MoonPoint Support Weblog

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.

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.

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:

GlobalSansSerif.CompositeFont
GlobalSerif.CompositeFont
GlobalUserInterface.CompositeFont

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.

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.

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.

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

Obtaining a command prompt in Windows 11
Date: February 18, 2017
Obtaining a command prompt in Windows 10
Date: February 18, 2017
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

Wed, Nov 01, 2023 5:06 pm