In large organizations it is common to have large numbers of people. Obvious, right?  Well how can you see a list of all users in AD when you have over 2000?  That 2000 number is not random – it is the default list length in AD.  So how do you see 2001 people?  Like this:

1. Log
2. Logon to the server in question
3. Open AD
4. Select “View”
5. Select “Filter Options”
6. Modify the items displayed to what ever count you want!

Love it!

Wow!  When it rains it pours!  More Excel tricks 🙂
This one is also duplicate related (can you guess what I do for a living? 🙂 )  Another super easy trick to remove duplicates (no formulas needed)

1. Select the column (not row – you may need to do a transpose)
2. Go to the data tab
3. Click remove duplicates
4. Done!

Excel like a boss!

This has been another thorn in my side. I know how to do it using formulas (as you may have read in my older blog posts) but I was just shown a super easy way to find them.

Its almost embarrassingly easy:

1. Select the row or column
2. Go to the Conditional Formatting section
3. Select Highlight Cells Rules
4. Duplicate values

Voila!  Are your duplicates are shown.  Thanks Jason G for the pro tip!

This is a new one on me.  I had never noticed this before but it seems like it has been in place since Excel 2013.  If you ctrl-click a cell and then ctrl-click it again it is “multiselected” and starts to darken. The more you click the darker it gets. Really cool way to change the formatting for a cell, right? Wrong, as soon as you click else where (not ctrl-click) it goes back to its original shading. So what does it do?  According to kb2769340 it is used to show and highlight cells.  Okay… The problem is it also breaks the copy column/row rule. If you are selecting numerous cells and accidentally click one twice Excel does not know how to handle this and you will get an error (“This action won’t work on multiple selections).  Kinda frustrating… hope this “feature” gets removed in favor of something more user-friendly

I love Excel.  How often have I said and posted some coll/nerdy thing about it!? Lots – I should make a formula to help me calculate the time 🙂

This is one that was bugging me for  a while now.  If you have an existing table with data in it how do you copy validation rules on top of the existing cells while maintaining their current value?

All the paste options don’t do this… but there is Paste Special.  I had totally forgotten about it . For work, I needed this to work so I spent a bit of time trying to actually (finally) figure out how to do it.

As it turns out it is very simple:  Paste Special has the option to paste validations. Done!

I wish I could not read emails. I have a compulsion where if I get an email I have to read the whole thing no matter how capricious or arbitrary.  This post is not about that but it is about how to not mark emails as read just by clicking on them. I personally like the default behavior of Outlook but one of my clients doesn’t. Here is how to turn off marking emails as read just by clicking on them

In Outlook 2010, 2013 and 2016

1. Go to the View tab
2. In the Layout section click the down arrow beside the Reading Pane Icon
3. Select Options
4. Uncheck the Mark Item As Read When Selection Changes

That’s it!  So easy 🙂

Happy Nerdings!

It has been the OS on PCs for over 30 years. In that time it has taken on a lot of “history” that may be holding it back.  How to take Windows to the next evolution?
OneCore is a start – this is nothing new to us tech nerds. A slimmed down, module ready OS that can go from the nano IoT to the macro server datacenter.

Cool, but not new. Whats new? Andromeda OS.  It removes even more unneeded and restrictive coding. Installing Windows on your phone – you don’t need x86 folder – so that’s gone.  Think in terms of removing product skews entirely and having just Windows 10. Period.  (Not sure how to best write that but you get the idea 🙂 )

Now think of this with the UWP – apps running in virtualized space – Mind Blown

Happy nerdings!

People always want to know if their PC is running as fast as it used to.  The quickest and easiest way to do that is by seeing how long the PC takes to boot.  This is not the best way – easy is not usually the best.

If you want a real way to measure performance you need tools.  Real tool. Enter Sysinternals. A suite of tools that really does the job.  The one we will look at here is Process Monitor

1. download the app
2. Start Process Monitor
3. Reset the view to default
4. Click Capture to stop the current trace
5. Deselect the events you dont want to log
6. Click filter then Drop Filtered Event
7. Go to Options and enable boot logging
8. do not enable thread profiling events
9. Click OK and the PC will restart

Now we look at the reboot

1. go back into Process Monitor
2. Reset filter if needed
3. Save the trace
4. Click tools then Process Tree
5. Click in the far left for Idle
6. Note the clock time
7. Now in the process tree look for LogonUI
8. Note the time stamp

Comparing these two time stamps really gives you an accurate measure!

Happy Nerdings!!