Tip o’ the Week #187 – A Route for old times

Posted on August 30, 2013 by ewand

Once upon a time, a company called NextBase wrote some software to help people plan routes across the road network, using a computer. It was expensive in the day (£130 in 1988 works out about £300 in today’s money), but if your job was to schedule travelling reps or delivery drivers, then time was money. Or money was time saved.

Anyway, Microsoft bought the company and brought out Microsoft AutoRoute in the UK (eventually renamed Streets and Trips in the US) and did a modestly brisk trade selling annual versions of the software for a more reasonable (£40 or so) amount, with updates to keep the maps fresh and to add improving functionality.

All of this pre-dates the arrival of Multimap, Bing Maps, Google Maps etc. Nowadays the man in the street can make routing decisions on browsers or phones, free of charge and even taking account of prevailing traffic conditions, generally free of charge.

Nevertheless, the AutoRoute and S&T products soldier on, surprisingly. AutoRoute 2013 can be bought for £39 naked or £85 if you want a plug-in USB GPS module. MapPoint and Streets and Trips are still available for American users. Just don’t try and stick the PC to your windscreen.

The zooming in & out is a big agricultural compared to the Deep Zoom style navigation in and out of Bing or Google Maps these days, but there’s a lot of data behind the app and it’s very usable when it comes to searching and setting particular options – showing how much your journey will cost in fuel as well as how long it will take, for example…

Why?

There are a few key reasons why it makes sense to have AutoRoute instead of relying on online mapping – it’s all available offline for one, it responds comparatively quickly (especially when rerouting via specific places) and it also can show you easily what’s in the neighbourhood of a given point – though some of the data may not be as up to date as online sites.

You can export *.axe routing files to *.gpx using AutoRoute 2013 (or use free 3^rd party software ITN Converter to turn out a version for most popular satnavs – so you could spend a while poring over a pan-European route in AutoRoute then squirt it down to your TomTom so you end up following the exact route you want, rather than sticking to the motorways, as the device might insist)… though as yet no route mapping is exportable to Nokia’s Here Drive software so you can let your phone guide you.

Interestingly, you can also overlay further data onto AutoRoute maps – maybe Excel spreadsheets full of postcode-oriented data, or even the simple mechanism of plotting all your Outlook Contacts on a map – maybe useful for seeing which of your customers or partners are based nearby a place you’re going. Or where to wind up the windows and keep driving…

Tip o’ the Week #185 – Outlook, offline!

Posted on August 23, 2013 (Updated October 8, 2021) by ewand

Previous ToW entries have covered the need to sometimes tell Outlook to pipe down and let you get on with what your job is supposed to be. Where, after all, does it say on your job description, “Sits in front of a screen reading & writing email all day”?

The Pomodoro time management method is one potential solution to the problem, where the user forces themselves to focus for a period of time by avoiding distraction. The continuously excellent series of Photo Tips from Robert Deupree (JR) featured a simpler solution…

Robert also recommends a shortcut for the keyboard junkies so dedicated to extreme productivity that they can’t afford to lift their hands away to touch a mouse – to toggle Online and Offline modes in Outlook, simply press ALT+S then W.

When Outlook is offline it obviously won’t receive any new email, but it will let you work on existing mail, calendar etc and you’ll still be online for Lync distractions, and able to while away time browsing the web.

Whilst on the subject of Outlook and distractions, do yourself a favour and switch off the new mail alert – it’s even more intrusive in Outlook 2013 than previously. We all get enough email that we don’t need to know when another one has arrived, so try it now and you can always switch it back on if you feel that nobody loves you anymore.

Simply go to File / Options / Mail within the main Outlook window, and tweak the settings as required:

Tip o’ the Week #184 – ActiveSync account limits

Posted on August 16, 2013 by ewand

Various people have commented on issues they’ve had whilst setting up new PCs, especially after the upgrade to Windows 8.1 Preview. The upgrade process is a lot like a reinstall which happens to remember a bunch of settings, and one of the side effects is that it sets up the Mail (and associated Calendar) client as if it was a new PC connecting to your mailbox.

Now, one gotcha you might not be aware of is that Exchange Server can impose a limitation on how many ActiveSync devices are connected – it’s part of the numerous controls IT departments could place on synchronising with mobile devices, such as not allowing certain types of device (eg inherently insecure Android phones) to connect and sync, or by forcing a certain password policy on the phone so it locks when not used for a while.

Windows 8 and 8.1’s inbuilt Mail client uses the ActiveSync protocol to connect to the server, rather than the “Outlook Anywhere” method that the regular Outlook mail client uses. This means that if you reinstall/upgrade your Win8 PC, it could start to chalk off entries on the list of ActiveSync clients associated with your mailbox – and if you think how many phones you might have had in recent years, that number may be close to the limit. You may receive a notification email that there was an “error with your new mobile phone partnership” – strange stuff given than you may be just installing Windows…

To solve the problem (if it affects you) or to prevent it from happening at some future and doubtless inconvenient moment, simply:

Go to Outlook Web Access (whatever the URL is for your installation), and login
Go to Options in the top right and See All Options (after selecting a Groovy Theme, should you so desire)
Go to Phone / Mobile Phones and look at the list of devices set up to synchronise – you may have a number of WindowsMail “phones” as well as a couple of kosher mobile devices.

