Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with MS

Can't figure out my intercom speakers

Mid — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:24:19 -0800

There are stereo speakers in my ceiling and I don't know how to get them to work. We moved into a house that has an "M&S" intercom/music system built in. In two of the rooms, there are stereo speakers built into the ceilings and there are wall-mounted dials that I presume control the volume. I cannot figure out how to get any sound to come out of these speakers.

At the control panel, there are 11 toggle switches with Intercom / Radio-Intercom / Off / and Monitor positions. Some of these are labeled with different room names and some are not. One is labeled "Master." None say anything about ceiling speakers or about the rooms that have the speakers. I have been playing with various combinations, as well as turning all of the volume controls up and down, but nothing comes out of the ceiling speakers. I have not located any other wall switches or anything else that might make the speakers work.

Does anyone have a system like this? Thanks

I'm trying to win a bet

metacort — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:30:50 -0800

Is Windows 7 an upgraded version of Vista (like Snow Leopard presumably is of Leopard) or completely re-built from the bottom up?

Is Mrs still expected?

mdn — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:39:16 -0800

If you are recently married and have taken your husband's last name, do you go by "Mrs"? I know some women of the previous generation still use Mrs (like Mrs Clinton) and I have been perhaps slightly surprised to see a good percentage of my generation taking their husband's name as they get married, but I don't know if they imagine being addressed as Mrs Hislastname, or if Ms Hislastname makes sense.

When I worked as a telemarketer about 15 years ago, I offended most of the people I called on the first day by switching from "Mrs" to "Ms" (to me, "Mrs" was already outdated then) but that was a limited sample, probably older, probably non-working...

So, would either Mrs or Ms offend? And which would be preferable if both are acceptable?

Give me my Money!

asuprenant — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 18:56:47 -0800

How to recover/break MS Money password? Hi, I just migrated to a new computer and am bringing over a backup from Microsoft Money (2002 or 2005).

I backed up the account to a .mny backup file, but when I try to open the file on my new computer, I'm asked for a password, which I don't remember setting (or ever being asked for) on my old computer, and none of my standard passwords seem to work. Gargh.

To complicate issues slightly, I'm traveling this week and don't have access to my old computer, just my .mny file and new Money installation.

So - any way to break/workaround the Money password? I've seen a lot of purported services online, but they seem pretty shady. Thanks!

How can you make XP Pro to run USB ports at 2.0 speed?

yggdrasil — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 09:23:58 -0800

Why are my netbook's USB 2.0 ports running at 1.1 speed under XP Pro, and what can I do to fix this? I have an Asus EEE 1000HA netbook that originally came with XP Home. I installed XP Pro, including complete patches, upgrades, updates, and current service packs, and have been happily computing for almost a year.

I recently noticed that whenever I plug in a USB device (be it external hard drive, disk drive, TV receiver stick, or flash drive), XP pops up a warning that the device could run faster if I'd only use the right 2.0 port. Problem: all three USB ports purport to be 2.0, but none of them are. Now that I think back, I think it has done this since the beginning, so it's not a recent development.

I'm running completely updated XP Pro and a current version of the BIOS (and no, the standard fix to turn "OS installation" in the BIOS to "complete" is not an option in this BIOS version). I've tried uninstalling all the USB devices and let Windows discover and install them, but they're still 1.1. But I know that the hardware is 2.0 compatible because both on-board camera and flash reader work - camera doesn't work at 1.1, and the flash reader runs at 2.0 speed (or at least a hell of a lot faster than the USB stick). [It's not a difference in media: same microSD card in USB stick is hella-slow, but stick it into the flash reader inside the SD adapter, and it's full speed ahead). So the 2.0 USB hardware is on-board.

I've spent more than an hour with ASUS tech support, and they say that they don't have a patch, and that it's actually a known issue with XP, and to try calling MS. I'm abroad for the next 3 months, so I really don't want to have to pay international long distance to be parked in on-hold-telephone-tree-hell at MS.

So does anyone have a work around or patch? (I can't install a linux distribution because I need to be able to run my law school's exam software... otherwise, I'd be all about it...)

The doctors won't diagnose his MS (or whatever it is). What can we do?

