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Here are many of the feedback posts we received during February.
Feedback
A reader writes...
I just read the first couple of sentences in one of your articles on
Excel charts and realized I was using the wrong type of chart -Line
instead of Scatter! (Now I'll go and read the rest of the article,
but I wanted to thank you first...Have a great day!
Reply
Jon
Peltier, author of
the Microsoft
Excel Chart Types article, writes...
I'm glad that you found my article helpful. The confusion between Line and
Scatter charts is one of the most common problems experienced by users
of Excel. Long time users have this trouble too, not just new users. -
Jon
Feedback
A reader writes...
Have you considered the fact that having a drawing on Saturday, February 21
with claim required by Sunday, February 22 disenfranchises those of us who
subscribe through our work e-mail address and do not work on the weekend?
Reply
Dian
Chapman, TechTrax Editor, writes..
You know, I hadn't thought of that! I'm able to access all my email 24x7,
so I wasn't thinking of folks without that ability. Sorry and thanks
for the wake up call! As a result, I did wait a couple days to
select the SnagIt winners this round to make sure they all had sufficient
ability to get to their home/office email. I'll keep this fact in mind
for the future, too. Thanks!
Feedback
A reader writes...
Hello,
I much appreciate your well-organized and informative site.
Here's the issue: Afer saving a user-defined chart, when I try to make a new
chart using the user-defined setting, the text sizes, axis labels, and data
point labels all revert back to the Excel standard settings. I don't remember
having this problem in excel 95 or 97. Am I missing something? I thank you
in advance.
Reply
Jon
Peltier, author of the Microsoft
Excel Chart Types article, writes...
Oh, there are several shortcomings to using custom chart types. I mentioned
one at the end of the article: applying a custom chart type to an existing
chart will overwrite any titles in the existing chart with those of the saved
chart type. That's a drawback, because you have to retype your titles.
You've discovered another drawback that I neglected to mention in the
article: if you have formatted a chart element (a title, data labels,
the legend, a data series), then delete that element, when you add
the element back, the chart does not remember the custom formatting you
had applied to that element. This is a drawback because you have to reapply
the formatting.
I'd actually forgotten about this second glitch, because I don't use chart
types very frequently. Above I described a couple of the reasons.
Instead I use a variety of macros I've written over the years to adjust
the formatting of a chart. I typically use two or three of these on each
chart. It's not as convenient as one operation, applying a chart type,
but it avoids the problems.
This behavior does exist in Excel 97, and as far as I can remember, it
existed prior to that. - Jon
Feedback
Patricia O'Rourke from Canada, writes...
Dian, I and friends with whom I share TechTrax really loved the article "Honey,
I'm Home!". While not American, we loved this story and appreciate the
sacrifice that Canadian and US forces are making for our benefit. We think
that you and Greg are special people for sure! You have both been of great
help to me and other over the years. Just wanted you to know that there are
a lot of Canadians who respect what you and Greg do — not just as "computer
gurus" but as two terrific people with great heart. "Patricia from
a VERY Chilly Toronto (warming up with Conan of "Late Night with Conan
O'Brien" of NBC fame filming here in T.O!) Cheers!
Reply
Dian
Chapman, author of the Honey,
I'm Home article, writes...
Thanks so much for the kind words, Patricia.
Many folks have written me
to tell me how they had tears in their eyes reading this article...because
they are so touched by the love to and from Man's Best Friend. Let
me tell you...it was hard writing this article because I, too, had tears
as I wrote it!<g> Mostly, it breaks my heart to think of all the
furry pals who won't be able to go home with their friends. And like
all the Viet Nam vets who helplessly watched as their faithful dog
partners were cast aside by the goverment...I feel for those soldiers
who are having trouble getting their beloved friends out of harms
way. As I write this now, I look over to one of our pups who is sprawled
across the bed and think...man,
you are one lucky dog!
And as I told my colleagues at Tourism Canada when I left after working
there for 12+ years..."my heart will forever be shaped as a maple
leaf and I'll never be able to stop saying 'eh'." So I'm glad to
hear that our friends to the North appreciate what we
do here. Cheers!
Feedback
A reader writes...
Any article I try to print will only print blank pages beyond page 1. Any
suggestions? Even in print preview, I see only page 1. The other pages just
show page x of y.
Reply
Dian
Chapman, TechTrax Editor, writes...
I'll assume you mean you're printing from within your Internet browser.
