Creating a dropdown list in Microsoft Excel

In the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet program, if you wish to create a dropdown list where a user can select options from the list for a cell's value, you can take the steps below:

1. Highlight the cells where you wish to have the the dropdown list appear, e.g., by clicking in a cell and dragging downwards through a column where a user should select from the dropdown list.
2. Click on Data on the menu bar at the top of the Excel window
3. Click on Data Validation.
4. If you see 3 options under Data Validation, i.e., Data Validation, Circle Invalid Data, and Clear Validation Circles, select Data Validation.
5. You will then see a window where you can change settings. In the "Allow" field for validation criteria, select List.
6. You will then be given an option to provide the items for the list in the source field. If you have just a couple of options for the list that won't change, you can type them separated by a comma.
7. Click on OK.

In cells where you have chosen to present a dropdown list to a user, when the user clicks on the cell or tabs into it, he/she will see a small box with a downward pointing arrowhead appear to the right of the cell. The user can then either type a value in the field or he/she can chose a value from the dropdown list by clicking on the small box with the downard pointing arrowhead. If the user types a value that isn't in the list rather than selecting from the dropdown list, when the user hits enter or moves the cursor out of the cell, he/she will see the message "The value you entered is not valid. A user has restricted values that can be entered in this cell."

[ More Info ]

[/software/office/excel] permanent link

Comparing Keepass database entries by modification times

I needed to compare two KeePass Password Safe (version 2.45) databases, since one was copied to a laptop where I thought it might have been updated after it was copied with the original also being updated, so the two files no longer matched. I needed to add any new entries from the laptop to the original database. I knew there should at most only be a few additions on the laptop. You can see modification timestamps by clicking on an individual entry and then selecting the History tab for that entry, but I didn't want to go through every entry in the database that way to determine new entries, since it would have taken many hours. There is a way to speed the process by clicking on View from the KeePass menu bar which will give you the option to select Configure Columns.

Check the check box next for Last Modification Time, then click on OK. You will then see a "Last Modification Time" column for each entry, so you don't have to open each entry, though you will have to go through each group you've created to check the last modification time for entries, but you can click on the column header for "Last Modification Time" to sort them by time. You can sort them from oldest to newest or newest to oldest by clicking on the column header multiple times to toggle the display. By then viewing a list of entries under each group within KeePass on the laptop, I could see that nothing had been added, so I didn't need to add any entries to the original database to ensure synchronization of any updates made to the copy with the original file.

[/software/security/keepass] permanent link

Extracting image files from Google Chrome Cache

I wanted to save a local copy of an image on a webpage I was viewing in the Google Chrome browser on a Windows 10 system, but I couldn't right-click on it to download it, so I thought I could look for it in the Chrome browser cache, which is located at C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache where username is the name of the relevant account on a Windows system. I had the ChromeCacheView program from NirSoft on the system, which provides a command-line option to copy image files from the Chrome cache for a user, so I used it. Since I was logged into a regular user account, I opened a command prompt as the administrator and then made the working directory the directory where the ChromeCacheView program was located with cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Network\NirSoft\ChromeCacheView. Then from that directory I issued the command below:

chromecacheview -folder "C:\Users\JohnDoe\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache\" /copycache "" "image/png" /CopyFilesFolder "c:\users\johndoe\documents\temp\chrome" /UseWebSiteDirStructure 0

You can use the -folder option to tell ChromeCacheView which user's cache file you wish to use while the /copycache option can be used to specify the directory where you want images, such as PNG files, to be copied—in this case I was looking for a .png file because when I examined the HTML code on the webpage I thought that the the image was a PNG file. I created a temp\chrome directory under the Documents directory for the user account prior to issuing the command to hold the images stored in the cache. After the command completed, I could see all of the PNG files that had been in the Chrome cache in that temporary directory I had created.

