Can't Login to Outlook.com "This account can't be used to access Outlook.com " error

"This account can't be used to access Outlook.com

You're currently signed in with an Office 365 email account, which can't be used with Outlook.com. Please click here to sign out of your Office 365 account, then use another Microsoft account to sign in to Outlook.com (for example, your hotmail.com, live.com, or msn.com account). "

Most likely cause is the email address/account you're using belongs to a educational institution, work or other big institution who pays Microsoft for the services. What has happened is they've switched your account from Outlook to a Office365 account, possibly without telling you.

Microsoft has stupidly put the above error message which isn't immediately obvious what to do.

Fix:

1. Go to http://login.microsoftonline.com
2. Login
3. That's it

And no Microsoft can't put this URL in the error message above because it would make it too user friendly and easy to use/fix. It's more fun searching Google for a forum or blog like this right? .... 

An attempt to login to the mailbox via www.office365.com will result in a circle of purchase this and purchase that advertising instead.

sudo: command not found

A possible reason for seeing the "sudo: command not found" error is that your admin hasn't given you sudo access or haven't applied them correctly for you to use sudo.

A work around could be to use this full path

/usr/local/bin/sudo

How do I switch Excel from rows to columns or columns and rows? (Transpose)

1. Copy all the cells you wanted to switch/invert in Excel and copy them
2. Instead of pasting them, use the Paste Special button and select "Transpose" into the cells you want them in.

This might not be the most effective solution to do what you may be specifically wanting to do but please do give the Transpose feature a go and try to save some time.

You may also need to fiddle around with the space and cells in which you're copying or pasting to and from.

Outlook Loses Ability to drag and drop

Hit Esc key a few times and now try again.

Thunderbird: the current operation on "inbox" did not succeed. The mail server for account XXXX responded: [TRYCREATE] The requested item could not be found.

Thunderbird error:

The current operation on "inbox" did not succeed. The mail server for account XXXX responded: [TRYCREATE] The requested item could not be found.

Just tonight I've been having Sync issues with Thunderbird. This hasn't happened before but lately I have been using my mail on my mobile and webmail as well as Thunderbird and I have noticed unlike Gmail my Microsoft account seems to sync much slower between Thunderbird and Webmail than Gmail does.


Anyhow, restarting Thunderbird didn't seem to help and using my webmail was the only temporary solution I was able to find. Mail on the mobile seems to sync correctly.

Know of a solution? post it here so we can dot point a solution for future readers. Thanks!

Align/snap shapes to grid in Powerpoint

Drawing a simple flowchart in Powerpoint became frustrating when the flows/arrows were not straight and a snap to grid didn't work. Resulting in an angled and wonky flowchart.

Using the snap to grid feature didn't seem to help, even when adjusting the grid to be larger/smaller.

Tip: Holding down CTRL when using the arrows allows you to make smaller steps which helps align the arrows and shapes a bit more precisely when using a mouse is too tricky.

Have a solution too? why not share below in the comments.

Buying Grey Imports Electronics, Devices and Gadgets

There has been this recent craze with buying grey imports to save money.

In the past it may have been to get a product released in a country other than your owns earlier than everyone else but recently there is the widely advertised advantage of saving hundreds of dollars.

You may hear horror stories like save a few hundred or a few dollars but lose it all if you need to make a warranty claim as many manufacturers do not support and provide warranty for products that are imported. Some businesses may provide warranty repairs and servicing by third parties as a next best offer.

Recently I got an Ainol Novo 7 Mars tablet which is not only a grey import but does not actually have official (retail) resellers here, instead they rely on distributors selling them. So basically they're not designed for my country's market. Which I found had bigger differences than say purchasing a Samsung or Apple product import, which may see a power adapter issue or a manual issue.

Because the tablet was designed for the Chinese market, it had censorship and restrictions pre-installed, many applications were blocked and there was no easy work around. The brand boasts high quality control, but if this is their idea of high quality control then major brands are working beyond high quality.

Here were some issues:

* They released the product before having a firmware that works well, so hardware is done, let's sell it and then push out software to fix the bugs once customers own it.

* Wifi drops out constantly and also has a weaker range than any cheap major brand product I've ever used.

* Touch screen is unresponsive and sometimes detects touches when it has been sitting on the table for 5 minutes untouched......

* There was a hot pixel (stuck white pixel) out of the box.

I am no Apple fanboy and don't mind having a product that doesn't work straight out of the box like Apple products, I usually don't mind some setting up, customising and tweaking but this product would be considered half functional in my personal opinion, out of the box.

So I recommend, when you buy grey imports really look at your support options and if it is not an international brand, really think it through, it will be hard to find bad reviews on products that are not widely known in the English speaking market.

This is not to say all grey imports are of poor quality but I would just like to share some food for thought.
Sometimes you get what you pay for, sometimes you're just being ripped off.

