How to remove slanted quote marks (curly apostrophes) and smiley faces from Outlook 2013

This probably will work in other versions of Outlook too...


The Problem:

Outlook insists on trying to make your apostrophes in your email text slanted. e.g.
This is ‘annoying’ and ‘not neat’ and not compatible with other email programs 

Instead of...

This is 'annoying' and 'not neat' and not compatible with other email programs :-(

The Solution:

1. Go to settings (Little arrow in top right, then 'More Commands')

2. Mail tab

3. Editor Options button

4. Proofing tab

5. AutoCorrect options button

6. AutoCorrect tab

7. Select the smilies etc you don't want from the list here by highlighting each then pressing 'Delete'

8. Also un-tick "straight quotes with smart quotes"

There, much better.

How to update the software on the Samsung F3 MP3 player

So I've got a Samsung YP-F3 MP3 player. Small little thing, typically comes in a blue colour scheme.

I've had it a couple of years, and wanted to take advantage of the latest software updates, which I presume improve certain bits of reliability etc (at the time of writing I've not actually tested for any improvements . Here's how I did it...

1. Visited the Samsung website to look for the latest software, also known as Firmware.
http://www.samsung.com/hk_en/support/model/YP-F3QL/XSH-downloads?isManualDownload=true

2. Select 'Firmware' option and download the file to your PC desktop (at the time of writing that's V1.10 about 17.31 MB)

3. Connect your MP3 player to your computer via the lead and when the Windows prompt comes up opt to browse the folder (if the prompt doesn't come up you can get in via 'My Computer')

4. Extract the file YP-F3.rom from the desktop folder (it's in a zip like file) and copy it across to the MP3 player folder. You need to drop it into the base folder, where it has has sub-folders like "Music", "System" etc.

5. Unplug the MP3 player from the computer, turn it off and turn it back on again. It should give you a message saying "firmware updating"... when that's finished it's done!

Server hacked? Find all the files on a Plesk server that have been modified

Sorry to hear you've been hacked. It's happened to me a few times. Your password is perhaps not strong enough (so change that first).

Hackers tend not to delete your website, rather add extra files for their own bad plans, or add malicious code to your existing files.

Here's how you find what files they've modified on a Plesk server.

1. Get Putty and connect to your server using your SSH login.

2. You need to navigate to the 'vhosts' folder, where all the files are kept for the various websites. For me, this was...

cd ..

cd var

cd www

cd vhosts

Then type this command in...

find -iname '*php' -mtime -3 | more


Change the 'php' bit if you want to find a different type of file (cgi?) or remove the whole -name '*php' bit if you want to find all the types of file... although this will likely bring up lots of log files and statistics files.

Change '-3' if you want to look more or less days in the past. (e.g. -7 is a week).

If you get a whole stack of results, you need to press return to see each next one. Press 'q' if you've found what you're looking for and want to stop.

Good luck!

p.s. Instead of the 'iname' one, here's a line that will find any file modified in the last week that resides within a httpdocs folder (i.e. so the statistics are cut out of the search, but the public folders aren't)

find -iwholename '*httpdocs*' -mtime -7 | more

Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 - Crashes on Startup - Solved

Problem:
Macromedia Dreamweaver MX2004 crashes when you try and open it. It doesn't even appear at all before the window 'report error' box comes up.


Solution that worked for me:


1. Navigate to:
C:\Documents and Settings\<<??>>\Application Data\Macromedia\Dreamweaver MX 2004\Configuration
(Replace <<??>> above with the name of your Window's profile. e.g. "Mark")

2. Delete the SiteCache folder

There is no harm in doing this as you're just removing its memory of what files you have in your website (presumably this memory was corrupted). Next time you load Dreamweaver it pops back up, and re-creates the cache file.