If you have ever done any system administration you will quickly find that many users think Outlooks auto complete feature is a fully fledged address book, but it’s not.
A feature I thought Microsoft would look at in Office 2007 is a more robust auto complete feature set, sadly this is not the case. However it is still a nice feature to have in your arsenal.
The brains of auto complete lies in the Outlook.NK2 file. This is the place that stores all the auto complete entries, you can get to this file by navigating through explorer to…
C:\Documents and Settings\user.name\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.NK2
user.name should be subsituted for the user name of the account you are using.
Basic method
You can simply copy this file to the same location on any computer, the usernames do not need to match. Then they will have the same autocomplete entries as the source computer.
Advanced method
A great utility for managing your NK2 files is NK2View from the guys at Nirsoft. This will let you import/export enteries and easily backup your NK2 files amongst other things.
What did you do before you knew about format painter? Well my guess is a shed full of repetitive formatting.
Format Painter is one of those time saving shortcuts that once you have found it, life using Word and Excel is a much more pleasant experience.
| MS Word 2003 |
MS Word 2003 |
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Basic usage
- Simply place your cursor within your document text that has your desired format
- Click the Format Painter icon (I have included screen shots of MS word 2003 & 2007)
- You will notice your cursor will change to
, you can now highlight the text you want to change and hey presto it takes on a new format!
Power usage
As of MS Office 2007 format painter gets a natty advertisement of this power tweak (see the screenshot on the right, above) but it also applies to previous version and for all of you that do not know about it all you need to do is shut your eyes and…..
Double click (the tool bar icon)
Now the Format Painter icon will not revert to the standard cursor and you can format till your heart content. To revert to your normal cursor simply press the ESCAPE key or click the tool bar icon again.
What are you waiting for, get formatting!
Everyday more people are using some form of linux. I though it would be handy to have a quick look at the basic folder structure of a typical linux system.
Some of the Linux distributions I have used over time are
openSUSE
redhat
Debian
and my current favourite Ubuntu
Remember that your Linux system may be different so dont expect an exact match if you compare the two.
/bin. Essential user command binaries (for use by all users)
/boot. Static files of the boot loader, only used at system startup
/dev. Device files, links to your hardware devices like /dev/sound, /dev/input/js0 (joystick)
/etc. Host-specific system configuration
/home. User home directories. This is where you save your personal files
/lib. Essential shared libraries and kernel modules
/mnt. Mount point for a temporarily mounted filesystem like /mnt/cdrom
/opt. Add-on application software packages
/usr. /usr is the second major section of the filesystem. /usr is shareable, read-only data. That means that /usr should be shareable between various FHS-compliant hosts and must not be written to. Any information that is host-specific or varies with time is stored elsewhere.
/var. /var contains variable data files. This includes spool directories and files, administrative and logging data, and transient and temporary files. /proc. System information stored in memory mirrored as files.
Do you want to work with aliases within the FileZilla server software. Well stop looking for instructions and read this how to !
It’s not as hard as you think and once you get your head round it, it is really straight forward! Grab the how to from the link below and get started.
get aliases working with FileZilla Server (303 KiB, 10 hits)
You need to be a registered user to download this file.
Virtualbox is a great virtualization product for OS X that also works on Windows and Linux!
In this How to it will show you how to get Ubuntu up and running within OS X.
install ubuntu on a powerbook (985.2 KiB, 9 hits)
You need to be a registered user to download this file.
IPCOP is one of my favourite pieces of software. It is a great internet gateway solution for home users and small to medium businesses. I use the Zerina addon to install OpenVPN and this in my option turns IPCOP into the best open source VPN/Firewall/Proxy solutions out there.
Following on from here. Another issue I find is when you install it; it does not push through DNS from the local network (green interface). To solve this problem it is a simple configuration change made to one file.
The easiest way to do this is use WINSCP to connect to your IPCOP machine. Locate the file server.conf from the location below
/var/ipcop/ovpn/server.conf
Edit the file adding the following line, just add it at the bottom.
push “dhcp-option DNS 192.168.0.5″
Replace ‘192.168.0.5‘ with your internal DNS server for the Green network.
Save the file and reboot IPCOP.
Now when your clients connect they can use IP or the DNS name of the computers in the green network!
There are several ways to keep your information private in Windows XP, some better than others. Depending on your needs and situation the strongest protection is not always the best.
Here I will be looking at the following ways to keep your files secret from prying eyes!
