Can't pick up any wireless network signal at all on your laptop?

Can't pick up ANY wireless network signal at all on your laptop? But used to be able to?

Check for a physical on/off switch on the laptop/notebook case. Ran into this issue today and felt dumb I overlooked the simple stuff. Wasted time resetting a router and multiple reboots! *sigh*

Exporting Safari bookmarks from a Mac to a XP based Windows PC

So I had to export Safari bookmarks from a Mac to a XP based Windows PC today for another user in a department I support. The previous user I had to migrate did not use Safari so that was a problem. But with most employees doing everything actually work related online through web applications, bookmarks are actual important to migrate now. I think I found the easiest way to export Safari bookmarks into Firefox or Microsoft Internet Explorer is to install Firefox on the Mac and us it to import the bookmarks from Safari. From there you can export the bookmarks to a format that can be accepted by both PC based Firefox or Internet Explorer.

How to Export Mail from Macintosh Entourage 2004 into Windows based PC.

I've been working on a way to export mail from Macintosh Entourage 2004 into Windows XP based PC. I have come to the point I don't even care what format, just as long as all the email makes it out and brings the attachments with it. It would be ideal to be able to export from Entourage to Outlook, but I haven't been able to bridge that gap yet. So the instructions below are to export from Entourage and import into Mozilla's Thunderbird email client.

So far the most promising way seems to be exporting following the steps below:

1. Export an .rge archive folder structure of the local mailbox in Entourage 2004 on the Mac, using the Entourage Archive tool.
2. Then copy that folder and all subfolders to a PC
3. Install Mozilla's Thunderbird email client onto the Windows XP PC you will use to access the exported email. You can download Thunderbird for free here http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/
   
4. Using Window XP's search feature, search the .rge archive folder you copied from the Mac for ".mbox" files.
   
5. Copy ALL the .mbox files into Thunderbird's default mailbox folder. On the XP Professional system I was using, it was found at:
   C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\u8qn8rvf.default\Mail\Local Folders
6. After you dump all the .mbox folders in there, launch Thunderbird and it should be able to view almost all the folders you copied over. Why almost? If you used special characters, which Mac OSX allows but is pretty much forbidden in the Windows world. (Some characters like /, \, <, >, ?, etc. are allowed in Macintosh filenames but are illegal for most Windows applications.) Those mailbox folders will not work in Thunderbird. The mailbox folder name shows up slightly modified but will appear empty. All you need to do is rename the actual .mbox file with all valid characters and relaunch Thunderbird and the mail will show up properly. If you only have a couple a folders, that is fine.... but my little project here has a whole gang load, so I'm looking into a more automatic method.
7. I corrected the special character issues with the program "Bulk Rename Utility" which can be downloaded for FREE at http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Main_Intro.php (they do ask for donations)
   
   
   
   
8. Search for "._" using XP's search tool and delete all these hidden files, we won't use them in Windows and this is a COPY of the original files we are working with anyway right? You did make a copy right? I had some issues deleting some, but left them there as I didn't care.
9. Careful with folder paths or filenames being too long, since numerous subdirectories can exists. I chopped down certain file folders that had names that were too long.

I was actually just going to breakdown and BUY the software Emailchemy and have it do this export for me, http://www.weirdkid.com/products/emailchemy/, but playing around with the demo version I noticed for 1 subfolder it misses all the attachments. Not sure if that would occur for other folders, I decided NOT to use this application since it did not do EVERYTHING in my case. I used the IMAP server feature of Emailchemy for those interested on how I tried to export the mail.

I know you can copy a mail message directly from Entourage into Outlook (as a single email message file), but again my project had over 30-40 folders with thousands of emails. Around 14,000 emails I think, I'm not going to copy that and rebuild that structure. And this was only for one user, I have a handful of users to do this for. Hope this blog was some help to someone out there and if you have a method to complete that last import step into MS Outlook, please let me know!

How to display the Contacts list in the last name, first name format in Outlook 2007 and in Outlook 2003

Minor details of swapping a user to a new system, but this question does come up from time to time.

How to display the Contacts list in the last name, first name format in Outlook 2007 and in Outlook 2003

Follow these steps to change the contact display format so that the Contacts list is sorted by the last name of the contact:

1.	Sort the Contacts list by the File as field. To do this, use one of the following methods depending on the version of Outlook that you are using. In Outlook 2007, follow these steps: a. Start Outlook 2007. b. On the Tools menu, click Account Settings. c. Click theAdress Books tab, and click Change. d. Under Microsoft Office Outlook Address Books, click the address book that you want to change the contact display format for. For example, Contacts: Mailbox - Personal Folders, and then click File As (Smith, John). In Outlook 2003, follow these steps: a. Start Outlook 2003. b. On the Tools menu, click E-mail accounts. c. Click View or change directories or address books, and then click Next. d. Click Outlook Address Book, and then click Change. e. Under Outlook Address Books, click the address book that you want to change the contact display format for. For example, Contacts: Personal Folders, and then click File As (Smith, John). f. Click Close, and then click Finish.
2.	Quit and restart Outlook.
3.	Verify that the newly created contacts are sorted in the LastName, FirstName format. To do this: a. On the Tools menu, click Options. b. Click the Preferences tab, and then click Contact Options. c. In the Contacts Options box, click Last, First in the Default File As order list. d. Click OK two times.
4.	Edit the properties of any contacts that have the File as option configured individually. This setting overrides the setting that you made in step 1. a. Double-click any contact that does not appear in the LastName, FirstName format in your Contacts list. b. Click the General tab, click the down arrow next to File as, and then click Lastname, Firstname, where Lastname, Firstname is the name of the contact.

The beginning of this Desktop Dude's Blog

I figured I'd start documenting some of my daily or weekly experience on fixing mostly Windows PC and some Mac OSX issues. I'll also see where this leads to. I figured this could be something continuous regardless of where I'm working, if its on a personal computer, a work machine, or a client's server during my off hours. Hopefully this will eventually build to something bigger and useful for many others. At worse, its my own tech diary of how-to fix things that worked for me in the past and that I can always refer to.

-DD