Blog Archives

• Found it: The definitive guide to Word Mailmerge

  Posted on June 15th, 2019 at 21:41 woody Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

  I tried to find this post from Windows Secrets a couple of weeks ago and couldn’t see it. Now, with the help of the developers, I’m happy to point you to macropod’s phenomenal, comprehensive guide to Word Mailmerge Tips & Tricks.

  The plain text of the AskWoody URL is

  https://www.askwoody.com /forums/topic/word-mailmerge-tips-tricks/

  It used to be located here:

  https://forums.windowssecrets.com/showthread.php/163017-Word-Mailmerge-Tips-amp-Tricks

  We’re working on a way to more accurately re-route inquiries to old Windows Secrets posts. While we’re getting the plumbing working, you may want to try editing the link manually.

  Office News, Other Word Mailmerge tips and tricks

• Microsoft: Enabling innovation and opportunity on the Intelligent Edge

  Posted on May 29th, 2019 at 14:10 woody Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

  I get hives when I see “Intelligent Edge” capitalized…

  Yesterday Microsoft Corporate VP Nick Parker gave a keynote at Computex in Taipei. It’s a wonderfully jolly pastiche of marketing memes, culminating in this vision of our operating system future (I’m looking at YOU, Windows):

  These new modern PCs and innovative devices the ecosystem will continue to build and bring to market in the future require a modern operating system. An OS  that provides a set of enablers that deliver the foundational experiences customers expect from their devices, and includes a set of delighters that deliver innovative human centric experiences. Enablers include seamless updates – with a modern OS updates are invisibly done in the background; the update experience is deterministic, reliable, and instant with no interruptions! A modern OS, is also secure by default, the state is separated from the operating system; compute is separated from applications; this protects the user from malicious attacks throughout the device lifecycle. Always connected -with a modern OS Wifi, LTE 5G will just work – and users never have to worry about a deadspot. All of a users devices are aware and connected to each other. A modern OS provides sustained performance, from the moment a user picks up their device – everything is ready to go – without having to worry about the next time the PC needs to be charged. These enablers will satisfy customer’s basic needs, but to truly differentiate we must also delight them. A modern OS does this by enabling cloud-connected experiences that use the compute power of the cloud to enhance users experiences on their devices.  These experiences are powered by AI, so a modern OS is aware of what a user is doing tomorrow and helps them get it done, and it enhances applications making them more intelligent. A modern OS is also multi-sense. People can use pen, voice, touch, even gaze – what ever input method a user wants to use works just as well as the keyboard and mouse. Finally, a modern OS provides the ultimate in form factor agility. A modern OS has the right sensor support and posture awareness to enable the breadth of innovative form factors and applications that our partner ecosystem will deliver.

  Brushing aside gaze input, enablers, delighters, an OS that knows what you’re doing tomorrow, and posture awareness — and acknowledging that the human centric stuff is the raison d’être for the mess we’re now in —  I want to ask a serious question.

  How far is ChromeOS from achieving this kind of Nerd Nirvana?

  Other ChromeOS

• Is AskWoody back to normal?

  Posted on May 27th, 2019 at 22:36 woody Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

  I hesitate to say it, but things look normal to me. There’s one bug I see as of 8:30pm Redmond time on Monday:

  In the Recent Replies list, anonymous posts aren’t identified as “Anonymous,” instead there’s no attribution

  Anything I’ve missed?

  Site seems to be sprightly. (Correcting my earlier mistake!)

  The newsletter went out about 8 hours later than usual, but that wasn’t related to the site problems.

  Tomorrow’s another day, eh?

  Other AskWoody bugs

• Ongoing list of remaining bugs

  Posted on May 26th, 2019 at 16:15 woody Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

  After the Great Memorial Day Crash (which happened before Memorial Day, but nevermind) we still have a load of unsolved problems. I’m not talking about old problems. These are new.

  Here are the ones I’m tracking:

  • Site is very slow (and it was once quite spritely)
  • On Replies, under the avatar, AskWoody Loungers are showing as “Subscriber.” That’s a consistent problem: “AskWoody Lounger” no longer exists, as best I can tell. (If that change leads to redesigning the current roles and straightening them out, I’m all for it!)
  • Not-logged-in users cannot post Replies
  • AskWoody Loungers should have a “Select Files” button on the Reply editor. It isn’t there, but an unwanted “Add Media” button is.
  • The “New” tags are cropping up in all sorts of places.
  • We have at least one post that was incorrectly attributed to the wrong poster. (!) https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/ms-defcon-3-get-windows-xp-win7-and-associated-servers-patched/#post-1739240
    

  Add to the list, please!

  Other AskWoody bugs

• 16-year U.S. data leakage: KrebsOnSecurity

  Posted on May 24th, 2019 at 18:16 Kirsty Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

  Security supremo Brian Krebs has published details of a long-standing data leak he stemmed this week:

  The Web site for Fortune 500 real estate title insurance giant First American Financial Corp. leaked hundreds of millions of documents related to mortgage deals going back to 2003, until notified this week by KrebsOnSecurity. The digitized records — including bank account numbers and statements, mortgage and tax records, Social Security numbers, wire transaction receipts, and drivers license images — were available without authentication to anyone with a Web browser.
  …
  I should emphasize that these documents were merely available from First American’s Web site; I do not have any information on whether this fact was known to fraudsters previously, nor do I have any information to suggest the documents were somehow mass-harvested (although a low-and-slow or distributed indexing of this data would not have been difficult for even a novice attacker).

  See Brian’s blogpost “First American Financial Corp. Leaked Hundreds of Millions of Title Insurance Records” for details.

  Other data breach

• We were down – but we’re now back up and limping

  Posted on May 24th, 2019 at 01:55 woody Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

  There was a gap of almost seven hours in posts. I still don’t know what happened, for sure – and we’re still missing some important pieces, like the list of most recent posts.

  Patience, please. But in the interim, post away! We’re all still here.

  Other

• New forum for Win10 1903

  Posted on May 22nd, 2019 at 09:42 woody Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

  With its official release, it’s time to give Win10 version 1903 its own forum.

  Et viola: https://www.askwoody.com/forums/forum/askwoody-support/windows/windows-10/windows-10-version-1903-may-2019-update/

  Other Win10 1903 forum

• Langalist: Common reasons for backup and imaging failures

  Posted on May 20th, 2019 at 02:10 woody Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

  So your backup didn’t, you know, back up. Why?

  As Fred Langa points out, that isn’t always an easy question. But he has answers.

  The latest LangaList out this morning in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 16.18.0.

  Hardware, Other
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