Finding the size of a Microsoft Office 2007 file

Prior to Microsoft Office 2007 (MSO2007), office provided a quick and simple way to find out just how big your file was.  This was done by selecting the properties option from the file menu which then displayed the same file properties dialog box that you could select from the file in Windows Explorer.

In MSO2007 the information is still available, but has been annoyingly ‘hidden’ somewhat deeper in the application.  In fact it is so awkwardly hidden that I know many people have not come across how to access it … so I thought I’d share.

Along with the menu item click options I’ve included the accelerator / shortcut keys to help make this as quick as possible.

1. Select the ‘Office button’ [ALT+F].
2. Select the ‘Prepare’ menu item [Press E].
3. Select the ‘Properties’ menu item [Press P].
4. In the ‘Document Properties’ section that appears, click the title (“Document Properties”) of the section to reveal a drop down list containing just one item – ‘Advanced Properties’.  Select this item to display the file properties.

NB: Please keep in mind that until you save a file, the properties window will not provide a file size though other file properties may be populated.

Top FlagIT Posts of 2009

It’s been about a year since I started blogging here and whilst it was primarily supposed to be a site for quick useful tech-related posts several have grown into far larger posts.  Whilst some posts have remained somewhat quiet on the number of reads others have generated far more interest than I could have expected.

It’s actually five more days until this blog is a year old, but I thought that new year’s day might be as good an opportunity to review what the top ten posts were.  This has been based on the number of visits from more than six and a quarter thousand since the blog was created.

10. Reclaim more Memory on a Windows Mobile Device

Posted: 04/04/2009

Reads: 95 (Daily Average 0.35)

Windows mobile phones have a finite amount of memory and like any operating system (particularly M$ ones?) memory leaks can stop memory being released.  This post highlights how to resolve some storage issues with the Mobile Opera browser and a useful tool for reclaiming that memory lost to leakage.

9. Simple Template Workaround for Evernote

Posted: 21/11/2009

Reads: 95 (Daily Average 2.32)

A relatively recent post about one of my favourite pieces of software (Evernote) and how to use a simple bit of scripting to create templates in Evernote.

8. A Ceiling Function for VBScript

Posted: 31/07/2009

Reads: 133 (Daily Average 0.86)

This post includes some VBS code to round a number off to the greatest integer.

7. Developer Tabs and Drop Down Lists in Word 2007

Posted: 17/03/2009

Reads: 135 (Daily Average 0.47)

This post explains how to access the developer tab in Microsoft Word 2007 and briefly discusses some of the shortcomings of the drop down lists it offers.

6. VBScript – Count Occurrences in a Text String

Posted: 30/07/2009

Reads: 148 (Daily Average 0.95)

Another simple bit of VBS code that counts the number of instances of a string of text within another string of text.

5. Omnia to Oblivia (and back)

Posted: 05/04/2009

Reads: 151 (Daily Average 0.56)

I have a Samsung Omnia mobile phone and have had a number of issues with it.  This describes how I resolved one of the most difficult issues with the file system constantly mounting and dismounting a storage device.

4. A Flexible Progress Window in VBScript

Posted: 19/07/2009

Reads: 169 (Daily Average 1.02)

Another popular bit of VBS code is some that builds a customisable progress window based around dynamically updating a web page that is automatically loaded into a browser.  The progress window allows the user to display messages and progress bars.

3. VBScript – Select a Folder

Posted: 28/03/2009

Reads: 278 (Daily Average 1.00)

The most popular VBS code post on the blog in the past year this one shows how to access a common dialog to select a folder and pass this back to the main code.

2. Controlling Spotify

Posted: 29/07/2009

Reads: 1172 (Daily Average 7.51)

At this point we see a big change in the number of reads of the posts.  This particular post’s popularity is most likely related to the popularity of Spotify.  The post describes a way in which an iPhone emulator can be used on a PC running Microsofrt Windows PC to control Spotify installed on an Apple Mac.

1. Excel – Dynamic Drop Down Lists with Full Validation

Posted: 15/03/2009

Reads: 1272 (Daily Average 4.36)

At the top spot is a post relating to Microsoft Excel.  It looks at how to overcome some of the limitations on dynamically populated drop down lists.  There are a number of other Excel related posts on the blog that people may find useful in combination with this and it has certainly made quite an impact with some of the spreadsheets I’ve developed for colleagues at work.  It seems as though that popularity is spreading to hundreds of others across the Internet.

So please have a look through these top ten (and others if you like) and I’d encourage you to leave a comment or rate the post.  If you like the content why not subscribe to one of the RSS feeds?

Overlaid Text Display Problem

I came across a bizarre issue today in Microsoft Word. A user had a document containing a set of information laid out in a tabular format where the text in each cell was being condensed and overlaid so that the text was all being placed one character on top of another. The image shown here illustrates how “Hello world” looks when the characters are overlaid one on top of another.

