In last week’s post, I mentioned starting Outlook in Safe Mode. While I didn’t expect it to help, I was at the point where I wanted to ensure I’d tried everything. Simply put, when starting Outlook in Safe Mode, you disable any add-ins that may be installed and causing issues. I’ll leave the question of whether or not it’s a useful tool to have in your bag to you, here’s how you do it:
(more…)Category: How To
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Outlook: Calendar illegible in invites
A little while back, I had an issue with Outlook not properly displaying the calendar in meeting invitations. It looked like this (which I’m sure you’ll agree is less than helpful):
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Use browser profiles for more efficient operations
One of the complicating factors of my job is that I need to use the same tools, with different user credentials, often at the same time. For example, most of the companies I and my colleagues support use services that have some sort of integration with Microsoft Azure. As a result, I need to log in to the Azure portal for many of them on a daily basis.
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Hide recipients in Outlook meeting bookings
Like so many of you, I arrange a fair number of meetings for various purposes. Among these are the ones I arrange for the members of my union local in my capacity as its head. Now, EU – and thus also Norwegian – data protection law clearly categorizes union membership as one of the numerous special categories of personal data. I understand this to mean that I am not allowed to share the membership list with my members.
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Free text search in ADUC
A critical component to successfully closing a lot of the tickets I handle at work is the ability to search for – and find – Active Directory User, Computer, and Group objects. In about eight of ten instances, I’m able to do so using the standard search types (searching for Users, Contacts, and Groups or Computers). Sometimes, however, I need to find each and every object that has a name containing some predefined string. When that string might be found anywhere in the name, the standard search fails me pretty consistently. Luckily, there is another search type: Custom Search. Here’s how to use it:
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A better way of finding users’ group memberships
More than six years ago, I wrote a post, detailing how I could identify users’ Active Directory group memberships. While the method I detailed certainly works, it isn’t as simple as it might have been. Having recently found myself needing to perform that very same task again, I decided to revisit this topic, to show how I did it this time around.
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Excel: Calculate percentage
I need to calculate what percentage one number is of another on a relatively regular basis. Luckily, it is relatively easily done using functions in Excel. Here’s how:
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Excel: Combine two columns
While analysing an Excel sheet the other day, I needed to combine two columns so that I could get names in the format
(more…)firstname lastname(the list had been provided aslastname,firstname). As it happens, doing so is relatively easy. You do it on a cell by cell basis, by using basic excel commands. -
Improving your Google-fu
Search engines can be a great way of finding what you’re searching for. Using them to their fullest extrent, however, requires a bit of knowledge about how to structure your searches. These examples are some that I use on a regular basis:
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How to block everyone who likes a tweet on Twitter
I am a relatively active Twitter user. One of the things I do in order to keep Twitter a fairly enjoyable place, is to actively use the Block feature. I usually leave it at blocking individual users, but some tweets are simply so nasty that I don’t only want to block the user that tweeted (twote?) the tweet, but also anyone who likes it.
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