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:17:37 -0800

Would really like to hear from any Mefites who have been through this particular hell. My partner has been suffering for many years from symptoms that we recently realised are a perfect match for MS. Many members of his family, including his father, have MS, and his problems right now are mirroring those his father had that led to his diagnosis. We did some research and he is a perfect, 100% fit to pretty much every online list of MS symptoms. He is in almost constant pain and 90% housebound, has been for many months. After blood tests, a neurologist and a couple of MRIs, he's being told that he is in perfect health, has been prescribed basic vitamins, and told that if the problems persist to come back in four months to get a referral... to a psychiatrist. Needlesss to say, we are both fuming right now. He is in pain. He is suffering. It is NOT in his head. We want to start him on a course of whatever it is he needs so that he doesn't have to be in pain and I don't have to see him in pain.

Details: he has experienced a variety of on-again, off-again ailments for many years. Most prominent are big bathroom problems (constipation/diahrrea on a near-daily basis, even with diet changes), and attacks of crippling pain (he describes it as fire or lightning) and/or numbness in his legs, to the point where stairs and getting up from a seated position are painful and sometimes impossible. Also extreme constant fatigue and short-term memory loss, to name a few.
These problems come and go but the attacks have been getting worse and closer together in recent months.
Doctors (GPs at local walk-in clinic) kept saying he was fine, until finally he got one to do a few more tests - at the point that the rubber hammer to the knee got no response at all twenty times in a row, blood tests were ordered.

- Blood tests came back "fine"; when he pointed out that he was in no way "fine", he got a recommendation to neurologist.
- Neurologist watched him walk, poked him, etc., prescribed a mildly radical change in diet, and sent him for an MRI (head/spine).
- We followed the diet religiously (I made all his food and as he can barely leave the house there's no cheating), miraculously managed to get the MRIs done within the month, and then had to wait another month for the follow-up with the neurologist.

Today the neurologist said that everything looked good and that he could have some vitamins if he wanted. No signs of anything in the MRIs. We asked about the diet, and were told that he could follow it or not, it didn't really make a difference (!). He said to try the vitamins for four months, and then to come back and if he was still having problems then he would refer him to a psychiatrist.

We are.... angry.
It's been such a struggle to even get a doctor to LISTEN, and finally we go the whole route and the end result is a patronizing dismissal. He could barely even get to the doctor's office today because his legs were so bad, with numbness below the knee and pain above it, and he gets a shrug and a pat on the head?!

From all my reading I know that MS often goes undiagnosed for a long time; even my father-in-law got three different diagnoses before he finally got treated for his. I've seen first-person accounts of this same frustration online. We are still both pretty sure that this is MS - with his symptoms that's one of the nicest diagnoses he could get - but WHATEVER it is we want to get him diagnosed and TREATED already! I just don't know where to go from here.

What can we do?
What kind of doctor should we try to see?
What should we be doing on our own while we try to get a medicine man who will actually help him?

any MS Money 2007 users?

royalchinook — Sun, 31 May 2009 23:05:27 -0800

In MS Money 2007, I am able to open my MS Money 2002 file and everything is great except for one difference that is causing me fits. I like to put all my Bills in the bill section and then I can easily see what the balance is going to be in my account after all those bills go through to make sure I have enough money (Shift+Click), but it seems that starting in MS Money 2006, that functionality was taken away. I am not aware of a way to select multiple bills to see the balance after paying all of them.

Reason for upgrading to 2007: I recently installed a new hard drive and my MS Money 2002 backup file would not open for me anymore (it asked for a password that I didn't have, seems that's a 'feature' to get you to upgrade).

Apologies: I know I should probably find a forum more specific to Microsoft and their software's problems but there is so little help there so thanks for indulging me on this active site.

I've spent some time googling and here's what I found:

Someone asking this same question with no real responses on eggheadcafe

List of features removed from MS Money over the versions, my problem is similar to this one (although I am able to see my balance, but just after the single bill I have selected, not multiples).

I see in the eggheadcafe question the guy seemed to answer his question with making the bills online payable but I've looked around and I don't think the banks I use support paying online (I'm in Canada).

I guess I'm asking if there's a way to find out what my balance will be after a bunch of bills that are scheduled to be paid are actually paid and if not, other recommended financial software; this is a deal breaker for me if I can't get it to work.

How to make multiselect dropdown lists

angiep — Wed, 27 May 2009 10:36:07 -0800

Form creation on MS Word 2003 on an XP system. How do I make an MS Word doc with a multiple-selection dropdown listbox? I know this can be done using VB, but I don't know VB. I've made forms before using dropdown boxes from the Forms toolbar in Word (as opposed to the Control Toolbox toolbar) but the user can make only one selection from the list.