I'll also bet you use Internet Explorer (IE) version 5.5? You can check by
opening IE and clicking Help > About. Check the version number at the
top of the about box that will be displayed.
If it's version 5.5...there's a bug that causes problems with some pages
printing...particularly those that have Java included, as does TechTrax.
You have two choices...copy the text and paste into Word to print or upgrade
to the free IE version 6.x.
If you read the February (current) issue of TechTrax and go to the Feedback
section, you'll find details of how you can move articles into Word,
remove the table and print, fairly easily. I even show you how to record
a macro to gather many articles. I do this each month by gathering and
posting ALL the article to Word...in about 3-4 minutes. So it is quite
easy once you get the hang of it.
Otherwise, make your life easier and just download/install the upgrade
version of IE which has this bug fixed. You can download it free from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.asp
Further reader reply...
Thank you very much for the info - at least I know it's not something
I was messing up.
Feedback
Kathleen Vinciguerra from Willow Grove PA, writes...
I'm having trouble adding favorites, is there something wrong with my brower
(Internet Explorer)? I've just added WinXP Home Edition, I have added possibly
5 favorites and it will not allow me to add more, WHY?
Reply
Dian
Chapman, TechTrax Editor, writes...
Hi Kathleen...
I found this knowledgebase article that might help your situation. Granted,
it says it's for Win98, but also mentions IE 5x. And because this article
might have originally come out prior to WinXP and not been subsequently
updated with the new operating system notation, you should read it and
see if it helps. It explains how the Favorites folder can become damaged.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q218841#appliesto
Good luck!
Feedback
Ben Howard from Sydney, NSW, Australia, writes...
This article is very helpful. However, I have a client who is using Norton
Corporate Edition and who is receiving OLE errors when trying to edit word
documents inside a database. The problem is that she can't turn off the Office
plugin and cannot turn it off in the registry because the file OfficeAV.dll
isn't even on her computer. How can I fix it?
Reply
Beth
Melton, author of
the Norton
AntiVirus and Office XP SP-2 article, writes...
Hi Ben,
If a previous version of NAV was installed, which contained the plug-in,
and Norton CE was installed later the DLL for the plug-in could still be
registered.
First search for officeav.dll and if found go to Start/Run and run the following
command:
regsvr32 /u "c:\program files\norton antivirus\officeav.dll"
In the above example the path for "Officeav.dll" would depend
on the location of the DLL.
If you are unable to locate OfficeAV.Dll then I would say the issue is not
caused by Norton. You might try recreating the Registry entries for the Word
file type by going to Start/Run and running the following
command:
winword /r
Note the space before the forward slash.
Thank you for your feedback and I hope you get the issue resolved.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Feedback
A reader writes...
dear techtrax,
in an effort to excorcise the overly obnoxious Internet Explorer 6's search
engine (especially that "pop-up" page of "recommended sites" to
visit) I came across your article:
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=87
I followed all the directions and as long as i don't reboot, the search engine
is google...but as soon as i reboot, everything resets to the microsoft product.
Has microsoft rendered IE untamperable?? is there a missing step that I needed
to implement? If i could only shut off that horrible pop-up search site page,
I could deal with the rest....I even followed the addendum at the bottom of
the article but only a temporary fix (gosh, sometimes I hate MS).
any feedback would be much appreciated....
thanks,
Reply
Vic
Ferri, author of the
Making
Google Your Default Internet Explorer Search Engine article,
writes...
Try these steps.
Open IE, click Tools>Internet Options>Programs tab and click Reset
Web Settings (you don't have to reset your home page) Then close IE and reopen
Click the Search button.
Click Change Preferences.
Click Change Internet Search Behavior.
Put a checkmark next to With Classic Internet Search and from the list
choose Google.
Then close IE.
Double click the attached reg file to merge into your registry.
Open IE again.
Google should now remain your default search engine.
good luck!
vic
Feedback
A reader writes...
I read your piece on Excel custom formatting. Good job! I have a few custom
formats I would like to have be automatically available in all my new Excel
worksheets (just like Excel's built-in custom formats). I know I could add
my formats to a blank worksheet and save it as a template, but I'd rather not
bother with templates for this purpose. Is there a macro or some other way
I can get these formats to be "built in" to in my new sheets? Thanks.
Roy
P.S. Hope you're keeping warm in Chicagoland. I lived there for 14 yrs, but
never got used to the weather. Otherwise, it's without a doubt the very best
city in the country! Go Cubs!
