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Tue, Dec 12, 2023 3:43 pm

Turning off Spelling and Grammar Checking for a Document in Microsoft Word 2010

If you wish to turn off the spelling check and/or the grammar check for a document in Word in the Microsoft Office 2010 suite (version 14.0.7268.5000), you can do so by taking the following steps:
  1. Click on the Review tab at the top of the Word window where the document is open.
  2. On the Review tab, click on Spelling & Grammar.
  3. In the Spelling and Grammar window that then opens, click on the Options button.

    Spelling and 
Grammar window

  4. Under the Proofing option, you will see check boxes for "Hide spelling errors in this document only" and "Hide grammar errors in this document only". Check both boxes, if you wish to turn off checking for both, and click on the Ok button.

    Word 
Proofing Options

  5. You can then close the Spelling and Grammar window by clicking on the "X" in the upper, right-hand corner of that window.

[/os/windows/office/word] permanent link

Wed, Nov 01, 2023 5:06 pm

Clearing the formatting of paragraphs in Microsoft Word

I edit a newsletter for the retiree organization of my former employer. Often when I receive a draft copy of the newsletter in Microsoft Word format, I find that some paragraphs have a gray background or other formatting that I need to remove. I can't remove that grey background by changing the fill for the paragraph to "none", but I can remove it by highlighting the paragraph and then clearing the formatting. The procedure for doing so with Microsoft Word version 14.0, which is part of Microsoft Office Professional 2010, and other versions on a Windows system is to right-click on the paragraph after highlighting it, then select Styles and then Clear Formatting. The font selection will also be cleared.

Microsoft Word Clear Formatting

Alternatively, with the text in the paragraph highligthed, hit the Ctrl key and spacebar simultaneously to clear the formatting for the paragraph.

[/os/windows/office/word] permanent link

Wed, Oct 18, 2023 3:59 pm

Sites that can be used to download YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok videos

Sometimes videos you might wish to view later, or view again, will disappear from online sites. If you would like to store videos on your own system so that you don't need to worry about them disappearing, either removed by personnel associated with the site or the person who posted the content, there are sites that you can go to where you only need to provide Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) to have the site provide you with a download link you can use to store videos on your own system. For YouTube videos, you can use the OffLiberty site. For Instagram videos, you can use the Inflact site, which also allows you to save videos hosted by Facebook, Twitter (now X), and Tiktok. Both sites allow you to save a video on your own system in .mp4 format. Use of both sites is free.

Related articles

  1. Downloading Video Clips with Offliberty
    Date: January 26, 2014

[/video] permanent link

Fri, Sep 15, 2023 5:14 pm

Determining the Serial Number of a Disk Drive with PowerShell

If you need to determine the serial number of a hard disk drive (HDD) attached to a Microsoft Windows system, you can do so from a PowerShell window using the cmdlet Get-Disk (you can open a PowerShell window by typing PowerShell in the Windows "Type here to search field on a Windows 10 system and then selecting the app when it is returned in the list of search results). If you just want a list of drives attached to the system by a USB connection, you can pipe the output of the cmdlet to the Where-Object cmdlet where you can filter on just drives that have a USB connection as shown below.

PS C:\> Get-Disk | Where-Object -FilterScript {$_.Bustype -Eq "USB"}
Number Friendly Name Serial Number                    HealthStatus         OperationalStatus      Total Size Partition
                                                                                                             Style
------ ------------- -------------                    ------------         -----------------      ---------- ----------
1      SanDisk Cr... 03025228050421082418             Healthy              No Media                      0 B RAW
2      USB2.0 Car... 606569746800                     Healthy              No Media                      0 B RAW
4      USB2.0 Car... 606569746802                     Healthy              No Media                      0 B RAW
5      USB2.0 Car... 606569746803                     Healthy              No Media                      0 B RAW
3      USB2.0 Car... 606569746801                     Healthy              No Media                      0 B RAW
6      WD My Pass... WXM1A375CKEZ                     Healthy              Online                  931.48 GB GPT


PS C:\>

[ More Info ]

[/os/windows/PowerShell] permanent link

Wed, Sep 13, 2023 10:22 pm

Filtering Windows Updates by a Specific Date

When I logged into a user's Microsoft Windows 10 system to check on a problem, I found the system had rebooted late the night before, September 12, 2003, at a time much later than I would expect the user to be working, so I didn't think she had rebooted it. I didn't know if the reboot might be related to the problem she reported to me or could possibly just be Microsoft Windows rebooting because of an automatically installed update. From a command prompt window, you can obtain the last time the system was rebooted using the systeminfo command. To see just the last reboot time and not all of the other output it provides, you can filter the output with the find command by piping the output of the systeminfo command to the find command. You can check on updates that have been installed using the Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) command wmic qfe list ("qfe" stands for "Quick Fix Engineering"). Since that command can also generate a lot of output for updates on dates you may not be interested in, you can also filter that output with the find command.