I'd like the dropdown list to allow for non-contiguous item selection. That is, if the list items were "red", "green", "yellow", "blue", "orange", and "purple", a user could select one, any, or all of them.

I need one of the following:

a) clear instructions to use the built-in tools in Word to do what I want
b) a reference that a complete VB noob can use to build a multi-select dropdown listbox -- fast.

Can anyone help with one or the other?

tips or tricks for organizing information using Windows XP

KokuRyu — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 17:15:03 -0800

Does anyone have any tips or tricks for organizing information using Windows XP and MS productivity software? Specifically, I'm wondering if there is a native "tags" function where you can tag specific documents so they can be easily retrieved.

When contracting, I relied on Gmail and the Google drive shell extension to easily store documents. In fact, I still use this system now for saving expense receipts for work: I email the receipts to a Gmail account and then search by keyword and date to find them.

However, I cannot use Gmail for work - it's against IT policy. I typically use Outlook 2007, Word 2007 and Excel 2007. The problem I have is that I often save multiple versions of files in multiple places.

I do have a filing system set up for email in Outlook 2007, but I often wish I could just bookmark an email, or bookmark and Excel spreadsheet.

Instead, I have to either save or file, and I much prefer Gmail's tagging system.

I am not considering moving to Gmail or whatever for my work-related productivity docs.

MS Desktop Search is enabled on my computer, but it's not quite as fast or efficient as the search function in Gmail.

So, once again, my question is:

Instead, does anyone have any tips or tricks for tagging items in Outlook 2007, or Word or Excel for easy retrieval? I'd love to hear your own unique solution using MS productivity software.

Note: my computer is locked down so I cannot easily install software.

Minimal set of Vista Updates?

papafrita — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:13:25 -0800

Just reinstalled Vista in my laptop, and now the next step is to install MS updates, right? The thing is, I don't think now installing every available update from MS Windows Update is a good idea. What are the absolutely necessary updates to install, if any? After some unresolvable issues with my HP laptop, I decided to format the disk and reinstall the Vista Business version included with the computer (in a different partition). Now, after some bad experiences after installing some updates in the past months, I now want to install nothing more than the bare minimum in this PC -- which is for work only.

Could you please recommend the smallest possible set of Windows Updates to install? I tried googling a bit, also looked around in AskMe, but no luck yet. My main concern is security; driver updates and such are of little concern.

Any recommendations? Maybe another website that could help?

If it helps at all, I took some screenshots of the list of 74 (!) updates that MS wants installed: 1, 2, 3.

It's a little hard to only use one half of the keyboard.

duckus — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:52:53 -0800

My keyboard has issues. Some letters work .. some do not .. some just Gibber at me. I have a Natural MS Ergonomic 4000 keyboard that has decided not to work.

When I type 'c' and also 'z', I get a right click menu.

These letters don't work at all: i o u x y

When I type '2' and also '4', I get this: -u=56jkl

I've got two keyboards hooked up so I can work, but my elbows and wrists are already hurting .. so this is not really a perm solution .. (hence the ergonomic keyboard) ..

It happened quite suddenly .. reboots/driver reinstall and restarts have all proved fruitless.

I am on Windows XP. Does anyone have any suggestions for troubleshooting or a fix?

Can an MA graduate fill an MS job?

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:52:38 -0800

A job opportunity opened up that requires an "MS degree". I have a MA. I know that I have the knowledge and experience for this position. Is there any way I can apply for this job? It's an adjunct professorship at a school focusing on Information Technology. I have around 12 years experience directly relevant to the open positions. I received a MA in International Studies but did my thesis on information science. I fulfill all of the other requirements. I have teaching experience and I think I would do a really excellent job. What, if anything, can I do?

Hosted sharepoint & exchange recommendations?

reddot — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:41:07 -0800

Hello. My company currently has MS exchange and sharepoint hosted with 1and1. However, their support sucks and not all features of the products are actually available. Does anyone have any recommendations that provide good support? Unfortunately, although I'd love to use different products, that's not going to happen. thanks.

How do I get Word and Excel to work together?

cheeken — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:07:52 -0800

I need MS Excel and Word to play together nicely. I can do what I need to in Word, and I can do what I need to in Excel; it's the Relationship that's Complicated. Maybe I need workflow advice? Basic knowledge? Please, please keep reading. I'm putting together a quarterly report for an ongoing evaluation of a county youth program. We're currently in Q2. We get lots of quantitative data, run it through SPSS and Excel to make lovely charts and graphs (like the average number of tutoring hours for females across tutoring agencies, that kind of thing). Then, my job is to write up a narrative description of what's going on, and put it together in ONE document.

