 23rd, 2011
by Carly Bond.
1 comment

Over the last week or so, I have been learning VB.Net. Now I am very new to this, and although I have got 10 years of VBA for Applications behind me, any new language is difficult to pick up. For me, anyway!

The job I needed to do, is work through a list of files & folders and amend a small amount of VBA code from one thing to another.  Given a starting point from Mike Hudson, I started to look into how it all worked & fitted together.  My first stumbling block was being able to connect to Excel.  I kept getting the following message:

HRESULT = 0x800A17B4 (-2146822220) “Programmatic Access to Visual Basic Project is not trusted”

I searched on the Internet to find that there was a setting in Excel that I needed to select before I could continue.  One which you can solve by following these easy instructions:

Office 2003 & Office XP

  1. Open the Office 2003 or Office XP application in question.
  2. Go to the Tools menu.
  3. Click Macro.
  4. Click Security to open the Macro Security dialog box.
  5. Go to the Trusted Sources tab.
  6. Click to select the Trust access to Visual Basic Project check box to turn on access.
  7. Click OK to apply the setting.
  8. You may need to restart the application for the code to run properly if you automate from a Component Object Model (COM) add-in or template.

Office 2007

  1. Open the 2007 Microsoft Office system application in question.
  2. Click the Microsoft Office button.
  3. Click Application Options.
  4. Click the Trust Center tab
  5. Click Trust Center Settings.
  6. Click the Macro Settings tab.
  7. Click to select the Trust access to the VBA project object model check box.
  8. Click OK.
  9. Click OK.

Microsoft Excel – Showing hidden data in charts

Aug 22nd, 2011
by Carly Bond.
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Excel

Sometimes when you are producing reports in a chart form you don’t want to show the raw data behind it, however, if you hide your data from the end user, the chart information seems to disappear.

There is, however, an easy way to get around this…

1) Create your chart in the usual way but when you Select Data Source, Click the Hidden and Empty Cells button in the bottom left of the pop up box.

SelectDataSource

2) Select Show data in hidden rows and columns

3) Click OK

Find your friends on Google+

Aug 21st, 2011
by Carly Bond.
1 comment

Google

The simplest things always seem to allude me and I searched for ages to find this so I thought I would post this for others who had the same problem as me.

Do you have a friend with an email address and you want to see if they are on Google+?, then follow these simple instructions:

1) Click on Circles

Circles

2) Click Add a new person

Add New Person

3) Enter the email address in the box that appear

4) Choose the circles you would like that friend to appear in

Choose Circles

If you’d like a google invite, then please feel free to read my previous post.

Google+ Invite Anyone?

Aug 20th, 2011
by Carly Bond.
123 comments

Google

Thanks to a close friend, I have had Google+ for a while now and I have been getting my head around all the new jargon; Circles, Plus 1′s, etc.  But I am realising that it’s not really any good without more people getting involved.

I can see how good it could be, with the ability to only post specific things to specific people being the best thing that I’ve seen, so far.

Now with my invite comes the ability to invite more people along.  So if you’d like me to send you across one, then please comment below with your email address and I’ll send you one.

If you’d like to find out more about it, take this tour.

Microsoft Excel – Stop a ‘Find & Replace’

Aug 12th, 2011
by Carly Bond.
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Excel

I am always working with large sets of data and occasionally I need to ‘Find & Replace’ on the whole data set, but it can take, what feels like FOREVER! The cell reference whirring away in the top left hand corner of the grid.

Sometimes, I realise that I didn’t really want to ‘Find & Replace’ what I have & want to cancel the process, however, Excel likes to tell you it’s ‘(Not Responding’) and you can either be sat there for ages, or end task when you don’t really want to.

To get round this problem, all you need to do Click & Hold the Esc Key until Excel starts to respond again.

Simples :)

Microsoft Excel – Forward Slash Issue

Jul 9th, 2011
by Carly Bond.
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Excel

I’ve been using Microsoft Excel for about 15 years but yesterday I came across something I have never seen before.  I went to type the forward slash straight into a cell and it behaves just like the Alt key showing all the short key references on the ribbon.  I thought I was going a little mental & couldn’t believe that I’ve never come across this before.

But I found out that you could switch it off very easily and thought I would share:

  1. Click the Office Logo and go to Excel Options
  2. In the options window, click Advanced
  3. Scroll all the way down to the bottom to the Lotus compatibility section
  4. Remove the / from the Microsoft Office Excel menu key

Microsoft Outlook – Tasks in Calendar View

Jun 17th, 2011
by Carly Bond.
2 comments

For a few months now the fact that I could see my tasks at the bottom of my Calendar view was driving me insane. Not sure why, probably because I’m pretty finicky……..OK, OK, a lot finicky :) . But after some searching I found that you can turn them off. The example below shows the ‘Normal’ setting.

outlooktasks1

To hide the details of the tasks, you need to select the menu path: View > Daily Task List > Minimized

outlooktasks2

To remove them altogether, you need to select the menu path: View > Daily Task List > Off

outlooktasks3

Print Screen

Jun 14th, 2011
by Carly Bond.
2 comments

I have just recently been set up at work with dual screens to help with my programming.  It’s taking a bit of getting used to, however, I love it.  Code on one side, Excel on the other makes it much easier to work & see what your code is doing at the same time.

Alongside writing VBA to create reports, I also write documentation explaining how to run the reports and to do this I am always using the ‘Print Screen’ option on the keyboard to capture major points in the report process.  The problem with having dual screens means as standard you get a picture of both screens:
Dual Screens

But all you need to do to stop this is:

1) Select the programme on the screen you want to ‘print’
2) Press ALT + PRINT SCREEN and it will copy the one screen you have in focus.

iTunes Christmas Music Problems

May 4th, 2011
by Carly Bond.
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If like me you have copious amounts of Christmas music in your iTunes library, but you like to shuffle or use the Genius playlist options, you will probably get annoyed that the occasional Christmas song pops up when you least expect it.

Well you can stop this from happening by following these simple instructions:

To stop them appearing in Shuffle

  • Right click the song(s) / album(s)
  • Select Get Info
  • Select the Options tab
  • Make sure the ‘Skip when shuffling’ option is selected (If multiple songs are selected, you will need to drop down the box to Yes)

To stop them appearing in Genius

  • Right click the song(s) / album(s)
  • Select Untick Selection
  • Go to menu path Store > Update Genuis
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