Selectively delete some WindowsMail (or old phone) entries that haven’t synched for a while – they’re presumably old and dead. If in any doubt, select a device and click on Details to see the OS type and name of the machine, amongst others.

Tip o’ the Week #183 – Screen Grabs on Windows 8.1

Posted on August 9, 2013 by ewand

If you’ve taken the plunge and updated to Windows 8.1, you may have spotted a mix of improvements (like the updated Search pane behaviour which needs a little getting used to, but works well), and some funnies (compatibility issues with IE11, internal tools like GMOBI or CRM not working so well, etc). All in, a happier upgrade but one which is quite clearly still a preview.

Now, one of the first downers some people have spotted is the fact that the Search charm has nabbed the WindowsKey+S combination – it makes more sense than Win+Q, so what’s the rub? Well, OneNote uses WindowsKey+S to grab portions of the screen, either for pasting into notebooks or just sticking the screen grab into the clipboard for later use.

There are alternatives to the handy OneNote process; like using the Snipping Tool, though like many other such utilities, it can’t grab portions of the Modern UI apps. Never fear, a solution is at hand…

If you’re a fan of Win+S, you can re-establish a way of screen grabbing by following the steps below…

· Fire up a PowerShell windows with admin privilege – press WindowsKey+X, and select Windows PowerShell (Admin) from the list. (note that in Windows 8, this option was “Command Prompt (with admin)” – is the shift to PowerShell in Win8.1 the death knell for the black-background command line?

· Copy and Paste the following command into the command line and hit Enter:
REG ADD "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\OneNote\Options\Other" /v ScreenClippingShortcutKey /t REG_DWORD /d 65 /f

· Either reboot your PC, or…
… kill off the Send to OneNote Tool (32 bit) application from Task Manager (press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC), then restart the application by pressing WindowsKey+R and entering ONENOTEM.

Now, you should be able to catch a screen grab by pressing WindowsKey + A. Not as obvious as Win+S, but it’s better than nothing.

Tip o’ the Week #181 – “Working Elsewhere” status

Posted on July 5, 2013 by ewand

This week’s tip comes courtesy of Phil Cross, who discovered it one day whilst trying to tell his colleagues where he was going to be. In Outlook, as you know, you can set the “Show As” status of an appointment or a meeting (and ToW readers of long standing may recall the difference – an appointment is in your calendar only, whereas a meeting is when other people are also invited).

The new “Working Elsewhere” status adds a welcome dose of granularity: what if you’re working at home, you’re available, but you want to make it clear that you’re not sitting at an office desk? “Out of Office” might not cut it, as that could signal that you’re OOF and therefore unavailable…

You could, of course, combine the appointment status with an appropriate Lync status too – you can tell people where you are/what you’re up to through your Location and even your “What’s happening today?” status.

There’s a new status in Lync too – “Off Work”. For all those times when you’re online – using your laptop at the weekend or on a day off, for example, but when you want people to know you’re not actually available to work. Just remember to set it back when you return, or else you’ll just look like a skiver.

Finally, a reminder for everyone planning a summer holiday and who would like to make sure their boss/colleagues/occasional collaborators know that they’re not going to be in the office. Don’t send people a meeting request to remind them you’re on holiday, without setting the status to be Free, the Reminder to be switched off, and the Request Responses to be blank.
[Sorry for the shouting, but so many times I’ve tried to book someone for a meeting only to find their free/busy status is obliterated by some other numpty politely informing that they’re away].

This topic was covered 2½ years ago in Tip o’ the Week #4 …

Tip o’ the Week #180 – A touch of magic

Posted on June 28, 2013 by ewand

As more and more of us continue to enjoy new laptops courtesy of the Windows 8 Refresh program, the fact that most of them are touch-enabled is causing delight and surprise. The best things about touch on traditional laptop devices may be the less obvious uses – scrolling up and down a web page with a lazy flick, or highlighting something to a colleague by pinching to zoom.

Tim Hall suggested a couple of cool tips, namely the new icon that’s appeared on the Office Quick Access Toolbar, to enable Touch Mode – a feature covered in the Office Preview, in ToW 142, but it’s changed the UI and become a good bit more functional. Tim also points out on his Lenovo X1 Carbon Touch, if you double-tap on the screen it will zoom in.

Meanwhile, Darren Strange has also become a huge fan of the Touch Mode in Outlook – not only does it space out the menu options and folders, but it introduces a new shortcut icon list on the far right (beyond the Reading Pane). Darren advocates triaging email by holding the sides of the super thin screen on his shiny Asus Zenbook, then tapping with his right thumb. It’s especially easy to flick up and down through the mailbox, then tap on Reply, then drop your hands to the keyboard for when you need to type.