When I didn't see the image I was looking for, I thought I might have misidentified it in the code, so I copied all of the image files from the cache directory, not just the PNG ones by changing "image/png" to "image" in the command. I.e.:

chromecacheview -folder "C:\Users\JohnDoe\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache\" /copycache "" "image" /CopyFilesFolder "c:\users\johndoe\documents\temp\chrome" /UseWebSiteDirStructure 0

That copied AVIF (.avif), BMP GIF (.gif), icon (.ico), JPEG (.jpg), JPEG File Interchange Format (JFIF) (.jfif), SVG (.svg), and WebP (.webp) files from the cache as well as the PNG ones.

[/network/web/browser/chrome] permanent link

Book Collector lock file

When I opened Book Collector version 20.5.2 today, I saw the message "Failed to open database, because your license key (xxxxxxxxxxxx) is already in use on computer "YYYYYYYY" by another user (zzzzzz). Do you wish to unlock your database file and open it here?" I could choose "yes" or "no" with the "no" answer opening Book Collector with a new empty book database. The computer the message referenced was the one on which I was currently trying to open the program. Since the system I was using had crashed earlier in the day, I realized that Book Collector was likely finding a lock file that would be deleted when the program is closed normally. I saw a file with the name I had given to my book collection, but with a .bkclck filename extension in the directory where I stored the book database. When I opened the file I saw the file conained only one line:

<lockinfo><writable><client pcname="YYYYYYYY" name="5c22840efc7a3db854c44b0b780f8abc" key="xxxxxxxxxxxx" username="zzzzzzzz"/></writable></lockinfo>

In cases where Book Collector was not closed normally, you can either choose "yes" at the prompt or delete the .bkclck file before opening Book Collector as its presence is what causes the message to appear.

[/software/database/collectorz] permanent link

Downloading Panopto videos

To download a video hosted on Panopto, such as a class lecture, you can take the following steps in the Firefox web browser:

1. Right-click on the video in Panoptoo—you may need to click on the small video in the upper, left-hand side of the window rather than the one on the right side of the window—and select "Inspect Element (Q)." In the "Search HTML" field, type .mp4 and hit Enter—this presumes the video is an MP4 video.
2. You should see the area in the HTML code where the MP4 file is referenced highlighted. Right-click on the highlighted area and choose "Copy" then "Outer HTML."
3. Then paste the information copied into the clipboard into Microsoft Notepad or some other text editor, depending on your operating system and preferred editor. You should see the URL for the video listed in the content pasted into the editor. Copy the URL starting with the "https" up through the ".mp4"—don't copy the information after the ".mp4."
4. Paste the copied URL into a browser tab. You can then right-click on the video in that browser tab and select "Save Video As" to download the video to your local system. You can give the video a more meaningful name than the long string of hexadecimal digits used for the name.

[ More Info ]

[/video/panopto] permanent link

Your electricity will be cut off in 30 minutes

At 11:55 AM EDT this morning, my wife received a recorded call stating our electricity would be cut off by Delmarva Power, our electric utility, in thirty minutes. She called for me to pick up the phone, but by the time I got to a phone in another room, the call was disconnected. She said the message had instructed her to hit "1" to speak to someone. The call sounded like a scam to me, since I didn't know of any issue with our electicity payments and also because I would have expected a letter well before a cutoff date and more than 30 minutes to pay any past due payment if someone called. It seemed to me an obvious attempt to panic a called party into providing a credit card to a scammer engaged in fraud, but I checked our bank account anyway and saw the last payment due had been deducted from our checking account about two weeks before the call and when I logged into Delmarva's website to check the status of our account, I saw the last payment credited and a balance of zero dollars.

Using *69, I was able to determine the listed calling number was 1-443-739-1747, but a search online for accounts of others receiving a call from a scammer using that number did not reveal other such activity. I called the number back to see how the scammer operated or to see if it might be a spoofed number, but just got a recorded message that the called party was not available, so I should leave a message. It sounded like a generic voicemail message. So, perhaps, the scammer spoofed the calling number as they often do to make it difficult to track down their identity.

