November 1, 2007

Use Access menus to add page numbers, dates, and times to your reports

Date: October 30th, 2007: October 30th, 2007
Author: Mary Ann Richardson: Mary Ann Richardson
Category: Microsoft cialis dosage options Office, Access, Tips: Microsoft Office, Access, Tips

While the Report Wizard automatically adds page numbers to your Access report, it does not add a date and time stamp. And, if you create a report in Design view, you have to add the controls for the page numbers as well. Access provides menus so that you don’t have to know the code for setting these controls.

For example, to add page numbers to the bottom of your report, follow these steps:

Open your report in Design view.
Go to Insert | Page Numbers.
Click Page N Of M under Format.
Click Bottom Of Page [Footer] under Position.
Click the drop-down arrow under Alignment and select Center. Click OK.

If the first page of your report is a title page and you do not want the number to appear on that page, clear the Show Number On First Page check box before clicking OK in step 5.

The Page Numbers dialog box gives you a number of options for positioning the number in the header and footer. For example, if you are printing the report on both sides of the paper, you can select Inside or Outside in step 4.

To use the menus to insert a date and time stamp in your report’s footer, follow these steps:

Open your report in Design view.
Go to Insert | Date And Time.
Select the Date format you want to display under Include Date.
Select the Time format you want to display under Include Time. Click OK.
Drag the Time And Date fields to where you want to position them in the page footer section.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Filed under MS Access by al

Permalink • Print • Email • Comment

October 24, 2007

End the Button Confusion

Note: This tip does not work with the MS Office Suite 2007 programs that utilize ribbons in place of menus and toolbars.

Have you ever noticed that many of the custom MS Office toolbar buttons you've added have the exact same image?

I have! For example, I added a button that takes me to the New window you see when you use the File menu, New choice in MS Word.

Unfortunately, it's identical to the New button that opens a blank document from the Normal template.

So, what can you do?

Well, change the button image, of course!

Yes, you read it right. You can change the button image all by yourself!

To change a button image, you first need to open the Customize window. (Either right click over a toolbar and pick Customize from the bottom of the pop up menu or go to the Tools menu, Customize choice).

Now, go to the specific button you wish to change and right click.

From the pop up menu, go to the Change Button Image submenu.

cialis discount price border=”1″ width=”400″ height=”447″ />

You should find a selection of images to choose from. Pick one and then click on it.

Finally, close the Customize window.

(If you decide you want the original image back, simply repeat the process and choose Reset Button Image from the menu).

So, there you have it. MS Office with your own "special touch." Happy redecorating!

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Filed under Microsoft, MS Office by al

Permalink • Print • Email • Comment

Windows automatically updating itself: Case closed?

October 22nd, 2007

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 12:52 pm

It’s time for the latest — and possibly final — installment of the seemingly never-ending saga of “Why is my copy of Windows automatically updating and rebooting itself?“

In the last episode, the Windows Update Product team stated on its blog on October 12 that neither Automatic Update (AU) nor the bunch of patches that Microsoft rolled out on October 9, Patch Tuesday, were responsible for reports from Windows users earlier this month that their machines were automatically updating without their approval.

The Product Update team continued to investigate. At some point (I’m not sure exactly when, as the time stamp does not reflect the post update time/date) the team updated its blog again, suggesting a few possible causes for the reports by certain Windows users of their machines updating automatically. On the team’s list of possible reasons that AU settings can be (re)set or changed:

“During the installation of Windows Vista, the user chooses one of the first two recommended options in the “Out of Box Experience” and elects to get updates automatically from Windows
“The user goes to the Windows Update Control Panel and changes the AU setting manually
“The user goes to Security Center in Windows Vista and changes the AU setting
“The user chooses to opt in to Microsoft Update from the Microsoft Update web site
“The user chooses to opt in to Microsoft Update during the installation or the first run experience of another Microsoft application such as Office 2007.”

In short, Microsoft’s explanation was that users were knowingly or unknowingly changing their own Automatic Update settings and complaining about the results.

I went back and asked some of the many readers who complained in the comments on my blog post, as well as the additional ones who sent me e-mail, about both Vista and XP automatically updating even after they had indicated they did not want automatic updates to take effect automatically. I showed them Microsoft’s explanation. To put it politely, many did not feel Microsoft’s explanation was adequate. Here’s one reader response from a user who said that his XP machine rebooted itself this month, despite his AU settings being set to off:

“I’m not buying their explanation. I — for several years — have always shut off Windows update. I don’t want anything installed on my computer unless I know about it. If something is done on my computer, installations or whatever, I want to control it. I don’t allow any software vendor to update my software unless I’m aware of it. This includes Sun, Firefox, Thunderbird and others. I’m a computer tech and am keenly aware of how software changes can have adverse effects on a computer. I especially don’t trust Microsoft. Why and how Microsoft made changes to my computer very much concerns me and makes me more wary of MS than ever.”

Another reader astutely replied that he cialis daily generic thought that the users might be experiencing the problem noted my ZDNet blogging colleague David Berlind back in August. Berlind documented how Vista could force unwanted and immediate reboots on users. Microsoft’s explanation, at that time, was that users running in non-admin mode might be subject (knowingly or unknowingly) to the whims of their administrators. Microsoft’s explanation to Berlind:

“Because an administrative user had configured the machine to automatically stay up to date, the reboot is not postpone-able by a non-admin. Allowing a non-admin to override an admin’s wish is not the right default for security sake. This behavior is also controllable by policy to allow a non-admin user to interact with Windows Update. So yes, what [you] experienced is by design and justifiable as it does not allow a non-admin to go against the wishes of the administrative user. And again if running as a non-admin is his normal mode of operation, then there are policies which can be set to tweak behaviors more to his liking.”