Here he is, poised to delete some nonsense email that’s cluttering up his inbox:

Tip o’ the Week #178 – Copy as Path, turbocharged

Posted on June 21, 2013 by ewand

Long-term readers of ToW may recall tip 101, which featured the “Copy as Path” command in Windows 7. In a nutshell; hold the Shift key as you right-click on a file in Windows Explorer, and you’ll see the Copy as Path option, which copies the entire path to that file (eg c:\blah\blah\file.doc) into the clipboard. Handy for when you want to point a dialog box from an application at a file you’ve been working on.

Well, Windows 8 goes one better. The Explorer desktop application features an option on the Home tab – simply select a file or folder, then click on the Home menu option to show the tabs (assuming they’re not already visible), and you’ll see Copy path.

If you like to have one-click access to these kinds of super-user functions, there is an even quicker way.

Look above the File menu in the Explorer window, and you’ll see a Quick Access Toolbar – something that’s been in Office for a while, as a place to dock common commands. If you click on the down arrow at the end of the QAT, you can enable and disable the commands which are already on it, but not add new ones. If you want to add the Copy Path command, for example, simply right-click on the command on the Ribbon tab, then Add to Quick Access Toolbar.

Tip o’ the Week #176 – F(u)11 screen ahead

Posted on June 6, 2013 by ewand

This week’s tip might seem a little obvious to some, yet partially unknown to others. Internet Explorer has offered the capability to display a page in full-screen mode, since IE4. Just like the “content, not chrome” ethos of the “~~Metro~~” Modern UI design language, reducing the various window borders and controls, menus, toolbars etc (aka the “chrome”), leaves more room on screen for the web page or other application/document content.

Now, we all know there are two versions of Internet Explorer 10 – the Modern UI version (full-screen, hiding all controls unless you swipe from the top or bottom of the screen or press WindowsKey-Z to display the address bar, tabs list etc), and the more traditional browser with tabs, icons to control the browser behaviour, menus etc. If you’re using the desktop version of IE, try flicking to and from full screen mode by hitting the F11 key – the same shortcut that’s been in IE for 15 years.

Other applications have full screen modes too, and some, like OneNote, also use the same familiar F11 – making your current OneNote page fill the entire screen (apart from the taskbar, unless you’re hiding that too), so useful when you’re note-taking in a meeting and want to make it clear to anyone peering over your shoulder that you’re not just doing email or wasting time.

Office 2013 applications let you switch to/from a full screen view too, by clicking on the Auto Hide option at the top right of the “Ribbon” – like the browser or OneNote applications above, it’s a handy way of making the most of screen real estate, especially if your laptop has a physically small screen. Like a Surface, for example.

Tip o’ the Week #175 – a ‘tastic OneNote add-in

Posted on May 30, 2013 by ewand

Regular ToW readers might recall a previous mention of an add-in to OneNote which provides useful additional functionality, perhaps most notably OneCalendar – which gives you a calendar view, with the titles of OneNote pages which were edited on that day… hover over the title to see a preview of the page, click on it to jump to that page.

OneCalendar can be installed as a separate app, then pinned to the Task bar or Start menu if you want to fire it up quickly, without first being in OneNote.

If you have multiple notebooks and if you have hundreds of pages, this is a great add-in, since it quickly lets you see pages you’ve updated, regardless of where they are.

The bigger OneTastic add-in does a load more, too – the newest addition to its arsenal of features being the ability to write and play back OneNote Macros. Even if you have no interest in creating your own, Omer has a whole slew of macros installed by default or available to download from Macroland. Sometimes simple things like being able to quickly insert a horizontal line, or add capabilities common to other Office apps, like auto-fill of tables.

Check out this brilliant – and free – add-in, on http://omeratay.com/onetastic/.

Tip o’ the Week #174 – Presenting tips from the pros

Posted on May 23, 2013 by ewand

This week’s tip comes after another successful “Tech.Days Online” session in late April, delivered by a host of specialists covering a range of developer and IT Pro topics. The Tech.Days Online programme of events is interesting in that it’s delivered “live” to thousands of virtual attendees: in other words, you could visit the Chicago auditorium and see the whole thing being presented to an empty room, except for the camera and audio crew and perhaps a few interested supporters.

Andrew Fryer suggested this update of an old feature of the somewhat-maligned Windows Vista. Pressing WindowsKey+X on a Veesta machine would display the Mobility Center, a collection of tools that are relevant to laptop use. In Windows 8, the Win+X combination has grown somewhat, and throws up a list of potentially useful utilities and quick access to the more commonly used (by technical types, anyway) aspects of the Control Panel. On a laptop, Mobility Center also features here.

If you like it particularly and a few more clicks is too much to ask, you could even start the Mobility Center then pin it to Taskbar for future one-hit execution.

The Presentation Settings applet in Mobility Center will allow you to configure how your machine looks and feels whilst you’re presenting – maybe change the background image of your desktop from a leering photo of your dog/child/spouse, to something a little more corporate and dry. Or don’t let the screen go blank, even if you’re running on battery… To set the options up, click on the projector icon within the Mobility Center.

It doesn’t set your Lync status to tell people you’re presenting, and it won’t configure PowerPoint to send things to the right screen, though… more on that in a future tip.