[/security/scams] permanent link

Placing timestamps at ends of lines of a transcript for Panopto videos

After watching lectures for classes that are stored on the Panopto website, I like to save the text listed for a video in the Contents and Captions that Panopto provides in a text file. However, if I copy and paste the text into Windows Notepad or some other text editor, I see the timestamps appear beneath the relevant text on the following line. To address the problem, I paste the text into the Vim editor on a Microsoft Windows system and apply the command v/\d:\d\d\n/s/\n/ / that replaces the end-of-line character at the end of all lines that don't have a timestamp with a space, instead.

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[/video/panopto] permanent link

Codes for Short and Long Vowels in Latin

If you wish to insert vowels used in Latin in a document, such as a Microsoft Word or WordPad document, on a Microsoft Windows system to indicate vowel length, i.e., whether the vowel should be pronounced as a long or short vowel, you can use the Unicode values shown in the table below — Unicode is an encoding standard for characters in most of the world's writing systems. For Latin, a macron, which is a diacritic mark, is placed above the letter to indicate a long vowel. Sometimes a breve may also be used to indicate a short vowel. In addition to the Unicode codes, the corresponding Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) code is listed as well for displaying the characters in a web page.

To insert the characters using a Windows keyboard on a system running the Microsoft Windows operating system, type the numeric code (the numbers are hexadecimal numbers so "A" through "F" represent the numbers 10 through 15) and then hit Alt-x, i.e., hit the "Alt" and "x" keys simultaneously, after entering the numeric code. Note, you needed to have a space before the number you enter, otherwise if you attempt to put "ē" in "fēmina," by typing "f" with "0113" immediately after it, the "f0113" will be replaced with a small box with a question mark within it. So place a space after the "f," type 0113, hit Alt-x, then when ē appears, remove the space before it. Also note that though Microsoft Word supports this method of entering vowels with a diacritic mark in a document not all Microsoft Office applications allow you to enter Unicode characters by this method. E.g., for Microsoft Powerpoint, you will need to use the Character Map method of entering such characters, instead.

[ More Info ]

[/languages] permanent link

Resetting the password for a Comcast Business Router

I needed to reset the password on a Cisco router provided by Comcast for Internet service for a local business, since I needed to update firewall rules in the router, but when I tried what I thought was the password it didn't work. The model number for the Cisco router was DPC3941B (the model number is on the bottom of the router). I also needed to reconfigure the subnet used by the router for the Local Area Network (LAN) after resetting the router, since the computers on the LAN were using IP addresses from a 192.168.0.0/24 subnet rather than the 10.1.10.0/24 subnet used as the default one for the router.

[ More Info ]

[/network/routers/cisco/DPC3941B] permanent link

Turning off McAfee AntiVirus Plus realtime protection temporarily

To temporarily turn off the realtime antivirus protection in McAfee AntiVirus Plus, e.g., so you could move a file to another system for analysis that it might deem malware or to scan the system with other antivirus software, you can take the following steps:

1. Open the program and click on the gear (cog) icon at the upper, right-hand corner of the window.
2. Under the PC Security section of the Settings, you will see "Real-Time Scanning." When you click on "Real-Time Scanning" you will have the option of turning off the real-time monitoring for 15 minute intervals from 15 to 60 minutes or you can select "When I restart my PC" or "Never."

If you select a timed option, the protection will automatically turn back on after that period of time. You can also turn on protection again prior to that time by modifying the "Real-Time Scanning" setting again.

If you wish to view or restore items McAfee AntiVirus Plus has quarantined, you can click on "Quarantined items" under Settings, which will show you all files in the quarantine area, if any.

Note: these steps were tested on McAfee® AntiVirus Plus version 16.0

[/security/antivirus/mcafee] permanent link