Reply
Linda
Johnson, author of the
Formatting
Cells in Excel article, writes...
Hi. You are on the right track. You do need to save it as a template,
but in order for it to be your default workbook you have to name it Book.xlt
and you must save it in your XLStart folder (which is in different places
on your hard drive, depending on your version of Windows and Office,
but if you search your hard drive for XLStart, you will find it.) When
you start Excel, it looks in your XLStart folder for a file named Book.xlt
and if it finds one, it uses that as your default template. If it doesn't,
it doesn't. So the name and location must be exact.
Take care and thanks for the feedback.
Linda
Feedback
Indika from Sri Lanka, writes...
Hi, I'm Indika from Sri Lanka. I've got your techtrax February issue & I've
read it as quickly as I get it. There are so many important things to me.
After all, I thought to send you a question that in my mind for a long
time.
I'm currently working in a company, which use the LAN network for its networking
system & also use 'Windows 2000 professional' for computer system. One day,
one of my friends told me that I could connect to another computer in my network
via running 'Telnet'. Therefore I've tried to connect to another computer through
that way. But unfortunately, it doesn't work probably. So, It is pleasure that
you could tell me the accuracy way to running 'Telnet' properly & tell me
what are the other things that I can do from 'Telnet'.
I'm waiting for your quickly reply.
Reply
Greg
Chapman, Senior System Engineer, writes...
Your friend was right, almost. You *can* use Telnet to remotely administer
your systems but only if there's a Telnet 'daemon' running on those clients.
By default, Windows 2000 professional does not have such a service. Windows
2000 Server and Advanced Server, however, do ship with the Telnet service
and enabling it is describe in this Microsoft Knowledge Base article:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:
80/support/kb/articles/q299/9/42.ASP&NoWebContent=1
Before you decide to implement Telnet, there are a few security concerns
you should be aware of. First, Telnet is a very old protocol with very low
security by default. All transmissions are made in plain-text, similar to
FTP, POP3, SMTP and NNTP. These services are left over from a friendlier
time on the Internet and most admins concerned with security have implemented
SSH for shell access instead. At this time, even FTP has fallen out of favor
and is receiving a makeover incorporating SSL technology to encrypt data
transfers.
If you do decide to host a Telnet server, at least be sure that your firewall
explicitly blocks Telnet sessions inbound (port 23, by default) and that
only your internal LAN hosts have it enabled, as it is generally a way to
get a command line shell to the system.
In the early days of the Internet, access to the Internet was generally
provided by giving users a modem number to dial in to which started a "Shell" session
on the host server. A user would dial in to this host and start a Telnet
session on the server. Internet resources were accessed by doing further "shells" from
that host to others on the Internet. It was quite handy if only just a little
boring to look at. It was, after all, text only!
Hope that helps!
Feedback
A reader writes...
Just to say thanks. I wanted to set up a Word Add-In across an organisation
to correctly list paper trays so that users could indicate where letterhead
might be stored, and finally tracked the code down in your site.
Reply
Dian
Chapman, TechTrax Editor, writes...
Thanks so much for taking the time to write...glad you found our site helpful!
Feedback
Alexandra Bishop from Brisbane/Qld/Australia, writes...
Very helpful. Good range of topics are covered. The step by step processes
don't assume that all visitors are Office gurus. Thanks for all your help.
Reply
Dian
Chapman, TechTrax Editor, writes...
Thanks so much for the great feedback, Alexandra...it's what we live for!<smile>
Feedback
Tracey Wade from Melbourne, FL, writes...
I am amazed at the spirit of sharing. I don't know where you all find the
time, but the many people that benefit from your efforts thank you!
Reply
Dian
Chapman, TechTrax Editor, writes...
I said it once...and I'll say it again...Thanks so much for the great feedback,
Tracey...it's what we live for!<smile>
Seriously, it doesn't take much to thank someone for their efforts. But
much of the time all support folks, like those who write for TechTrax,
get to hear are complaints about how this or that doesn't work and folks
get upset when you can't tell them everything they need to know!
So on those days when we sit back and think "<sigh> Why do
I even bother?" an
email like these...just saying thanks for a great job...are enough to
get you to take a deep breath and jump right back into the chaos!
Truly appreciate your words and the time you took to pass them along, Alexandra,
Tracey and all of you who remember to simply say...Thank you!
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