Month: January 2007

Office2007 upgrade fails

Tried to install the Office2007 cd and got told that I already had beta 2007 components installed (which is actually the Expression Beta) as per the error “Setup is unable to proceed due to the following error(s): The 2007 Microsoft Office system does not support upgrading from a prerelease version of the 2007 Microsoft Office system. You must first uninstall any prerelease versions of the 2007 Microsoft Office system products and associated technologies. Correct the issue(s) listed above and re-run setup.”
Several blogs later (funnily enough the first response in google was Scott’s page which I already read on a daily basis) I followed the instructions at kb928218 and removed the Expression Beta (which I had already removed from Add Remove programs and the My Uninstall program)

Low Disk Space HarddiskVolumeX in SBS

If you get an alert from Small Business Server stating :The following disk is low on free disk space. ……Drive letter: HarddiskVolume17″ (in my case) this is typically caused by a usb drive being unplugged without going through safe removal. The alert will get sent every day until the server is rebooted. You can also reduce the chance of this happening again by optimizing the drive for quick removal as per this post on Experts Exchange

Vista improvements to offline files

Jim Allchin blogs about changes to offline files in Vista and includes the great titbit of information that now, finally, the pc will only sync the files belonging to the user that is logging off so that the access denied message does not appear delaying the log off/shut down procedure.
Also, synchronisation is intelligent in that it will only sync changes to files as opposed to the whole file itself (if supported by the application) – this should help a couple of my clients who have issues with long synchronisation times on their pc.
It will be interesting to see if a new version of csccmd comes out with Vista, which includes all the extra switches that the xp version did not unless you requested the hotfix from Microsoft support.
See The Filing Cabinet for more information on these new features.

Google docs – We’re sorry, but we were unable to upload this document

If you try to upload a file that is greater than 500k then google docs will complain with the message “We’re sorry, but we were unable to upload this document” and then suggests you copy/paste the document from your spreadsheet or save as html. It doesn’t tell you that the reason it failed to upload is due to the fact that the file is too big. The file size is mentioned in the requirements so it would be nice if the error message mentioned that. It does give you a sensible error message if you try to email the file though (which is how I discovered this)

Blog ideas

Kristen got a book out of the library, No one cares what you had for lunch, which has 100 ideas to use when you get bloggers cramp and can’t think of anything to write about on your blog. Ideas range from “Find the objects of your affection” and talk about it to “Blow your budget” – what would you spend 10 million dollars on? Ironically I opened the pages at random and the topic was “Dig in” – what makes your mouth water – talk about your perfect meal……

Timeslips configuration/installation issue.

If you get the message “Another program is accessing your timeslips database in a way that prevents you from accessing it” then (in my case) the solution is as follows.

On the machine that is not having the problem, click on start/all programs/time slips/Station Administrator. Click on Help/About and make a note of the *install folder*. In my opinion this should really be named the config folder!
On the pc that is having the problem, do the same thing and you will find that the install folder is different (possibly c:\program files\timeslips).
Click on Options menu and then Change Database location – browse to the folder that was on the working pc and select the timeslips.cfg file.
Click ok (or done) and restart timeslips. You may be prompted to upgrade/update the timeslips data and then your timeslips data will be accessible again.

The menu names above are taken from memory but should be sufficient to get you working again. PS Sage’s phone support is 800 555 2542 but you will need a support contract.