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Category Archives: MS-Windows Platform
Shortcut to Task Manger in Windows 7
Control-Shift-Escape
Posted in MS-Windows Platform, Tips & Tricks
How to Delete File Associations (Default Programs) in Windows 7
In windows XP this was easy, in Windows 7, apparently one needs to edit the registry as suggested here:
Let XYZ be the extension you want to deassociate.
With a registry editor (e.g., regedit.exe),
1. go to
HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerFileExts
remove the subtree .XYZ
2. go to
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
remove the subtree .XYZ
remove the subtree XYZ_auto_file
When I tried this, step 1 seems to suffice. Why it has to be so complicated is beyond my understanding.
Posted in MS-Windows Platform, Tips & Tricks
Tagged Default Program, File association, Registry, Win7
MS-Office Custom Dictionary File
So you worked tirelessly and updated your custom dictionary on MS-Windows with all your specific technical terms of your area of work and then you get a new computer or a new hard drive and all is gone. How to avoid this? Simply copy the file “Custom.dic” from your old installation to the new one. Where is it? Here: “UsersUSERNAMEAppDataRoamingMicrosoftUProof”; simply replace “USERNAME” with your login ID.
Posted in MS-Windows Platform, Tips & Tricks
Outlook Settings File Location – Autocompletion
One of the annoying aspects of working on a new computer is that Outlook does not know your past recipients. Name completion in e-mails only works for previous recipients. There is a simple solution. Copy the Outlook settings file from your old default installation to the new one. But where is it? On Windows 7, the file is called “MS Exchange Settings.NK2” and can be found here: “C:UsersUSERNAMEAppDataRoamingMicrosoftOutlook”; simply replace “USERNAME” with your login ID.
Posted in MS-Windows Platform, Tips & Tricks
Convert Mac .webloc files to Windows-compatible hyperlinks
An ideal solution would simply convert the .webloc files to .url files. I am still looking for such a solution, in the meantime, a trick I found here works well:
Open Textedit, click and drag .webloc files or URL (from Safari) into document, an Http link is formed. Press right arrow key to go to end of line, then press Return twice. Repeat.
You can save as many links as you like, or open up the file later and add more links. Save it as a .rtf document (default) and it can be used in Windows or Mac.
Fast file transfer between Windows & Mac via TCP-IP over Firewire
The basic idea and setup is described here, however, many details are missing, so I put together detailed instructions with screenshots. I am describing the configuration between a Mac running Leopard and a Windows 95 Machine. Continue reading
Posted in Mac OS X Platform, MS-Windows Platform, Tips & Tricks
Tagged file transfer, Firewire, Mac, Network, Sharing, TCP-IP, Windows
PDF OCR Batch-processing with ScanSnap
The ScanSnap S1500M (but also the S1500 as well as the earlier models S510 and S510M) comes with ABBYY FineReader for OCR support. This is great for creating searchable PDFs. Especially handy on a Mac with Spotlight. The problem is that in the default setup, each scan is OCRed right after the scan and depending on the age your machine (my G5 is getting a little long in the tooth) in can take quite a while. When you’re in the process of scanning many hundred’s of pages of paper documents, you don’t want to have to wait for the computer to do it’s OCR recognition, you’d rather feed it all the documents and let it do OCR while you’re doing something else. Continue reading
Posted in Mac OS X Platform, MS-Windows Platform, Software, Tips & Tricks, Workflow
Welcome to 2001 – Windows 7 Gets a “Dock”, too!
Excerpt form an Ars Technica Article on the Windows 7 UI:
An icon on the taskbar doesn’t necessarily mean that a program is running; programs can be pinned to the taskbar so that their icon is persistent. Clicking the icon starts the program (if it’s not running) or switches to it (if it is).
…featured since March 2001 in Mac OS X as presented in this Ars Technica Article: Direct Link.
Export Outlook Mail PST-Files to the Mac
While there are multiple software solutions that cost money, I prefer the free alternatives. In this case it comes in the form of Mozilla Thunderbird, and to be more precise, the Windows version. Thunderbird’s import function imports your current Microsoft Outlook folders including attachments and all. It also has options for Outlook Express and other mail programs, but I have not tried those. Once imported, you can retrieve the converted messages from the profile folder (Thunderbird/Data/Profile/Mail).
On the Mac, after installing the Mac version of Thunderbird and setting up your accounts, you simply copy the content of the mail folder from the Windows version to the corresponding location on your Mac (~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/yourname/mail).
If you rather use OS X’s Mail Application, then additional steps are necessary. Mail App has an option to import from Mozilla but I was not too successful with that. Among other things, it creates those “mysterious” white folders that cannot contain messages directly, only other folders. Alternatively, this Mac OS X Hint (also check out the discussion) explores several other ways, however, I have not yet tried this myself.
Posted in Mac OS X Platform, MS-Windows Platform, Telecommunications, Tips & Tricks
Tagged E-Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird