You may notice that your labels and percent values appear somewhat jumbled in the Data Labels preview window. This preview may be a little inaccurate, but if you’re using long titles, you’ll need to do some reconfiguring in order to get each percent value and label to fit properly. One way to do this is…
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When it comes to placing drawing objects in just the right spot, eyeballing it may seem like your only option. As you know, this can produce less-than-desirable results. Instead of relying on such shaky methods, why not display non-printing gridlines behind your drawing objects? To create a grid in your document: Select Draw | Grid…
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Many times people use the same theme or a collection of graphics and fonts and colors in their slide show – they don’t include multiple themes – but in keeping with one theme so that they can mix it up just a little bit. They add different color backgrounds to their show. Click on your…
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One of the most useful innovations in Windows 7 (from a user interface point of view) was the introduction of jump lists. With this feature, you can right-click icons on your taskbar to see a list of frequently used folders and files. This reduces the need to keep lots of things open, since you can…
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While mergers, acquisitions, and spin-offs can create opportunities for an ITdepartment, they can also be very frustrating events. Senior managers may not be aware of the IT ramifications, such as the need to transfer a domain or ensure that company email will still be available during the transition. This may result in inadequate lead time…
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Traditionally, IT infrastructure has typically involved separate devices and vendors for servers, storage, and networking. Managing all of these different systems can be complex, often requiring multiple experts to handle each one. Converged infrastructure aims to simplify IT management by having one vendor handle all of these areas, with components that are all designed to…
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One of the most common and potentially frustrating requests from end users is to help them recover documents they haven’t saved. While data for unsaved documents may be found in a temp folder, users may not know where to look to find these. Fortunately, if the person is using Microsoft Office, there’s a GUI to…
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If you run into situations where users try to save an attachment to a location from Microsoft Outlook or other email software and every file saved ends up being 0 KB, check the permissions where the users are saving the file. It would seem that all they need is the Write permission, but some shared…
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Many legacy thin-client enterprise applications were designed to run in older browser versions such as Internet Explorer 8. Often, these applications aren’t updated because of the expense involved. Unfortunately, old browsers lack various performance and security features afforded by newer browsers. Furthermore those older browsers eventually won’t even be supported. In the summer of 2014,…
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While the Netstat utility in Windows allows you to view existing network connections and their state, you may want to be able to work with such data in a more interactive way. For example, TCPView provides similar information to Netstat, but through a GUI interface, allowing you to get updated information in real time, sort…
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When considering how to host an application for a development team, one option that can simplify administration is PaaS (Platform as a Service). In this model, you pay a provider for hosting a platform that includes a solution stack, such as the web server, database, and programming language. You may wonder, however, how PaaS differs…
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Microsoft Windows Server comes in various versions (e.g., 2008, 2008 R2, 2012, and 2012 R2) and editions (e.g., Foundation, Essentials, Standard, and Datacenter). With all of these names, it may be difficult to understand the differences and know which flavor you should use. First, don’t confuse the version with the edition. The version specifies various…
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Traditional backup technologies, such as tape backups, have a number of limitations, such as being time intensive and unable to back up open files. The Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) on Windows can facilitate a more effective backup strategy by creating point-in-time “snapshots” of a server. This technology simulates an instantaneous backup so that application…
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A common scheme to allow guests to connect to a network is to redirect them to a URL where they can enter a password and/or agree to terms. This approach is commonly used in public networks, such as at hotels and airports. However, some users may find that when they bring up a browser window,…
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The ability to “go back in time” and view an earlier version of a file has long been familiar to software developers in the form of source control applications. However, people in many other fields can also benefit from this ability. For example, if a spreadsheet or Word document were altered in the wrong way,…
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