Microsoft FaceID numbers for VBA programming

If you want to use Microsoft’s icons within your VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) code, you will probably have to refer to something called a ‘FaceId’. This FaceID requires a number which tells the office application which image to display. For example in the code you may see ‘.FaceId = 59’.

This FaceID would give you the ‘smiley face’ icon when the code was executed.

So how do you know which number to use for which icon ?.

Thankfully, the answer lies in the following graphics.

1-500	501-1000
1001-1500	1501-2000
2001-2500	2501-3000
3001-3500	3501-4000
4001-4500	5001-5500
5501-5685

How to find the codecs which are installed on your PC using Windows Media Player

I usually look for codecs which are installed on a PC by going to the system options but I have recently found  a nice way of viewing them through Windows Media Player. Below are the steps to follow :

1. Open Microsoft’s Windows Media Player.
2. With the application open, press the ALT key on your keyboard to access the drop down menu.
3. Go to “Help” –> “About windows Media Player”.
4. Click on the "Technical Support Information" link in the About Window.
You will now be presented with a web page listing all of your installed codecs!.

Problem clearing NetBT when repairing a network adapter on Windows XP

You may find that a PC will lose it’s connection to the network and when you try to do a ‘Network Connection Repair’ it will give you an error and produce the message “Windows could not finish repairing the problem because the following action cannot be completed : Clearing NetBT, For assistance, contact the person who manages your network.”

There may be a number of causes for this problem and therefore, different fixes may have to be applied before the problem is resolved. See the steps below :

Step 1 : Removal of any Malware (if present). This kind of network problem can be caused by malicious software that has infected the computer and made changes to important registry settings. Therefore, the first step is to run full scans with your Anti-virus and Anti-Malware software
Once you are confident that the PC is clear of malicious software move onto the next step.

Step 2 : TCP/IP stack repair method

• Start, Run, CMD to open a command prompt.
• Reset WINSOCK entries to installation defaults: netsh winsock reset catalog
• Reset TCP/IP stack to installation defaults. netsh int ip reset [log_file_name – this can be any name]

Note: the log_file_name needs to be specified, e.g. netsh int ip reset reset.log

Step 3 : WinSock XP Fix
This is a free software utility that has been created to fix this type of problem.
Official description – “WinSock XP Fix offers a last resort if your Internet connectivity has been corrupted due to invalid or removed registry entries. It can often cure the problem of lost connections after the removal of Adware components or improper uninstall of firewall applications or other tools that modify the XP network and Winsock settings.”
Download it here

Step 4 : Uninstall and re-install the network drivers
· Make sure you know what network adapter you have on the PC or laptop and have the driver disk handy. If you do not have a driver disk then download the driver from the internet on a different machine and place it on USB drive to transfer to the problem PC.
· Right click My computer, Properties, Hardware tab, Device Manager
· Find network adapters on the list, expand it out to show your current adapter
· Right click the adapter select ‘Uninstall’ and confirm.
· It should now show as a problem item in your Device Manager list
· Go to the file you have on your disk or USB pen drive and re-install the network driver.

Any one of the above fixes should solve the problem.

How to remove multiple hyperlinks from one word document

One of the scenarios I encountered today involved a user who had copied and pasted a large amount of information from the net and had stored it in a single word document.

The user wanted to print this information but the content included over a hundred hyperlinks to other websites, which showed as underlined in the printed version. Therefore, she wanted to remove hyperlinks from this document altogether.

Word hyperlinks can be removed individually by Right clicking the link> Remove hyperlink but as there were so many she wanted a way of removing them all in one go.

So here’s the solution….

REMOVE MULTIPLE WORD HYPERLINKS
1. Highlight the entire document by pressing Control + A
2. Once highlighted press Control + Shift + F9

The document will now be converted to text, and the hyperlinks will be totally removed.

How to fix ‘XML-RPC services are disabled on this blog’

If you have your own hosted account i.e not hosted on the Wordpress site and you have installed Wordpress 2.6 or later on your website, it is likely you will run into problems when you try and use offline blog editing software such as Windows Live Writer.
When you configure your settings in Windows Live Writer and try and connect it is likely that you will receive the message ‘An error occurred while attempting to connect to your blog : Blog Server Error-Server Error 405 Occurred XML-RPC services are disabled on this blog. An admin can enable them……’

This error may look abit daunting but it is actually very easy to resolve.

Solution
· Go to your wordpress blog dashboard.
· Go to Settings , Writing
· In the Remote Publishing section place a tick in Enable the WordPress, Movable Type, MetaWeblog and Blogger XML-RPC publishing protocols.
· Save the options
· Go back into Windows Live Writer and reconnect.

Does the Philips LFH 9172 conference microphone record in Stereo orMono ?

This seemed like a very simple question but after checking the manual that came with the microphone, the Philips website and Google, I still couldn’t find a definitive answer.

Therefore, the only thing left to do was connect it up to a PC and do some testing of my own.

The microphone is best suited to work with the Philips SpeechExec pro software but I wanted a more visual set of results regarding the two channels, so I used Cool Edit Pro and Audacity to record the audio.
Despite setting the software to ‘Stereo’ (to record on both channels) , the software only received a signal on one channel.

In conclusion, the Philips LFH9172 only records in mono not stereo.

Want to see how people view your website and give them more targetedcontent ?

Usability is extremely important on any website and the aim should be to give your visitors the information they need as quickly as possible. Recent figures indicate a webmaster only has 5 seconds to capture the interest of a visitor before they leave to find something more appropriate, so putting the right content in the right position is paramount.

A website might look fine in development but it should be remembered that people are going to be using different browsers, monitors and viewing the content through different resolutions. So what is in plain sight to one visitor may be completely obscured to another (unless they scroll downwards).
Thankfully, Google have created a tool called “Browser size”. It’s official description released on Google’s blog is as follows :

“Browser Size is based on a sample of data from visitors to google.com. Special code collects data on the height and width of the browser for a sample of users. For a given point in the browser, the tool will tell you what percentage of users can see it. For example, if an important button is in the 80% region it means that 20% of users have to scroll in order to see it. If you're a web designer, you can use Browser Size to redesign your page to minimize scrolling and make sure that the important parts of the page are always prominent to your audience.”

HOW TO TEST YOUR WEBSITE

You just go to http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/ and enter your website URL into the search field. I entered http://www.supportingtech.blogspot.com/ and received the following overlay.

This tool won’t change your life and it’s not something you will use everyday but it is good for making you think about your audience and how they experience your content.