microsoft

Permanently Disable Office 2003 Clipboard

It’s been a while since I posted a techie entry so here’s one. I’m so glad I did it!

Do you know that annoying window that opens whenever you press Ctrl+C twice? Yes, that is the Office clipboard. All Office applications have that and it’s pretty annoying. I work with Excel sheets a lot in my job and I use the copy command often. I tried hiding the clipboard through its Options but it keeps on returning after I restart my machine.

Today I was determined to get this annoying window out of my life for good.

WARNING: The procedure below includes modification of your computer’s registry. Serious problems may occur when you modify it incorrectly. Make sure to back it up before you do any changes. For the complete procedure, check this MS article.

Go to Start > Run. In the pop-up window, type regedit.
Once your registry is open, navigate to this section: HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Microsoft > Office > 11.0 > Common > General.
Look for the AcbControl key in the right panel of the window and double-click it.
In the window that opens, change the value data from 0 to 1 and then select Decimal. Click OK.

If you do not see the AcbControl key, do the following first before performing steps 3 and 4.

Right-click anywhere on the right panel of your registry window and select New > DWORD Value.
Give it a name of AcbControl and press Enter in your keyboard.
Double-click AcbControl.
In the window that opens, change the value data from 0 to 1 and then select Decimal. Click OK.

Now, using any MS Office Application, copy and paste stuff and you should not see the clipboard ever again.

Creating a Poll using Outlook 2003

The other day, we were planning a surprise baby shower party for our teammate, Janelle. Since it was a surprise one, we cannot plan it on meetings, everything was coordinated and decided through emails and instant messages for two days. When we were deciding on the food, I wanted a poll, similar to what our different committees use during events. I know it is possible through email but I’m clueless. So I went to Mr. Google and asked.

Here is what I found.

1. Open a new message.
In the toolbar section, look for Options… and click it.
A new dialogue box will open.
Look for the Voting and Tracking options header.
Tick the Use voting buttons: check box.
The default values are Approve;Reject. If you want a custom one, delete this, enter your choices separated by a semicolon (;).

You’re technically done at this point. But if you want to send your recipients’ replies to another mailbox, continue with the steps below.
Look for the Delivery options header.
Tick the Have replies sent to: check box.
Your name is the default value. Change this to the person or address where you want the replies to go. If you are unsure, you can click on Select Names… button and select the address from there.
Click Close.
You should be back to your email body.
Type your email message and when you are done, click Send.

There, you just sent a poll using Microsoft Outlook 2003.

Problems with Favorites using IE 7 on Vista

Thanks to hubby for sapphire and for setting up a wireless connection at home, I can work in any part of our house/room. Sapphire has been a great help for my mobility at home. I can work while putting Ayex to sleep, which happens most of the time I work at home.

Initially, I didn’t want to put Vista on sapphire because I heard a lot of negative feedback about it. But hubby won so sapphire has Vista.

Recently, I worked at home several times. Unlike here at the office where all the URLs I need to do my daily work are already bookmarked, at home, I have to rely on my browser’s history. So if I have or want to check an office URL that I haven’t visited so far, I have to guess it or ask the link from my colleagues. Then I remembered to start building my favorites/bookmarks list. Unfortunately, after trying to bookmark a page, I got an access denied error. At that time, I was already tired and didn’t want to research my issue anymore. I shut down sapphire and whine to my hubby. Hahahaha! Things I have to go through with Vista!

Last Sunday, I was online at hoe again. I remembered this problem. I went to Google and searched for my issue. I really think that searching is a skill. You get exactly what you need if you know what questions to ask. With one try, I found the answer to what I need. Below is what I did so I can finally bookmark the URLs I need.

Open the command prompt with Administrator access.
I only know how to open the default command prompt in Vista so I had to do another search in Google so I can do step 1. I found that pressing Ctrl + Shift + Enter after typing cmd in the Vista Start Run box instead of just hitting Enter does the trick. It worked perfectly for me because I like shortcuts. Thanks to Mr. Byte for the tip.
In the command line, I pasted this command: icacls X:pathtoFavorites /setintegritylevel (OI)(CI)low but did not hit Enter yet.
I have to change the X:pathto with the exact values. I checked my directories to see where my Favorites folder is located. Then in the command prompt, I modified the path to the correct one. After that, I hit Enter.

Vista processed my request and returned to the default C:Windowssystems32> after a while. Thanks to Microsoft forum for this command. It pays to read forum posts!
I opened a link from my browser’s history, tried to bookmark it and it worked! I was able to create a new folder inside my Favorites folder where I can save all my bookmarks. Hooray!!!

If you’re having the same problem, I hope this can help you. This is definitely easier to do than the export-import solution others suggested in the forum. Happy bookmarking!