[ More Info ]

[/os/windows/PowerShell] permanent link

Mon, Aug 21, 2023 9:56 pm

Pinning Evernote to the Microsoft Edge browser toolbar

TO pin the Evernote Web Clipper extension to the toolbar in the Microsoft Edge browser, click on the 3 dots at the top, right-hand corner of an Edge browser window, then select Extensions, then click on the Evernote Web Clipper extension, and then click on the icon that appears to the right of it, which will have a slash through it if an icon for the extension has not yet been added to the toolbar.

Add icon for Evernote to Edge

That will remove the slash from the icon and add an icon for Evernote, the green elephant head, to the toolbar.

[/network/web/browser/edge/evernote] permanent link

Sun, Aug 20, 2023 2:58 pm

Copying fonts from one Windows system to another

I needed to transfer the fonts my wife had installed from the Microsoft Windows 10 system she had been using to a new Windows 11 system. To do so, I copied the C:\Windows\Fonts directory on her old system to a network location that I could access from the new system (I could also have used a USB flash drive). I then copied the contents of that directory to the C:\Windows\Fonts directory on her new system. When doing so, an Installing Fonts window appeared with the following warning:

Cannot install StaticCahce.dat

The file 'C:\Users\username...\StaticCache.dat' does not appear to be a valid font.

After I closed that window, I also saw another window with the message below:

Cannot install
GlobalMonspace.CompositeFont

The file 'C:\Use...\GlobalMonspace.CompositeFont' does not appear to be a valid font.

A similar message appeared for the following fonts:

I also saw some messages stating a font was already installed and asking if I wanted to replace it. I chose "No" and checked the box for "Do this for all current items". After that, I also saw "Cannot install Deleted," though I don't know why that appeared as there was no file named "Deleted" in the directory from which I was performing the copy.

Note: you can see a list of the currently installed fonts on a Windows system by typing fonts in the Windows Search window at the bottom of the screen and then selecting Fonts Control Panel when you see it returned in the search results.

Windows 11 Current Fonts

Before I started copying fonts from the old system, I saw "183 items" for the number of fonts. After I copied the fonts, I saw "426 items" in the Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization > Fonts window. The number of items added will likely be less than the number of files in the folder from which you transferred the fonts as some of the TrueType font files (.ttf) are variations such as bold and italic, of a particular font.

I also transferred Windows themes from her account on the old system to her account on the new system.

[/os/windows/transfer] permanent link

Fri, Aug 18, 2023 2:54 pm

Pinning a Brave browser extension

If you would like an extension you have added to the Brave browser to have an icon at the top of a Brave browser window, you can "pin" it to the right of the address bar in the browser by clicking on the icon that looks like a puzzle piece that appears to the right of the address bar, which will result in a list of installed extensions appearing, and then clicking on the pushpin icon for an extension that you would like to be "pinned" so that an icon for the extension appears to the left of that puzzle piece icon, allowing you to click on the extension's icon to use the extension. E.g., for the Evernote Web Clipper extension shown below, if I click on the pushpin icon next to it, an icon for the Evernote extension than appears next to the puzzle piece icon.

Brave browser - Pin Evernote

[/network/web/browser/brave/evernote] permanent link

Wed, Aug 16, 2023 9:09 pm

Replacing all occurrences of a text string in a binary file with XVI32

If you need to replace all occurrences of text in a file that isn't a text file, XVI32 is a free hex editor that provides that capability. To use the program, download the zip file xvi32.zip and unzip the file to whatever directory you wish to place it in. There is no installation procedure, you simply run the xvi32.exe file from the directory where you placed it. To search for a string you wish to replace throughout a file, make sure you are at the beginning of the file (position 0), then click on Search on the program's toolbar then choose Replace.

XVI32 - search and replace

Then put the text you wish to replace in the Find field (you may also need to check "as Unicode Latin (UTF-16LE)" if the file uses Unicode encoding, which is likely. Then put the replacement text in the Replace with field. Again you may need to check the box for "as Unicode Latin (UTF-16LR)". UTF-16 is a 16-bit Unicode Transformation Format.

XVI32 - replace

Then click on the Replace all button. The program will tell you how many occurrences of the searched for text was replaced.

XVI32 - Occurences replaced

Choose File then Save to save the file you've edited with the changes you made.