Plain text and all the letters on top of one another

Copying and pasting the text out of a cell into the main body did not resolve the overlay issue.  Pasting the text into notepad did however prove that the text was indeed intact.  Therefore the issue was something that related to lay out.

There were no style or formatting settings that seemed to affect the character spacing in the way I expected so I then tried changing the font.  Originally it was set to Times New Roman, but changing it to another font restored the text to a legible format.  Changing it back to Times New Roman again incurred the overlay issue.  This suggested a font corruption.

I also tried adjusting the size of the text.  It then turned out that any size other than 12 pt resulted in the text being disaplyed correctly.  So anything but Times New Roman 12 pt was displayed correctly.

I had a quick look at the font file (found in the fonts applet in control panel in Windows XP) and the 12 pt size loked okay which suggested that it was something else affecting the way in which Word was laying it out on the page.  The page layout view was being used and this is built from the parameters of the current printer driver.

I changed the printer from the network HP printer located a few desks away to a CutePDF printer … and lo and behold the text appeared as normal.  I set it back to the HP printer and the overlay issue returned.  It seems a corruption in the printer driver was causing the issue.

I deleted the HP printer and then reinstalled it.  The text in the document was once again visible in Times New Roman 12 pt and the user also succeeded in printing out the document (which had previously suffered from the same issue as that seenon screen).

So if you have a bizarre layout issue in Microsoft Word that changing style based settings doesn’t seem to clear, try changing or reinstalling your printer.

Developer Tabs and Drop Down Lists in Word 2007

It seems that drop down lists are the in thing at work right about now.  One of my colleagues dropped by with a query about creating drop down lists in Word 2007.  So this is how to go about doing it…

First of all you need to ensure that the Developer tab is enabled in Word.  To do this you need to click on the Microsoft Office button (top left) and then on the Word options button at the bottom of the office menu that appears.  In the Popular section there is a list of check boxes about the “Top options for working with Word”.  One of these check boxes is called “Show developer tab in the ribbon” … this is the one that needs to be ticked.

With the developer tab enabled and selected the controls section on the ribbon is where we need to focus our attention.  The fourth button across on the top line is the one required to create the drop down list control – a.k.a. a combo box.  Clicking this button inserts a combo box at the current cursor position.

The next step is to fully define the combo box.  By default it has one entry in it – “Choose an item”.  Select the combo box and then select properties from the controls section on the ribbon.  Alternately you can enter design mode (from the controls section on the ribbon) and right click to get to the combo box properties.

The properties dialog provides a quick and easy way to not only add and remove items from the combo box’s list of selectable items, but also to name it something meaningful using the title.

Once you’re done editing the document, you then make it into a form by selecting “protect document” on the protect group on the developer ribbon and then selecting “Filling in forms” from the editing restrictions option.

The problem however seems to be that when you set the protection options in the properties of the combo box you can stop it from being deleted, you can stop it from being edited (at all!), but you can’t seem to stop it from having an option overtyped.  Seems a little bit odd and this is my one outstanding issue with the control.

Word – Creating Sample Text

Microsoft Word has a little known feature (unless you happen to have read Microsoft Knowledgebase Article 212251 of course) that allows you to create large amounts of sample text using what’s in effect an inline macro command.  Microsoft Word 2007 has a wider range of macro commands than previous versions, but I’ll describe the 2007 versions here.

In each case the parentheses can take two optional parameters.  Both are positive integers and they specify the number of paragraphs to create and the number of lines per paragraph respectively – e.g. =rand(p,l)

Each of the three commands inserts a different text sample as follows:

=rand()

On the Insert tab, the galleries include items that are designed to coordinate with the overall look of your document. You can use these galleries to insert tables, headers, footers, lists, cover pages, and other document building blocks. When you create pictures, charts, or diagrams, they also coordinate with your current document look.

You can easily change the formatting of selected text in the document text by choosing a look for the selected text from the Quick Styles gallery on the Home tab. You can also format text directly by using the other controls on the Home tab. Most controls offer a choice of using the look from the current theme or using a format that you specify directly.

To change the overall look of your document, choose new Theme elements on the Page Layout tab. To change the looks available in the Quick Style gallery, use the Change Current Quick Style Set command. Both the Themes gallery and the Quick Styles gallery provide reset commands so that you can always restore the look of your document to the original contained in your current template.

=rand.old()

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

=lorem()

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna.

Nunc viverra imperdiet enim. Fusce est. Vivamus a tellus.

Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Proin pharetra nonummy pede. Mauris et orci.

These are useful commands when you are demonstrating working with documents in Word or are just looking for some text to test your latest macro or mail merge with and just need some text quick.