A200 Toshiba Satellite Random Restarts / Freeze When on AC

Symptoms:

• Random restarts
• Boots ok on battery
• Toshiba A200 Satellite laptop
• Over 4 years old
• Works in safe mode
  

Solutions:

• Boot up in Safe Mode
• Start > Control Panel > System > Device Manager > Processors
• Disable both processors
• Restart the laptop
• Boot into normal Windows
• Should work fine, if not you may want to look at the rest of this blog
• This is apparently a temporary fix and your laptop will not last years and years without replacing a chip (see below)
  

Causes (Possible):

• Poor battery life and power switching between AC and battery
• A NEC chip on the motherboard that regulates power is deteriorating and causing the laptop to not power properly

Alternative fixes:

1. Set power settings to Power Saver
2. Set power to High Performance
3. Boot into BIOS and change Dynamic CPU Frequency Mode = Always Low (NOT DYNAMIC)
   
4. Charge up battery and only use laptop on battery

More Info (Google key words such as):

• a200 toshiba random restarts
• Satellite A200 freezes or restarts anytime
• A200 restarts when plugged into AC
• Toshiba laptop freezing when charger is pluggded in
• Toshiba Random Freeze/ Shutdown/ Restart
• a200 toshiba NEC/TOKIN OE128 Proadlizer Capacitor problems
  

New WLM not so chunky and bulky after all

Hey

The new WLM sucks right? so big and bulky and hard to use, an eye sore! Unless you use the built-in Facebook and social network features.

But if you prefer the older compact view, you actually can change it.


A. Next to the Inbox icon you should see a icon that looks like a window, or two frames, click that to toggle compact and full view.

B. Click on your name in WLM (The bit where you can change your online status to online, busy, offline etc.) and then click on the button that says "Switch to full view mode" or "Switch to compact view" to toggle settings.

Easier way to add captions in Pinnacle Studio

Its not too hard to make captions that are short.

I got lazy and I just added a slab or maybe 20 seconds of captions on one caption, this made it really bulky, unprofessional and crowded the screen but it was convenient for me.

I then realised I can easily make then shorter without having to apply much effort.

1. Do what I have done above, add a decent slab of text into a caption and add it to scene.
2. Split the captions on the timeline along where you want the captions to change.
3. Now start deleting sentences so that you only have a short sentence on every split caption.
4. As the captions will include the original slab of text, all you have to do is delete more and more lines of text until you teach the last sentence in the slab.
2B. You may want to split the captions strategically to ensure you don't need to play around with timing realignment.

This has saved me so much effort in making shorter captions. Its easy , quick and looks so much more professional (which makes it more practical) as slabs of text are hard to follow.

Fix stuck deleting print job

Have a job stuck in your print queue that says deleting?

Here is a fix:

"

1) Go to Control Panel

2) Select System and Maintenance

3) Select Administrative Tools

4) Double-click on Services

5) In the list of services, scroll down until you find one called "Print Spooler"

6) Right-click on "Print Spooler" and select "Restart"

7) The "deleted" jobs will disappear and any queued jobs in your print queue will print
"

Quoted from:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/itprovistaprinting/thread/2d7f6282-3f20-43ff-a897-26db99585c1f/

pod51008.outlook.com

Login or password error when setting it up in Thunderbird?

Try using the username as the whole address rather than the first bit. For example use gecblog@uowmail.edu.au as the username instead of just gecblog. The Outlook exchange server is used by many different e-mail groups not just for example uowmail.edu.au so, you need to input that as well.

Common error message you get when this setting is incorrectly set up:

"Login Failed"
"Login to server pod51008@outlook.com failed."
"Retry, Enter New Password, Cancel"

All my Excel cells are greyed out and I can't re-colour them

If everything in Excel is all gray and you can not change any of the colours even after changing the formatting. Then most likely you are viewing the Excel workbook in "Page Break Preview", if all the cells are gray even if you have nothing in it and never used that cell, then my guess is "Page Break Preview!

GO to View > Normal View and well. that should be it.

View > Page Break Preview to make it all gray again.

Solution gathered from:

http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/showthread.php?t=33739

How to set up Internet on TPG mobile

http://optusau.wdsglobal.com/index.html

Seeming as TPG runs on the Optus network, just follow the link above, it will allow you to be sent a sms that auto configures everything for you =) Hope that helps!

Quickly switch to the desktop

I realised how much efficiency I have gained through Windows 7 using the Aero Peek or bottom right hand button that shows desktop as well as learning the Windows + D shortcut to switch to the desktop.

A recent modification I made was to go into the mouse settings and assign the middle click button to show desktop, now I can quickly switch applications, open apps or files and folders in 1 click and 1 click to bring back the last program I was using. Its pretty quick and easy, like in games to switch between modes or screens but it will disable the open in now window function which really only works in Internet browsers.

EDIT/Fix: You can add program specific settings and add Firefox to it and allow the middle click button to be Middle Click rather then Show/Hide desktop.

Efficiency in using mouse

I want to reduce my mouse usage and I got inspired from using a tablet today and iPod, You can actually download freeware to change your laptop or pc to use a "drag and scroll" feature to simulate the touch-pads. This will save the time of having to move the mouse to the scroll bar and instead just click an empty area on the window and move the mouse up or downwards.