[/software/editors/xvi32] permanent link

Mon, Aug 14, 2023 7:37 pm

Adding registry keys to the Windows Registry from a .reg file

You can save registry keys from the Windows Registry on a system running a Microsoft Windows operating system by running the Windows Registry editor, regedit.exe, then navigating to the location of a key you wish to save, right-clicking on it and selecting Export to create a .reg file. You can then import the registry key on another Windows system by double-clicking on that file on the system on which you wish to have the same registry entry. You may need to be logged in under a administrator account for keys that apply to all users, but you can still import the contents of the .reg file without logging out of the currently logged in user account, if that is not an account in the administrator group, by opening a command prompt window with administrator privileges. On a Windows 11 system, you can do so by typing command prompt in the Search field at the bottom of the screen. When you see the Command Prompt app returned in the search results, click on it to open a command prompt window without administator privileges or select "Run as administrator" to open a command prompt window with administrator privileges. To add the registry entries in a .reg file to the Windows Registry from the command prompt you can issue the command reg /import filelocation\filename where filelocation is the directory path to the file and filename is the file's name. E.g., to import a registry file named L5SoftwareGroup.reg located on the server server1 in the shared public folder under the directory path \Software\Utilities, I could enter the command below.

C:\Windows\System32>reg import \\server1\public\Software\Utilities\L5SoftwareGroup.reg
The operation completed successfully.

C:\Windows\System32>

Related articles

  1. Obtaining a command prompt in Windows 11
    Date: February 18, 2017
  2. Obtaining a command prompt in Windows 10
    Date: February 18, 2017
  3. Obtaining a Command Prompt on a Windows 8 System
    Date: March 15, 2014

[/os/windows] permanent link

Sun, Aug 13, 2023 6:42 pm

CDisplay Installation File

While installing software that my wife uses on a new PC, I discovered that the developer of CDisplay, David Ayton, died in 2003 and the program is no longer maintained. The application allows one to display comic book archive files, which are files with an extension of .cbr, cbz, .cbt, or .cba — those files are renamed RAR, ZIP, TAR, or ACE files. Since the website where I obtained the software almost two decades ago, www.cdisplay.me, no longer exists, I've placed a Zip file containing the installation program on this website at CDisplay 1.8.1 so that others who might need a copy of the software can access it.

[/os/windows/software/comics] permanent link

Mon, Jul 24, 2023 1:16 pm

Stop sharing a folder on a Windows 2012 server

To stop sharing a folder on a Windows 2012 server, you can take the following steps:
  1. Hit Ctrl-Esc
  2. Type Computer Management and when you see Computer Management returned in the search results, click on it.
  3. In the Computer Management window, select Shares under Shared Folders, which is under System Tools.
  4. Right-click on the directory you no longer wish to share and select "Stop sharing".

    Stop Sharing folder

If you see a Shared Folders window open informing you that there are open files in the shared directory when you attempt to stop sharing it, you can click on Open Files, which appears beneath Shares in the list of options for Shared Folders in the Computer Management window to determine which files are open and which user account has them open.

Shared Folders open files

If you wish to close them from the server, you can, after you have selected Open Files to see the list of open files, right-click on a file and select the option to close it. You can also close all open files by selecting "More Actions" in the right pane of the Computer Management window, then "Disconnect All Open Files".

You can also see which files are open by opening a command prompt window with administrative access and issuing the openfiles command. You can open a commmand prompt window with administrator access by hitting Ctrl-Esc then typing command prompt and when you see "command prompt" returned in the search results, right-click on it and choose "Run as administrator". In the command prompt window, enter the command openfiles.

C:\Windows\system32>openfiles

INFO: The system global flag 'maintain objects list' needs
      to be enabled to see local opened files.
      See Openfiles /? for more information.


Files opened remotely via local share points:
---------------------------------------------

ID       Accessed By          Type       Open File (Path\executable)
======== ==================== ========== =====================================
27514635 Joe                  Windows    C:\..\Public\Documents\Books\Images
10066334 Joe                  Windows    C:\..\Documents\GRAA\2023\July
28185728 Joe                  Windows    C:\..\2023\Summer\Review\2023-06-26
25501373 Joe                  Windows    C:\..\Documents\MoonPoint\2023
22145930 Liz                  Windows    G:\..) (2023_07_15 23_24_31 UTC).pdf
28185729 Joe                  Windows    C:\..\Public\Documents\Books\Images
27514641 Liz                  Windows    G:\..) (2017_07_06 02_45_37 UTC).pdf
28856820 Joe                  Windows    C:\..\Documents\MoonPoint\2023
38923150 Joe                  Windows    C:\..\2023\Summer\Review\2023-06-26
22145934 Joe                  Windows    C:\..\Documents\GRAA\2023\July

C:\Windows\system32i>openfiles

If you can't determine which files are open because the full path to files is not displayed, i.e., two dots are displayed for a portion of the path, then you can add a format option (fo) to the command to display the output in a different format. E.g., if you add /fo list, i.e., openfiles /query /fo list when you query for the open files, you will then see the files displayed in a list format that will display the full directory path for each file that is open. Other format options for the display of output are table and csv. The csv option is for Comma-separated values. You can see a full list of options for the openfiles command by issuing the command openfiles /?.