- Making My Documents private
- Password protecting a zip folder
- Truecrypt
Making My Documents private
To use this method you need to be using NTFS and have a password on your account.
Windows XP pro
1. Right click My Documents > Properties > Sharing
2. Select ‘Make this folder private so that only I have access to it‘
3. Click apply
4. Click OK
Windows XP Home Edition
- Boot into safe mode and logon to the ‘Administrator’ account
- Right click My Documents > Sharing and Security
- Click Make Folder Private
Password protecting a zip folder
- Double click your zipped folder
- Click File > Add a password
- Enter your chosen password and confirm it and click OK
When using this method please remember that the file names within the Zip file can be viewed.
Truecrypt
Website: Truecrypt
Truecrypt is a excellent encryption utility that works on all the major platforms. Without going in to technical details, basically Truecrypt adds a drive to your computer that allows you to save your work securely.
This drive is really a file, so it is portable. All you need to do is launch it through the Truecrypt software and you can use your files securely on Windows/MAC and Linux.
When email does not get delivered it can be a real pain.
Here I will try to explain a few basic trouble shooting tips that you can perform to try and narrow down the problem by connecting to the remote mail server.
I will be using Windows XP commands for this. But most operating systems have these tools inbuilt or very similar ones available.
Tools used
NSLOOKUP
First off we will use NSLOOKUP to find the mail server we are having problems sending to.
- Open a command prompt.
- Type “NSLOOKUP” and press enter.
- Type “SET TYPE=MX” and press enter.
- Type in the domain name your having problems with eg. “microsoft.com” Look for the server name with the lowest MX preference number and note it down. If they are all the same preference, just use anyoneone.
- Quit NSLOOKUP by typing “exit”
PING
Now we will use the PING command to see if the server we found in part one is reachable.
- Open a command prompt.
- Type “PING server address” (ping mail.microsoft.com )
Please note that if the server has ping disabled you may get Request timed out message. This does not necessarily mean it is down.
TELNET
Lastly using the TELNET command we will connect the the remote email server and send a test email.
- Open a command prompt.
- Type “TELNET server address 25”
- You should see a server welcome message
- Type “HELO” and press enter (you might not see what you type. This is normal)
- Type “mail from: myemail@mydomain.com” substituting your address and press enter.
- Type “rcpt to: user@server.com” substituting the recipients address and press enter.
- Type “data” and press enter.
- Type “Subject: Test message” and press enter TWICE
- Type “This is a test message.” and press enter. You must have the . (full spot/period)
- Type “quit” and press enter to exit.
If everything has work the message will now be sent, confirming the server is working fine. If not more troubleshooting is required!
I have been using the great firewall solution IPCOP for a while now. Until recently I never had a reason to connected to the Orange interface, the DMZ, remotely. I found that I had to perform some teaking in order to do this.
To connect to another subnet (interface) of your IPCop machine from the internet you must edit the server.conf file. This will allow access to your Orange and Blue zones along with the standard green zone.
I used the great software WinSCP to connect to my firewall and edit the file server.conf.
File Location: /var/ipcop/ovpn/server.conf
Green interface IP: 192.168.0.254
Orange interface IP: 192.168.10.254
In this file you should find the following line push “route 192.168.0.0 255.255.255.0″ This is the IP and Subnet of your Green interface.
I added the line push “route 192.168.100.0 255.255.255.0″ the the file to allow connections to be made to my Orange Interface.
I then rebooted the IPCop machine and it was all tickety boo!
Depending on how your machine is configured the numbers you see above may be different. So please don’t just cut and paste. Check out your own configuration.
In a Windows 2003 Active Directory environment there are fours types of logon script. You must select the correct logon script for what you want to achieve.
- Group Policy logon / logoff scripts.
- Group Policy Computer startup / shutdown scripts.
- Domain User logon scripts.
- Local user logon scripts.
Type 1: Group Policy logon / logoff scripts
This script executes when a USER logs on or logs off. It executes with that users privileges.
Type 2: Group Policy Computer startup / shutdown scripts
This script executes when the COMPUTER starts up or shuts down. It executes in context of “Local System Account” so it has enhanced privileges.
Type 3: Domain User logon scripts
This script executes when a domain user logs on. The difference is type 3 scripts work on all Windows versions whereas type 1 only works with Windows 2000 and up.
Type 4: Local user logon scripts
This script as the name suggest, only executes when the user logs on locally.