Google Drag and scroll freeware to find one that suits you.

External Monitor COnnected to Laptop flickers

Here is a new one. I got a new BenQ monitor and connected it to my laptop, brilliant, best add-on to my laptop ever., except for one thing. flickering or refresh rate lines.

After days of search, I finally found on google that if i run the laptop on DC the flickering goes away, when I run it off AC the flickering is there, even more weird if i put the laptop into Max Performance mode the flickering is even worse, if I place it in Battery Saving mode the flickering is less.

I found this website that gave me the idea of testing for the AC and DC differences to flicker.

http://mrgnome.wordpress.com/2009/06/12/external-monitor-flicker-laptop-ground-loop-problem-solved/

To be honest I DON'T condone the use of this method as modifying any electrical parts are dangerous, I will re-post again if I find a fix that doesn't require such a big risk.


EDIT: Seems like it is the AC power pack from the laptop, putting noise onto the LCD cause they share the same power board, when using a different board, the problem does not exist.

Now my experiment ideas are using a DVI to HDMI converter adaptor, My laptop only has VGA and HDMI but my screen has VGA and DVI so if I use the DVI cable and monitor and change one side of DVI cable back to HDMI I can use HDMI port for digital signal, hopefully this will reduce the noise impact as it;'s digital signals not analogue. WINNER (brought a $18 adaptor from DickSmithElectronics, DVI-I Female to HDMI Male)

Other idea is looking into getting special surge boards that split this noise and interference, don't know what they are called or if they even exist.

Lastly use an adaptor to remove the grounder plug, not physically but if you plug the 3 pins into an adaptor with 2 pins it removes the ground pin from working back into the surge board.


EDIT: My power pack died anyway so I went and got a new one, which had 2 pins, so no grounding pin. Fixed the problem with DVI anyway but hey if you have VGA as only option then you can try getting a global power pack to have 2 pins rather then buying a plug to change 3 to 2 pins. =) cheers hope this helps.

JDdownloader

Need to schedule up or simplify downloads from Meagupload, Rapidshare etc.?
Well there is a way! Use JDdownloader!



This free software allows you to:

* Schedule many downloads from Rapidshare, Megaupload etc. automatically, it is hard to do without this software because you need to enter CAPTCHAS. This software can automate that for you.

* Simplify your downloads, as you know when downloading huge files say for example a Linux ISO you will have something like 30 off links from Megaupload as the ISO is split into different parts. Using this software you can have it automatically downlaod all the aprts and even extract all the parts into a single folder with the ISO in it.

* You can easily get the links into JDDownloader by:

1. Copying a website or blog URL into the clipboard (Windows Clipboard so basically just copy the web URL) whilst JD is running, it will then show up a lsit of all links and you choose what you wanted to dwonlaod from that website.
2. Copy each individual link whilst JD is open
3. Copy a big slab of text which contains links, the software is so amazing in filtering out text and keeping links only.

* Many other features and add-ons such as auto shut down, scheduler, unzipper etc. etc. so amazing for a Freeware. So useful in countries where downloads are split into On and Off peaks periods OR shaped traffic plans.


http://jdownloader.org/

MSN/WLM Batch import Gifs as emoticons / Back up all emoticons

Ever wanted to important many GIFs as emotions but hate the long and annoying process? You can do a batch import and after you do that you can backup all your emotions, so if you need to re-install, you don't even need to batch import, just do a recovery/import of the backup file and tada.

Hopefully MSN/WLM will have a save emotions to server one day, so annoying if you can't use the same emotion when on a different computer, using web messenger or need to re-install MSN?WLM.


http://www.emoticonmadeeasy.com/

MSN/WLM Message window pops up

MSN/WLM Message window pops up
MSN/WLM Conversation window pops up

Isn't it annoying when you joke to a friend about soemthing, another friend sends you a message and then that window pops up and you type into the wrong window, hit Enter by impulse and then have a very awkward situation where the friend 2 is reading a very out of context and maybe even disturbing message that is only disturbing due to being out of context?

Yeah, it's a pain in the butt to explain that every time it happens. It seems to happen more frequently when offline contacts send you a message, whoever sends a message last is at the very top all the time.

To my experience the solution is:

Disable the alert/notification pop up you get above the clock, this seems to also disable the actual Message/Conversation windows from popping up to be the active window.

• Open messenger
• Tools > Options > Alerts
• Uncheck "Display an alert when a message is received"

I thought this would turn off everything but you still get the sound and also flashing icon in the task bar, so it only disables the little pop up above the clock and also the actual Message window from opening up in front of you. This applies to Windows 7 anyway.

GOOD LUCK! Hope this helps

Edit: I think this varies depending on how you set up MSN, for example if you're using Windows XP mode where the MSN icons is in task bar or in system bar etc. also combine icons or don't combine etc.

I have tested it and it still seems to happen if a contact is offline and sends you a message, it pops up affecting where ever you are typing to be typed into their window. I have noticed that if the contact has sent you a message and you minimise it then the next messages from them doesn't pop up but again online contacts seem to be less annoying LOL.