[/os/windows/server2012] permanent link

Mon, Jun 19, 2023 10:17 pm

Checking and setting the port speed on a Cisco switch

You can check the port speed on a Cisco network switch from its command-line interface (CLI) by logging into the switch and then issuing the show interface command. If you want to see the parameters, including port speed, for all ports on the switch, the command without any additional command line arguments will display information for all the ports on the switch. If you are only interested in the rate for a particular port, then specify it after the command. E.g., show interface fa0/1.

Hadrian>show interfaces fa0/1
FastEthernet0/1 is up, line protocol is up (connected)
  Hardware is Fast Ethernet, address is 0009.e897.d281 (bia 0009.e897.d281)
  MTU 1500 bytes, BW 10000 Kbit, DLY 1000 usec,
     reliability 255/255, txload 32/255, rxload 1/255
  Encapsulation ARPA, loopback not set
  Keepalive set (10 sec)
  Full-duplex, 10Mb/s, media type is 100BaseTX
  input flow-control is unsupported output flow-control is unsupported
  ARP type: ARPA, ARP Timeout 04:00:00
  Last input never, output 00:00:00, output hang never
  Last clearing of "show interface" counters never
  Input queue: 0/75/0/0 (size/max/drops/flushes); Total output drops: 0
  Queueing strategy: fifo
  Output queue: 0/40 (size/max)
  5 minute input rate 72000 bits/sec, 29 packets/sec
  5 minute output rate 1286000 bits/sec, 728 packets/sec
     686444 packets input, 756803225 bytes, 0 no buffer
     Received 6 broadcasts (0 multicast)
     0 runts, 0 giants, 0 throttles
     4 input errors, 4 CRC, 0 frame, 0 overrun, 0 ignored
     0 watchdog, 0 multicast, 0 pause input
     0 input packets with dribble condition detected
     1626390 packets output, 293258140 bytes, 0 underruns
     0 output errors, 0 collisions, 2 interface resets
     0 babbles, 0 late collision, 0 deferred
     0 lost carrier, 0 no carrier, 0 PAUSE output
     0 output buffer failures, 0 output buffers swapped out
Hadrian>

[ More Info ]

[/hardware/network/switch/cisco] permanent link

Mon, May 29, 2023 9:09 pm

youtube-dl unable to extract uploader id

I installed ytdl-org / youtube-dl from Github to download videos from YouTube to a Linux system with the pip package manager, since youtube-dl is a Python script, using the command pip3 install youtube-dl. But when I tried to download a YouTube video with youtube-dl, I received an error message indicating the script was unable to extract the ID of the uploader of the video and the video was not downloaded.

$ youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmSmjDngVXM
[youtube] JmSmjDngVXM: Downloading webpage
ERROR: Unable to extract uploader id; please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Make sure you are using the latest version; see https://yt-dl.org/update on how to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.

$

I verified I had the latest version of the program, 2021.12.17.

$ youtube-dl --version
2021.12.17
$

To obtain further information on the error, I then ran the script with the --verbose option which showed me more details on the error.

$ youtube-dl --verbose https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmSmjDngVXM
[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Custom config: []
[debug] Command-line args: ['--verbose', 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmSmjDngVXM']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, out UTF-8, pref UTF-8
[debug] youtube-dl version 2021.12.17
[debug] Python version 3.6.8 (CPython) - Linux-3.10.0-229.7.2.el7.x86_64-x86_64-with-centos-7.1.1503-Core
[debug] exe versions: none
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[youtube] JmSmjDngVXM: Downloading webpage
ERROR: Unable to extract uploader id; please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Make sure you are using the latest version; see https://yt-dl.org/update on how to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 815, in wrapper
return func(self, *args, **kwargs)
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 836, in __extract_info
ie_result = ie.extract(url)
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 534, in extract
ie_result = self._real_extract(url)
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/youtube.py", line 1794, in _real_extract
'uploader_id': self._search_regex(r'/(?:channel|user)/([^/?&#]+)', owner_profile_url, 'uploader id') if owner_profile_url else None,
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 1012, in _search_regex
raise RegexNotFoundError('Unable to extract %s' % _name)
youtube_dl.utils.RegexNotFoundError: Unable to extract uploader id; please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Make sure you are using the latest version; see https://yt-dl.org/update on how to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.