This is the problem.

So, the final document will have a couple paragraphs of text, and then a chart that I've copied over from Excel, then more text, and on and on. Writing up the text and charts takes 20% of my time. Formatting, moving, adjusting, placing, chasing paragraphs around takes up the other 80%. It seems to me that with two programs that are part of a "Suite," it can't possibly be that hard.

Here's how I currently do it:
1) Write paragraph of text in Word.
2) Go to line after paragraph.
3) Copy chart from Excel.
4) Post Special...Microsoft Excel Chart Object
5) (Because now the text looks all goofy from how it looked in Excel) Right click > Format Object... > Layout > Click 'Square' and 'Center'
6) Then I have to go back above the chart and start typing the next paragraph, but I have to move the chart up manually to push the new text below the chart. [This is where it starts to suck.]

Now, god forbid that, after I have all my text-chart-text-chart sequences done, I have to go back and add a sentence or a paragraph, or move (or, *gasp* resize slightly) a chart, because then my charts will suddenly move behind each other, or on different pages, or they'll move to above the top margin on a page and become Completely Immovable.

So, I need some advice on how you create a document in Word that has 20+ pages of text and 25+ charts pasted in from Excel in a way that you can then make adjustments to the document and not have everything completely screwed up. What's your Word+Excel workflow?

Stupid Outlook! No cookie!

IAmBroom — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 14:38:19 -0800

VBA programmers: is there any way to control the formatting of Outlook Contacts Body text? (The "Body", BTW, is the large "notes" section at the bottom of the Contacts form.)

My searches on internet forums have proven useless, and I even got an MS online tech support person to say it probably couldn't be done (but I've proven them wrong before, so it's not exactly like visiting the Oracle at Delphi).

Here's some ideas I've tried, and why they don't work:

mapiContacts.ContactItems(i).BodyFormat = olFormatPlain
(Turns out the BodyFormat property is only available for mail & post items, despite what it suggests under Help for ContactItems.Body).

Dim str As String
str = mapiContacts.ContactItems(i).BodyFormat
mapiContacts.ContactItems(i).BodyFormat = str
(This requires every stinking Contact to be updated, every time I run this program.)

Coming from an art-school background, I have none of the requirements for a CS grad school. Am I hopeless?

amileighs — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 11:15:24 -0800

How do I start a MS in Computer Science with no applicable background? My Background:
Throughout high school (mid-late 90's) I was a computer nerd, often blowing off my homework to stay up all night learning about TCP/IP, Linux, OpenBSD, and generally hacking around with the vague intention of doing something computer-related.

After high school I took a job as a phone-monkey for Dell and MSN and after a year and a half doing customer service and tech support I was completely disenchanted. I recoiled at the thought of sitting in a cubicle for the rest of my life, programming enormously bloated software just to further some giant corporation, so knee-jerk enrolled in art school (a second passion) and was accepted. Mistake #1

I was a major in New Media, where I had a blast. Our department was in its first year and was beyond tiny- just eight people. Our teachers had no background in the field, so each of us basically taught our selves with little to no guidance from the professors. Some taught themselves 3d modeling, others more graphic design focused.

I spent the next three years teaching myself Max/MSP, ActionScript, and some minor circuits/sensors/robotics. My focus was on AI, mainly on Genetic Algorithms and Neural Networks for use with music, video, and text processing. I did all of the research myself, as my college was focused on fine arts- it didn't even require a math course at all. Eventually I realized that I was having a blast coding, doing research, and algorithm design to deal with large sets of data; and that I had little interest in the 'artwork' nature of it all.

I left college a semester early to move to New York and learn about the art. Mistake #2. Now I've been here for two years and I realize that the art world is not what I thought it would be and I would desperately like to go back to doing Computer Science research, with a focus on AI and Machine Learning.

I'm a great autodidact and I've spent the past months re-acquainting myself with the field, learning things like Python and SQL, doing some data-mining exercises, brushing up on my math, and making a few projects on the Google App Engine. I'm definitely sure I want to do this.

My Questions:

- Should I take the CS GRE in addition to the regular GRE in order to show I'm committed?

- I have a semester's worth of credits left to full to (finally) get my art degree, and my school will accept CLEP tests and/or CS courses taken at a local school. Should I take the CLEP tests like Discrete Mathematics, Info. Systems & Computer Applications or would it be better to get an 'A' in the actual class?

