Tech Tip Daily

Who doesn’t love Excel?  On top of all of the great things it can do, it does a heck of a job of looking neat and organized.  While you can create gridlines of certain styles and thicknesses around each cell, sometimes the standard thin-gray ones do the trick.  But by default, these aren’t printed on the spreadsheet.  How do you get excel to print these?

To print gridlines in Excel 2007:

1. Go to the page layout tab at the top of the window
2. Click the “expand” icon to the right of the “Page Setup” group heading.  This will bring up the page setup window.
3. Click the sheet tab
4. Place a check next to “Gridlines” in the print section and click Ok.
5. Alternatively, within the page layout tab, you can check the “Print” box under Gridlines in the Sheet Options group.

In all other versions of Excel:

1. Go to File -> Page Setup
2. Click the sheet tab
3. Check the box next to “Gridlines” in the Print area.
4. Click Ok

That does it!  Thanks, and happy computing!

Microsoft has long been criticized for it’s lack of attention to security.  For a long time, the majority of its products have not only had some major holes, but has done little to prevent the end user from jeopardizing their well-being.  Fortunately, this trend has changed in the past few years.  Microsoft has been taking some very large steps in security not only their operating systems, but their applications as well.

Finally, people are beginning to get the point that you shouldn’t open file attachments.  Just in case a few didn’t get that memo, Microsoft blocks some of the more dangerous attachment types (.exe, .vbs, .bat, etc.).  You’ll know that Outlook is blocking the attachments by the message “Outlook blocked access to the following potentially unsafe attachments:” that appears where the attachments usually do.  That way, Aunt Sally doesn’t accidentally open an email “from Uncle George” with the file “virus.exe” included.  Despite this security feature, I and a few others insist on being stubborn and having complete and unrestricted access to the capability of a program.  If I want to download and infect my computer, let me do it.

Although it isn’t easily accessible through the file menu (probably a good thing), Microsoft has outlined steps to disable attachment blocking for specific file types on their support knowledge base.  I’ll outline these steps below.

It’s important to emphasize that this really is a good thing.  Microsoft made the right choice in doing this because, well, it protects you.  In my case, I had an .exe file that I HAD to retrieve from my exchange email, and I had no choice but to follow these steps to access it.  And remember, when opening file attachments (never), you should only open those that are from someone you know, AND that you are expecting.  Grandma Johnson sends you pictures.zip?  Call her up and make sure she sent it.  Then, scan it with antivirus software just to be safe.  My papa always said, “Scan twice, open once.”  Do the following at your own risk.

To unblock a particular file type within Outlook:

1. These steps will involve modifying the registry.  As is always good practice when modifying the registry, be sure to back it up.
2. Exit Outlook if it’s running
3. Click Start -> Run, type ‘regedit’ and hit enter
4. In the window that appears, navigate to the following registry keys, depending on your version of Outlook (clicking the ‘+’ next to each section heading)

   Outlook 2007
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Security

   Outlook 2003
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Security

   Outlook 2002
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Outlook\Security

   Outlook 2000
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Outlook\Security

5. If these keys don’t exist for your version, create them.  Otherwise, proceed to step 6.  Navigate to the ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft’ and right click in the right on the Office Folder in the left pane.  Select New->Key and then title the new key as the corresponding version number depending on your version (look above – 12.0 for 2007, 11.0 for 2003, etc.).  Then click on the key you just created and create a new key titled ‘Outlook’ and then a new key within that one titled ‘Security’
6. Select the ‘Security’ key/folder and then right click in the right pane, selecting New->String Value.  Give the new value a name of ‘Level1Remove’
7. Once created, right click ‘Level1Remove’ and select ‘Modify’.  In the text field, type the file extensions (including the period) that you wish to unblock within Outlook, separated by a semicolon.  For example, I have…

   .exe;.bat;.vbs

8. Click Ok and close all windows.  Restart your computer

Outlook will now allow you to download these previously-blocked attachments.  Again, I caution you on doing this, and always make sure that you scan anything that you receive as a file attachment.

That’s all!  Thanks, and happy computing!

