Batch-change value of thousands of cells in Excel sheet

There are milion of ways on modifying many cells’ value in single pass using… formula. But, what about a situation, when you need to perform only a single one-time bulk-change of value in many Excel’s cells?

I had a situation when I was preparing some IT project’s budget. Since I am an IT geek then writing amounts in thousands like 1,30k USD was no problem at all. However, this solution had two falls:

• Some accounting freak, having nothing to do with IT, had problems understanding that “k” means thousands
• Cells itself had to use some custom formatting of ##0,00k USD in order to add that damn “k”

Thus, I had to do a one-time recalculation of most of cells in my sheet to multiply their value by 1000.

Change page size when scanning in Windows 10

If you’re scanning images using Window’s native drives and software (i.e. not those provided by your scanner manufacturer) you may often hit the wall of not being able to change scanned page side due to fact that corresponding list is disabled:

In this article I’ll show you how to change this value (page size). But, keep in mind that this will be a one time solution. As far as I know there is now permanent solution for this problem.

Can’t enable BitLocker for pendrive or USB removable drive

If your pendrive or removable drive (after selecting it in This PC) has BitLocker button disabled (in Protect section of Drive Tools tab) or if you can’t see it listed in BitLocker itself then it is (currently) not supported. Most guides you’ll find will tell you that the destructive way of formatting drive is the only option.

That turned out to be not true, at least in my case. Simple deactivation of pendrive’s partition using DiskPart solved problem.

Of course you need Windows 10 Pro, because “lower” editions of this system does not have BitLocker.

The server drafts location you entered for offline editing is not valid (updated)

At some point in your struggle with Office 365 off-line applications (Word 365, Excel 365, PowerPoint 365 etc.), when trying to save any changes to Options dialog, you may run into following error:

The server drafts location you entered for offline editing is not valid or you do not have permission to access that location. Specify a location on your local computer.

In short, this has nothing to do with Office and most likely, you (or someone / something else) deleted your c:\Users\[username]\Documents folder. Closing Office 365, re-creating this folder should fix this problem.

Paste not formatted text to Word

In many programs, applications and web services you can use the Ctrl+Shift+V keyboard shortcut when pasting to override source formatting and paste copied text “as is”, thus using destination document’s formatting. Google services are especially promoting this shortcut, which you can use to paste not formatted text i.e. to Gmail message.

In Word this isn’t that easy. You must:

• bring up Paste Special window (I use another keyboard shortcut for this — Ctrl+Shift+Insert for example),
• navigate through list of available options (using Up or Down keys) to locate Unformatted Text option,
• confirm selection with Enter or by clicking OK.

I wanted to make it simpler and working the same way as in other services. Fortunately, it was an easy keyboard shortcut assignment in Word.

“Unprotect” a sheet or a workbook in Excel

Microsoft developers’ ignorance has hit jackpot one more time. If you “protect” a sheet or workbook, Excel only places a special tag inside .xlsx file. Changing it and thus “unprotecting” such file is a piece of cake.

You can remove it in a matter of two minutes using software like Total Commander or 7-Zip. By doing so, you can gain access to “protected” sheet or workbook without knowing a password. Something that in theory should never happen.

In previous versions of Excel (Office) that were using old .xls file you had to work with some nasty, multi-level macro to unprotect a protected file. Now they have made even easier. Instead of using some dully macros all you need is a text editor and a file to unpack and repack archive.

If you can’t get rid of Windows 10’s folders…

…then change their destination!

All those default system folders in any version of Windows simply drives me crazy:

You can try to play with Ultimate Windows Tweaker or similar software to get rid of them. But the keep getting back after each important Windows Update.

So… if you can get rid of them, learn to like them, but first… change their location.