- After I have my prerequisites taken care of, is it OK to go to a lower level university for an MS, and then go somewhere better If I want to do a Ph.D ? Or is it more common to start off with a Ph.D immediately?

missive

plexi — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 08:00:28 -0800

I've noticed the New York Times is now using "Miss", or Ms., as the accepted honorific for a women both married and unmarried. Is this MLA, or is the New York Times in the vanguard? Is Mrs. dead?

Segoe UI Font Missing

paulyballs — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 06:59:51 -0800

Where can I get Segoe UI font? I have Office 2007 and recently ran a registry repair and since then my Segoe UI is missing. Anyone know where I can get it?

Office Go Zoom Zoom Zoom in the Room Room Room

ian1977 — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:46:08 -0800

Why would a laptop+conference projection thing make MS office docs expand? During a meeting, my boss was having trouble with his laptop. It was hooked up to the in house projector. Anytime he would open an MS Office document (he tried Powerpoint, Excel and Word, 2003 I think) it would expand to the maximum zoom, but it would scale up through each step, like someone was dragging the zoom bar. If he dragged it back to small, it would just zoom back in. He mentioned that it had happened before, but only in this one room.

Anyone know whats up with that?

Is this MS?

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 08:08:40 -0800

I may have MS. Now what? It might not be MS, but there's definitely something wrong.

I have experienced many of these symptoms, some getting progressively more apparent, over the past 2-3 months: http://www.mult-sclerosis.org/mssymptoms.html

Yes, I have a doctor appointment scheduled. But I'm a wreck.

Microsoft Points blues

howiamdifferent — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:45:09 -0800

Xbox 360 PAL + MS Points for US + UK Live account + non-UK location? How can I work this out? So I have a PAL Xbox 360 (Elite version), and live somewhere that's considered as part of the PAL regions, that is neither Europe nor Australia. I set up my Live account to go with my hotmail account whose location I've changed to UK because for some reason Live is still not officially released in my country (and Microsoft, which I hate with passion, hasn't publicized any plans to when/if it is going to do so).

I want to download some Live titles so bad, but sadly, no official PAL MS points cards are sold here. And for some mysterious reason, US MS points cards are everywhere. I ended up buying one of those (4000 MS points card), and surprise surprise, it didn't work.

So what should I do? is it feasible to change my hotmail location to US? will I lose anything by doing so (gamer score, save data, ..etc)?
I am really trying to avoid using the visa card option cause that too will require some verification with Zip addresses and stuff.

Thanks in advance.

Ms. Clinton vs Mrs. Clinton

lorimer — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 05:16:58 -0800

Why is "Mrs. Clinton" so common in newspapers & other media that use Ms. universally for other women?

MS Excel going slow on me - Is my document too big?

amusem — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:32:58 -0800

Very average PC user here. The MS Excel document I use everyday has become huge over time. One sheet with 6 columns going down more than 4000 lines. It weighs 7,6 Mbyte. Too much? It's just line after line with coordinates and text (no formulas). Recently the program has begun to behave weirdly when I'm using this document.

Inserting or deleting a line takes a full minute. Copying a line or a group of lines can take even longer. Even a simple save seems to take forever.

What's wrong?

I would like to keep using this single-sheet .xls document and have it work quickly on all fronts. I find it very useful to have all my information in the same sheet.

Thoughts?

Thank you.

How Can I Create A Work Schedule Program?

miltoncat — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 07:02:55 -0800

Need advice on how to make a work schedule... possibly writing a program? I'm a school librarian. I have to make a new schedule every month for classes to come visit the library. I have to work these classes around not only myself, but the classes' lunch times, PE classes, music classes, etc.

As of now I have the school lunch schedule on one sheet, other classes on another, etc. Long story short, it takes me 2,000 years to plan a schedule every month. (Also other things come up such as field trips, etc. that I have to work around.)

So. Is there a simpler, technology-based way to do this? I was thinking a basic program that has all the info in it that would show a conflict as I go along (It would need to be a VERY basic program, as I'm computer savvy but know very little about programming). I'm not limiting myself to just this avenue... I'm open to any suggestion, as long as I can do it on a computer. I have access to all MS Office apps.

Text box

Ollie — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:50:24 -0800

How do I make the outside text flow around a text box in Microsoft Word? Right now the text box is sitting on top of the text it's supposed to accompany. I know this is a waste of a question, but I'm in a rush and need to do this today.