Friday, December 11, 2009

Visio Tip #2: Export text from Visio

There are situations when we want to export text from Visio diagram. For e.g. the other day I wanted to export sever Name and IP addresses from a physical diagram. I hoped to find something like Save As text etc. But then I stumbled on this blog http://kenfallon.com/?tag=visio-export-text. Copying the steps here in case link dont work
  • Visio 2003 go to Tools -> Reports.
  • Visio 2007 go to Data -> Reports.

These instructions are for Visio 2007.

  • Make a new report and select Shapes on All pages or Shapes on the current page.
  • Then select only (you may want to Show all properties to make sure nothing else is checked)
  • Give it a Title e.g: Text Only Report
  • Give it a Name e.g: Text_Only_Report
  • Then select run and export it to either Excel, HTML, Visio Shape or XML

In the future when you want to extract text all you need to do is run Data -> Reports select Text_Only_Report and press Run.

Visio Tip # 1 : Reduce size of file

Sometime during the course of time, the size of Visio increases manyfold, sometime reaching upto 6-10 MB. Even if you zip it, there is not much help. But there are some options for reducing file size suggested by Microsoft. You can find them at this URL http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305025. The suggestions are to
  • Remove unused shapes in the local stencil.
  • Configure Visio to save the drawing with out a preview picture.
  • Reduce the number of grouped shapes.
  • Convert duplicate shapes to a single master shape.
  • Do not save your diagram as a XML for Visio drawing

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Enable online status in Outlook 2007?

Outlook 2007 has a option to Display online status next to person's name.


There might be a scenario that once you install Outlook and Communicator, this option is greyed out. To fix this issue update registry as follows:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\common\personamenu\enabled=1
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\IM\EnablePresence=1

Friday, August 28, 2009

Power Commands for VS2008

Have you ever need a command to expand or collapse a project or solution in VS2008? Or what about right click a file and missingg the option to open in Explorer?

You can get some of such cool commands after installing Power Commands for VS2008. These additional commands are really useful in day 2 day development life. Not sure why they are not pre installed with VS2008 :)

The cool commands can be downloaded from http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/PowerCommands.

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Displaying Multiple Clocks / Timezone in Vista

No need to download and install third party utilities to display multiple clocks in Vista. Here are the steps to display multiple watch

  • Click on time in System tray
  • Click on "Change date and time settings..."
  • Click on "Additional Clocks" tab
  • Enable additional clocks by checking "Show this clock" checkbox
  • Select the timezone for the clock, and click OK

Hover over the time on system tray and now you will see time from second watch as well :)

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

JavaScript library | BBC Glow

BBC Glow is available as open source JavaScript framework library (http://www.bbc.co.uk/glow/). This is the same library which is being used for their website. According to BBC sources, none of the existing libraries (including jQuery and YUI) met their standards and guidelines (browser support being prime concern).

Article on Ajaxian - http://ajaxian.com/archives/ouh-shiny-bbcs-glow-is-finally-out

Friday, May 29, 2009

Overload missing for AsyncWaitHandle.WaitOne()

We recently faced an issue where a developer used overload of WaitOne() method as follows:

AsyncWaitHandle.WaitOne(timeout)

But this code failed on other machines because there was no overload available with one parameter. After some analysis we figured out that it was because .Net 3.5 SP1 was not installed on other machines. Seems two new overloads were added as part of SP1, namely

public virtual bool WaitOne(System.TimeSpan timeout)
public virtual bool WaitOne(int millisecondsTimeout)


In case you want to avoid this issue and maintain backward compatibility, use AsyncWaitHandle.WaitOne(timeout, false); which is effectively same as AsyncWaitHandle.WaitOne(timeout);

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Testing Flock

This is my first blog entry from Flock. Flock is labeled as Social Web Browser and is based on Firefox3. I wanted to test the blogging Capabilities if it. This is a bold text

List
  1. List item
  2. List item
  3. List item
  4. List item
Here's an image. My Photo

--- End of test ---
Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Add '+' or '-' before float value using ToString()

Assuming you want the sign of the number to be displayed rather than an arbitrary '+', then try the following:

a.ToString("+#.###;-#.###;0");

Where 'a' is your variable. This is a format string with sections,separated by semi-colons. The first section (+#.###) applies topositive numbers, the second (-#.###) applies to negative numbers andthe last applies to zero.