At some point you may run across a scenario when you try to access a help file within a program, but the help file doesn’t open. Typically you will get a screen similar to the one below saying “Navigation to the web page was canceled” (Windows 7) or “Action canceled” (XP). I believe that this typically happens when you get this help file from somewhere other than a standard installation of a program, and this is Microsoft’s way of protecting you.
What you need to do is navigate in Windows Explorer to the location that the help file is located in, such as below for example.
You then need to right click on the help file and select Properties. Then, on the General tab, select the Unblock button towards the bottom right and then hit apply and then OK.
Now the help file should appear when you try to access it from within your program.
As a side note, some help files can be accessed by double clicking on the help file itself from within Windows Explorer, and others cannot. Some can only be accessed from within the program they written for.
General tips & tricks for all, LP3 Warning messages, Windows tips & tricks
Ditto is a great program for increasing productivity, regardless of what you are using it for. Even simply for filling out forms or whatever, I use it often.
Haven’t you found yourself wanting to copy something to the clipboard by using Ctrl+C and then realizing – “Wait, I also need to copy that, but I can only copy one thing at a time. Nuts!” That’s where Ditto comes in. The picture below is a great example of this. I knew I was going to write this post and I knew I wanted to paste the web address in here as far as where to get Ditto and I also wanted to copy their description of it into here. So I simply used Ctrl+C on both things. Then when I ‘m ready to use one or the other (or any of the last several items I’d copied to the clipboard) I simply press the default key combination to bring up the Ditto box which is Ctrl+~. (That’s the control key plus the key to the left of the number 1 key, and as you may remember from a previous post, this ~ is a tilde.) Here’s a picture of the box that pops up:
Ditto is a free open source program that is very tiny and loads with Windows. I’ve been using it since Windows XP and now use it with Windows 7 Professional and have had no issues at all. You can get it here:
http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net/index.php
It is extremely simple to install – just use the default options. All you need to remember is to let it start when Windows starts and that way Ditto captures all clipboard entries. Then all you need to remember is that the hotkey to open Ditto so that you can select one of the entries from the list is Ctrl+~. That’s it!
Here’s the official description from the Ditto web site:
Ditto is an extension to the standard windows clipboard. It saves each item placed on the clipboard allowing you access to any of those items at a later time. Ditto allows you to save any type of information that can be put on the clipboard, text, images, html, custom formats, …..
General tips & tricks for all, Software we use, Windows tips & tricks
You’ve probably seen files in your file folders with tildes (~) in front of them like this:
If you’ve always wondered what these files are, read on. From Wikipedia: “The tilde symbol is used to prefix hidden temporary files that are created when a document is opened in Windows. For example, when you open a Word document called “Document1.doc,” a file called “~$cument1.doc” is created in the same directory. This file contains information about which user has the file open, to prevent multiple users from attempting to change a document at the same time.”
So if you have the option set in Windows Explorer under Folder Options to “Show hidden files and folders”, when you open a file, you see another file open as described above with a tilde in front of it, and the icon in front of this file name is grayed out (this is the standard operation for most, but not all programs). If the program crashes or “terminates early” then these files will often times be left over and look as shown above. If you see a group of files like this in your folder and you know that the related files are not open, they are perfectly safe to delete. They don’t take up much space – they are only 1kb in size, but it is good housekeeping to get rid of them.
Windows tips & tricks
I’ve had this chart shown below for well over a dozen years. I’ve found it to be very useful for quickly adding a symbol to the document you are working on; particularly when working with emails describing things such as diameters and plus/minus dimension and angles. The trick is to simpy hold down the Alt key on your keyboard and while you are holding it down, you simply type the 4 numbers corresponding to the symbol you want and then release the Alt key. So you can quickly type 0.251Ø or 30°±1°
General tips & tricks for all, Windows tips & tricks