Yesterday, I talked about how you could convert your copy protected TV shows on Windows Media Center to another, less restrictive file format.  But who has time to sit down at their computer and watch TV shows?  What we really want is to watch these files on our portable devices on the go.  Meet Handbrake, “an open source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows” (From the website).  In all reality, handbrake is marketed as a DVD-to-ipod converter, although it can support a wide array of input file types.  And the great thing is, it’s easy to use.

To convert video files (and DVDs) using Handbrake:

1. Download Handbrake from http://handbrake.fr and install it (GUI and command line versions available – I’ll be working with the GUI version).
2. Open the application, and you’ll see the beautifully intuitive interface.  In the source field, you’ll want to select Folder or File, depending on whether you want to convert a DVD or other media type, respectively.
3. Once you’ve selected your source, you’ll want to give Handbrake a destination.  Click browse and navigate to wherever you’d like your transcoded files to be stored (giving a file name, of course).
4. In the bottom section, you’ll find detailed conversion settings for all aspects of the files.  In all practicality, you’ll most likely be ok just selecting a preset from the list on the right of the screen.
5. Once you’ve chosen your preset, you’re all set.  Click Start to begin conversion OR you can select “Add to Queue” to queue up this conversion in a batch list of other conversions.  This is nice if you want to convert a few shows all at once without having to babysit the software.  For each conversion, click “Add to Queue” and then select the “Show Queue” button to display the queue.  Once finished, click “Encode” to start the process.
6. Depending on the input file type, size, and length, this could take some time.  Go do something else for a while (like reading the rest of my articles) and then check back later on.

That’s all!  Thanks, and happy computing!

For a long time I had an issue with iTunes where I couldn’t sort my library by alphabetical artist name without splitting up my “compilation/remix” albums.  Aside from regular albums, I have a large amount of techno/trance where the songs on the CD were originally performed by a variety of different artists, but all had been mixed together by one DJ.  When sorting by artist, iTunes would split the album, sorting by the original artist of the particular track.  For example, searching for “Tiesto” within my library would mix up every album, listing each song in alphabetical order of the original artist.

While playing around one day, I noticed that I could sort by artist, while maintaning my compilations that all had a common Album Artist field.  Despite having different artists for each song on an album, by placing the common “Album Artist” (in my case, “Tiesto”) in the tag for each song on the album, you could click on the “Album” column heading to sort by album, then click again to sort by “Album by Artist”.  This sorts all of the songs on the album by Artist, but gives precedence to the “Album Artist” field.

To sort your iTunes library by artist while maintaining grouping on your compilation and mix albums:

1. For each compilation or mix album, make sure that each track has the same artist name in the “Album Artist” field of the tag.
2. Click the “Album” column heading once to sort by album, then click it again to sort by “Album by Artist”

Your library should now be sorted by Artist, while maintaining the grouping of your compilation/mix albums.

That’s all!  Thanks, and happy computing!

How many times have you spent hours on a beautifully designed and organized excel spreadsheet, taking care to keep it easy to read yet functional, only to have your employer tell you he wants the whole thing flipped, with the rows as columns and vise versa?  Yeah, well me neither, but doesn’t it sound like a neat thing to be able to do?  It’s definitely something that I imagine I’ll use at one point or another.  Credit for this tip goes to my college roommate Scott (leaving for law school today – good luck friend!).  I had never heard of it until he mentioned it to me.

To invert rows and columns in excel:

1. Open your spreadsheet
2. Select your data table (Interestingly enough, you can’t select the whole table.  Click-and-drag to select all of the cells that contain information)
3. Go to edit -> copy (or ‘ctrl + c’)
4. Select an empty cell below or next to your existing data (try to leave some space between the two so you don’t confuse tables).  Alternatively, you can create a new spreadsheet and paste wherever you please.  Just be sure to close the old table after you copy the data over, and then save the new worksheet to overwrite the old.
5. Go to edit -> paste special.  In the box that appears, check the “transpose” box at the bottom of the window and hit ok.
6. Your new inverted table will appear in the worksheet.  Select all of the rows/columns of the old table to delete the old data and move the new table to position (unless you created a new spreadsheet).

There you have it!  Not a day goes by that I become where I’m not more and more impressed with excel.

That’s all!  Thanks, and happy computing!