$

The software, which is a command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and other video sites, is maintained by ytdl-org and, on a Github webpage for the organization, I found issue #32247, ERROR: Unable to extract uploader id, which attributed the error to YouTube recently starting to add that "at sign", i.e., @, to URLs. jgmayer, who posted his comments and the solution just 3 hours before I encountered the problem, posted the following solution:

The solution is to go to the file that you getting the error:
"/usr/local/Cellar/youtube-dl/2021.12.17/libexec/lib/python3.10/site-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py"

Find the following line:

'uploader_id': self._search_regex(r'/(?:channel|user)/([^/?&#]+)', owner_profile_url, 'uploader id') if owner_profile_url else None,

Replace with the following:

'uploader_id': self._search_regex(r'/(?:channel/|user/|@)([^/?&#]+)', owner_profile_url, 'uploader id', default=None),

The poster indicated the relevant file is /usr/local/Cellar/youtube-dl/2021.12.17/libexec/lib/python3.10/site-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py, but there is no /usr/local/Cellar directory on my system and running the script with the verbose option, showed the relevant code is on line 1,794 of /usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/youtube.py.

After making the suggested change, I was able to download a YouTube video with the program.

$ youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmSmjDngVXM
[youtube] JmSmjDngVXM: Downloading webpage
[download] Destination: Ancient Greek Lesson #1 _ Learn Greek Fast Online-JmSmjDngVXM.mp4
[download] 100% of 14.88MiB in 04:20
$

The updated youtube.py that can be used to replace the 2021.12.17 version in /usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/youtube.py.

References:

  1. ERROR: Unable to extract uploader id #32247
    By: jgmayer
    Date: May 29, 2023
    Github - ytdl-org / youtube-dl

Related Articles:

  1. Python script to download YouTube videos on Mac OS X

[/video/youtube] permanent link

Mon, May 22, 2023 10:05 pm

Relaying Denied by Sendmail

A family member reported she was no longer able to send email via a Sendmail service I have running on a CentOS Linux system. She sent me a screenshot of the message she received when attempting to send a message. I saw a "Server error: '550 5.7.1 ... Relaying denied'" message. At first, I thought that a technician from her Internet Service Provider (ISP) might have changed her Microsoft Outlook settings when he upgraded her network equipment recently, but then I remembered I was restricting email relaying on the system by IP address and realized her IP address would have changed when the technician upgraded her network equipment. So I had her visit whatismyipaddress.com and provide me with the public IPv4 IP address it showed for her. I then replaced her prior IP address in /etc/mail/access. The format for an entry to allow relaying from a particular IP address is as shown below.

# Jane Doe
192.168.71.77                           RELAY

You can include a comment to indicate who the IP address is associated with by prefixing the comment with a pound sign. The IP address should be followed by the word "RELAY" (you can put tabs in between the IP address and the word, if you like).

After changing the IP address, I rebuilt the access database with the makemap command. I then restarted Sendmail

# makemap hash /etc/mail/access </etc/mail/access
# service sendmail restart
Redirecting to /bin/systemctl restart  sendmail.service
#

I was then able to receive a test message she sent me. After updating the IP address, I may only have needed to restart Sendmail without running the makemap command first as I found the following at 19.3.2. Sendmail on a Red Hat website in reference to running the make all -C /etc/mail/ command (CentOS is derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux):

All other generated files in /etc/mail (db files) will be regenerated if needed. The old makemap commands are still usable. The make command is automatically used whenever you start or restart the sendmail service.

[/network/email/sendmail] permanent link

Sun, Mar 19, 2023 10:11 pm

Renaming a PC and joining it to a Windows domain

If you need to rename a computer running the Windows 10 operating system and/or make it a member of a Windows domain, you can take the following steps. To see the system's current name, you can press the Windows key and the Pause/Break key on the keyboard simultaneously. Alternatively, you can type about in the "Type here to search" field at the bottom, left-hand side of the screen and then select the About your PC entry which is returned from the search. You can also type this pc in the "Type here to search" field at the bottom, left-hand side of the screen and then select the This PC app when you see it listed. For any of the three above options, you will then see an About window that lists "Device name," which is the system's current name. If you just need to rename the PC, click on Rename this PC. If you need to both rename the PC and join a Windows domain, then instead of clicking on Rename this PC, scroll downards in the About window until you see "Rename this PC (advanced)" and click on it.

[ More Info ]

[/os/windows/domain] permanent link

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