I went back to the spokesperson for the Update team and asked whether it might be possible that this same policy decision was what was causing so many users to report that Vista and XP were automatically updating their machines against their wishes right after Patch Tuesday this month. The spokeswoman forwarded me the same response sent to Berlind, noting that it applied to Vista and XP.

The spokesperson said users who felt these settings were inappropriate should get their admins to change the policy setting in Windows Update so that a restart does not happen automatically after a scheduled install. (As Berlind noted back in August, changing this setting is not something many average users will be able to do easily.)

Microsoft is pointing users to this TechNet article explaining how to stop their machines from patching themselves without their approval, as well as this piece, which is specific to managing Windows Software Update Services settings.

There are still a number of unanswered questions, in my mind, regarding this matter. Why are reports of machines updating themselves automatically surfacing now, over the past several months, and not before now — especially in the case of five-year-old Windows XP? Are we going to start seeing these kinds of complaints flood in every month right around the time of Patch Tuesday? And are there other reasons beyond those Microsoft has suggested as the causes of Windows machines automatically patching and updating themselves which might be at fault here (as the reader I quoted is suggesting)?

Microsoft considers this Windows Update case closed. But is it? And should it be?

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Filed under Microsoft, OpSys, OS Vista, OS XP, software by al

Permalink • Print • Email • Comment

October 22, 2007

Microsoft matters less every 6 months

October 21st, 2007

Posted by Christopher DawsonMaybe not for the average corporation yet, or even the average home user, but every time Canonical releases a new version of Ubuntu (and with it comes Edubuntu), Microsoft becomes a little less the default vendor of choice for educational computing.

I’m still 2 years from a major tech refresh, including server hardware and software. I have to say I wish I was a little closer, having just installed Edubuntu 7.10 on my test server at home. Not only did the install go even easier than it did when I installed version 7.04 6 months ago, but the performance once installed is significantly improved.

One of the aspects of Gutsy that feels much improved over previous versions is speed.

Everything feels faster and snappier, from loading up the OS to clicking on menus.

For Edubuntu, a derivative of Ubuntu incorporating packages of educational software, and, more importantly, a brilliant implementation of the Linux Terminal Server Project, this translates into faster boot times for thin clients as well as standalone workstations. For those of you who haven’t used Edubuntu before, at installation you have the opportunity to install either a workstation (basically Ubuntu with educational packages and a kid-friendly theme) or a server, which supports connection of thin clients. In it’s simplest form, the latter requires two network interfaces, one connected to the Internet (via a router or drop from a larger network) and one connected to a switch with thin clients attached.

As with 7.04, this setup really is incredibly simple. Edubuntu detects both interfaces and allows manual or automatic networking setup. The automatic setup is remarkably intelligent; one caveat:

if the automatic DHCP/DNS the installer performs fails, then switch the two network connections coming into the server. Most likely, the so-called gateway interface was simply connected to the thin clients instead of the outside network. The text-based installer (sorry, no live CD/graphical install for Edubuntu, although you don’t really miss it) guides you through the rest and various setup options for Edubuntu are well-documented here. Note that while the instructions linked here are cialis cheapest price for version 6.06, the actual installation hasn’t changed much. The look, feel, and performance of the installed system are significantly improved.

I installed Ubuntu on two other older PCs for comparison (Dell workstations with 256MB RAM and Pentium 3 Xeons) without any trouble and had my kids using all of their Flash and Java-based applications in less than an hour and a half (from the time I started the install). My youngest was logged into the Edubuntu server (also an aging old donation with 2GB RAM and a single Pentium 3 Xeon running at 700MHz) via his old desktop (set to boot from the network) while I opened and closed applications, switched users, and monitored his connection via a cool control panel on the server itself. While this is obviously a low-utilization, seat of the pants test, this is also a really old server by modern standards and slower than the server on which I tested Edubuntu 7.04 (a Pentium 4 with Hyperthreading, running at 3GHz with 2GB of RAM). Performance was definitely improved, even with the slower server hardware, particularly in terms of network boot times and responsiveness on the thin clients.

Which leads me back to my headline. Edubuntu (and the various incarnations of Ubuntu) are very good right now. Microsoft may bring us “Patch Tuesday,” but Canonical brings us a significantly upgraded operating system every 6 months. Many other major Linux developers follow a similar schedule. If the improvements between versions are immediately noticeable, imagine what a couple more generations will bring us. What will Edubuntu 8.10 look like and how much better will it be? For that matter, how will SUSE Linux and their Kiwi implementation of LTSP look (along with the promise of fully-functional library and student information system software out of the box in the coming months)? RedHat/Fedora aren’t exactly far behind either, to say nothing of the countless options represented by other distributions.

I’m itching for a tech refresh already, just so that I can logically roll out one of these distributions somewhere other than my own lab. Of course, it will probably take me the next two years to convince my users that we can do without Windows anyway. For now, I’ll content myself with building a group of champion users who can see first hand the value of software like Edubuntu, and who can be as impressed as I am at its incredibly speedy progress.

Pasted from <http://education.zdnet.com/?p=1280>

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Filed under Microsoft, OpSys, OS Ubuntu, software by al