Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Internet – Open Browser To A Blank Page

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To set your browser to open to a blank page:

In Internet Explorer:

  • From the menu bar click on Tools then Internet Options.
  • In General Tab / Home Page / Address type “about:blank” (without the quote marks).
  • Click on Apply.
  • Click on OK.

In Firefox:

  • From the menu bar click on Tools then Options.
  • In General / Home Page / Location(s)type “about:blank” (without the quote marks).
  • Click on OK.

In other browsers there should be a similar method, though I have not tried in any others.

I set both Internet Explorer and Firefox to open to a blank page on the computers I use. My Portable Firefox on my thumb drives also is set to open to a blank page.

My reasoning for this is that many times at work the server is down, yet the browser, in this case Internet Explorer, still goes and searches and then comes back with an error message. I find this waiting very irritating, especially as I am usually wanting to go somewhere else anyway.

Another advantage of using a blank page as the default is that a browser hijacking is immediately noticeable and can be taken care of right away.

I know this is a day early but, I have a bunch of meetings tomorrow at work, as well as the monthly BPCA SIG and General meetings.

Word – Random Text Generation

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I sometimes have to generate some random text to test how a new layout looks for a newsletter or website. I know there are easier, and probably better ways to do it but, here are two methods I have used in Microsoft Word.

The first is to simply locate a document and copy what looks like the right amount of text and paste it into the new layout as plain text.

The second method I use is to randomly generate a number of paragraphs in Word and then copy them and paste them into the new layout as plain text.

To do the generation of random text paragraphs in Word:

  • Create a new blank document.
  • Type =rand(#) [insert 1 for 1 paragraph, 5 for five paragraphs, etc. in the place of #, inside the parentheses].
  • Press enter.

This will insert the following paragraph the specified number of times:

“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”

This is another of those little things, that I seldom think about but, have been asked by others “How do you do that?”.

Open XML Spreadsheet in Excel

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I was at my Business Agent’s office the other day and she was emailed a file, which she could not open after saving to her desktop.

The file in question contained spreadsheet information so she was double clicking on the file, thinking it would open up in Microsoft Excel but, it would not open.

She was on the phone with the sender, trying to resolve the problem.

I happened to see that the file had an .xml extension and when she hovered over the file name, the file properties showed it as being an “XML Spreadsheet”. These clues told me that the file had been sent in an XML (EXtensible Markup Language) format, not Microsoft Excel.

I told her to:

  • Open her Excel applications.
  • Go to the File menu.
  • Select Open from the drop down menu.
  • Navigate to the file on her desktop that needed to be opened.
  • Select the file (Change the File Type to All Files, if necessary).
  • Click Open.

This opened the file in Excel and she was able to access the information. I say that she was able to access the information because the XML file only contains the information with minimal set up; she ended up having to go in and setting up the header, footer, repeating row, etc. to manipulate the information.

This worked because she had Excel 2003. From what I have found Microsoft Office 2003 and above includes XML reading capabilities. OpenOffice is also capable of reading XML files.

XML is a much more involved subject than can be handled in a blog like this. Also, I am just now reading about XML and doing a little experimentation on utilizing it.

From what little I have read about XML and its implementation, XML will be more prevelant in the very near future, as the information needs to be written only once and then can be presented in many different ways very easily. For an overview of XML check out this information at the Wikipedia site: Extensible Markup Language.