Unlock the Form protection of Word documents

In the case you want to edit a word document that has been created using forms and these forms are locked-down, here are alternatives to bypass thi protection:

With Word versions previous to 2007, it was this easy:
1) Open the word document
2) Hit Shift+Alt+F11 to open the Script Editor
3) Search for the "Password: field (using Ctl+F)
4) Replace the 8 characters by 00000000
5) Save the file from the script editor and you're done

With Word 2007 and later versions, here is another tric
1) Open a new blank document in word
2) Click Insert --> Object --> Text from file
3) You can now edit the text
3) Save the document

Finally here is another option:
1) Open the file in Word
2) Save the document in HTML format
3) Open the html document with IE
4) Click on View --> Source - This will open a windows with a view similar to the Script Editor
5) Search for the "Password: field (using Ctl+F)
6) Replace the 8 characters by 00000000
7) Save the file and you're done

How to activate the automatic calculation in Excel

When Excel does not update the result of a formula after modifying the data, you need to do one of the following ticks:

1) press F9 to refresh the results

2) open File --> Options --> Formulas and go to Calculations and select "Automatic" (Excel 2010)

How to change the regional keyboard input

Sometime, my computer is changing the keyboard settings (supposedly after hitting a sequence of keys without intent) and I am ending up with strange characters showing up when I am typing, either on Internet Explorer or in a Microsoft office document. For example, " instead of @, É instead of ?, etc...

Reverting to the normal input is tricky but here is the solution (here for Windows Vista):

- Go to the Control panel

- Open the Clock, Language, and Region

- Open the Regional and Language Options

- Select Keyboards and languages

- Click on "Change keyboard"

- Open the tab "Advanced Key Settings"

- Now you can select shortcut to switch between keyboard settings, such as Ctrl+1 and Ctrl+2 by selecting the language and clicking on "Change Key Sequence"

- Click Apply or OK and you're done!!

If you're locked in a strange language, you just have to hit the shortcut (Ctrl+1 or Ctrl+2) to come back to the original language...

Old technologies not supported anymore...

Here is an interesting list regarding Technology and Operating systems that are not supported anymore... (all versions included)

O/S
-Microsoft – the following versions are not supported anymore: Windows 3.x, Windows 95, Windows 98 and 98 SE, Millenium Edition, Windows NT Workstation 4.0 and Windows NT Server 4.0, Windows 2000 SP2, SP4, Windows XP SP1, SP2, Windows XP 64bits SP1 and version 2003, Windows 2003 RTM SP0, R2 SP0, Windows 2003

- SUN Solaris - all versions before ver.8

- HP-UX - all versions before ver.11.00

- IBM AIX - all versions before 5.1, 5.2 et 5.3 

- SGI Irix - all versions before ver.6.5

- Tru64 - all versions before 4.x

- Debian - all versions before 5.0 (Lenny)

- Mandriva - all versions before 2009, all versions Corporate server before ver.4.0, Multi Network Firewall 2.0 is not supported since June 21, 2010.

- RedHat - all versions of RHEL before ver.3

- SUSE/Novell - all versions of SLES before ver. 9.0

- Fedora -  all versions N-2 is supported for 1 month after each new version N.

- FreeBSD - all versions before ver.6.x. The current versions 7.3 and 8.1will not be supported after March 31^st, 2012. The versions 7.4 and 8.2 will not be supported after February 29^th, 2013.

- OpenBSD – all versions before ver.4.7

- NetBSD – all versions before ver.4.0.

- Apple – all versions before ver.10.4 (Tiger)

Databases

- SQL server – all versions before SQL 2000 SP4, SQL server 6.5, SQL server 7.0 SP4

- Oracle Database – all versions before 9i

- MySQL – all versions before ver.4.1

WebServers

- Microsoft IIS – all versions before ver. 5

- Apache – all versions before ver.1.3

- PHP – version 4 is not supported since the end of 2007

Office

- Microsoft Office suite – Office 2000 and 97 are not supported. Office XP will not be supported after July 12^th, 2011

Some Vendor web sites:

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/

http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq5.html#Flavors
http://www.freebsd.org/security
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/fr/index.html
http://www.mandriva.com/security/productlifetime.html

Twitter ultimate guide, tools, how to, TinyURL and bit.ly

For twitter starter, this page just gives very practical information on how to use Twitter. A bunch of nice tools as well. http://bit.ly/bqxFqV

How to: Disable the "Do You Want To View Only the Webpage Content that Was Delivered Securely" Security Warning

How annoying it is to have this security warning all the time with IE "Do You Want To View Only the Webpage Content that Was Delivered Securely"

So here is the trick:

• Launch Internet Explorer.
• Click on Tools -> Internet Options.
• Go to Security tab.
• Select Internet zone (default selection).
• Click on Custom level… button under “Security level for this zone” section.
• Under “Miscellaneous” branch, for Display mixed content parameter, select the radio button of Enabled.
  “Disabled” will always stop loading on unsecured components in secure web page.
• Click OK when done, and click Yes when prompted are you sure you want to change the settings for this zone.

Voila!