Alexander’s Blog

If you are unable to preview Word, Excel and PowerPoint files in Outlook 2010, make sure that the previewers are not disabled. The attachment previewers are enabled by default. Here’s how the previewers work in Outlook 2010.

First of all, make sure that the attached file that you are trying to preview in Outlook has the application installed. In other words, if you are trying to preview a Word file in an Outlook message then Microsoft Word must be installed on your computer. For security reasons, you have the option to selectively remove some or all the attachment previewers.

If you want to selectively use only certain attachment previewers in Outlook then follow these steps.

1. Click the File tab.
2. Click Options
3. Click Trust Center.

   

4. Under Microsoft Outlook Trust Center, click Trust Center Settings, and then click Attachment Handling.
5. Do one of the following:
   • To turn off all attachment previewers, click Turn off Attachment Preview.
   • To turn off a specific attachment previewer, click Attachment and Document Previewers, clear the check box for a previewer that you want to turn off, and then click OK.

   

I recently ordered an HTC EVO 4G through my telecommunication Web site. Because I am a broker for all the major wireless providers in USA, I have the luxury to pick from one of the more than 65 free phones, or get one of the high-end phones at a discount. After researching for over two months, I decided to settle on HTC EVO 4G from Sprint. I have to wait for four weeks because HTC EVO is one of the most popular smart phones in the market today and HTC can’t make them fast enough to keep up with the demand. Especially, with all the iPhone issues in the news lately, people are very interested in HTC EVO 4G. Luckily, 4G wireless network is widely available in the Seattle area.

The wait for my HTC EVO was totally worth it. I could have waited for Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 smart phone but just like any other product, it will take Microsoft a while to fix all the bugs. Although everything I have heard about Windows Phone 7 is encouraging and Microsoft is supposedly going to spend 1 billion (that’s not a misprint…..that’s a billion with a B) to market Windows Phone 7 around the world. I like Windows Mobile OS but wanted to try Android for a change.

Here are the step-by-step instructions on how to synchronize your HTC EVO Contacts list to Outlook.

1. Download and install the latest version of HTC Sync here. At the time of writing, the latest version was 2.0.40 that came out on 6/16/2010. I have tested the software successfully on Windows 7 and Windows XP SP3.
2. Start the HTC Sync software from Start, All Programs, HTC, HTC Sync. You won’t be able to configure the Sync Manager until you have plugged the USB cable from your phone (micro USB connector) to the USB port on your PC.
3. On your HTC EVO you will see a screen that prompts you to choose a connection type. There are four options:
   1. Charge only
   2. HTC Sync
   3. Disk drive
   4. USB tethering
   Select HTC Sync and then tap Done.
4. You will be prompted to select a name for your phone. The default option is “My HTC Evo 4G.”
5. As soon as you are connected to your PC, you will see a third option on your HTC Sync screen on your PC called Application Installer.

   

6. Double-click the Sync Manager and then click the icon next to Settings to load the Sync Manager Settings window. Here you can configure the options to sync only the Contacts, or the Calendar, or both. You can also configure how to resolve any conflicts between the contacts on your mobile phone and the Outlook.

   

7. Configure the settings as necessary. For example, if you have multiple Contacts lists, such as one in your Inbox and one in your PST file, and you want to make sure that you keep your Mobile Contacts list separate from your Outlook Contacts list like I do, you need to specify which Contacts list you want to sync. By default, the HTC Sync will synchronize the default Contacts folder, which may be the one in the Inbox. If you only have one Contacts list and you want it to be the same on both your HTC EVO and Outlook then you have nothing to worry about. On the other hand, if you want to keep the two lists separate, like I do, then you need to be careful or else you will end up making a mess of your existing Contact list. If you have more than one Contacts list, click on the Properties button in step 6 and then clear the box Use default Contacts folder.Note: As a precaution, you should backup your Outlook Contacts list and also export your contacts list on your HTC EVO. To export HTC Contacts list go to Contacts, Menu, Import/Export, Export to SD card. If it’s the first time you are exporting the list you will be prompted to export your Contacts list to “/sdcard/pcsc_pcsc_00001.vcf”. If it’s the second time the name will be “/sdcard/pcsc_pcsc_00002.vcf”, and so on. Click OK to export the list. You can import a backed up list at a later time if necessary.
8. Click the Set Folder button and select the appropriate Contacts list.

   

9. If you don’t want to synchronize the calendar, then clear the box Synchronize this category under Categories, Calendar.
10. Usually you don’t have to modify the Conflict Policy and Silent Sync options.
11. Click Automatic Sync and select the appropriate options. I prefer a manual sync because I don’t sync my calendar, I only sync my Contacts list and it doesn’t need to be synchronized too often. If you are synchronizing your calendar then you may be interested in the automatic start of synchronization.
12. Click OK to apply the changes and close the Sync Manager window.
13. You can start the synchronization either from the Sync Manager on your PC or your mobile phone HTC EVO. I usually start the synchronization from my mobile phone.
14. You will see the synchronization process start as the data is prepared from your phone.

    

15. During the synchronization process you will see the progress as records are added (if it’s the first time) or synchronized with your Outlook.

    

16. Once the process is complete you can verify that all the Contacts were added, updated, or removed.

    

17. The Synchronization Summary report shows you all the details.

    

18. It also shows you the options that you select in the Used settings section.

    

So far I am loving HTC EVO 4G. Because there are so many things you can do on a smart phone these days, I think securing the information should be a major concern for all the mobile phone users. I hope to write about securing smart phones, especially HTC EVO in a future post.

Troubleshooting Tips

As you can see, the process of synchronization of data between your Outlook and HTC EVO is pretty straight forward. However, there a couple of things to keep in mind when you are troubleshooting.

Make sure that you configure the Sync  Manager before you start synchronization because if you accept all the defaults it will synchronize the default folder. This is not an issue if you have only one Contacts list but if you have multiple Contact lists you may experience some unpleasant surprises.

If you are unable to get your data synchronized, make sure that you select the second option “HTC Sync” in step 3 on your HTC EVO. Sometimes if you are not looking at your cell phone, the option may default to Charge only and disappear off your screen.

Remote access policies are local to the Windows Server 2003 where they are created. Therefore, you cannot synchronize remote access policies between servers. In addition, because remote access policies cannot be integrated with Active Directory, they can’t really be replicated as part of Active Directory replication.

If you have more than one remote access server, rather than administer the remote access policies of all the remote access servers separately, you can configure a single server with the Internet Authentication Service (IAS) as a Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) server and configure the remote access servers as RADIUS clients. The IAS server provides centralized remote access authentication, authorization, accounting, and auditing. This provides a powerful way to centralize remote access policies, especially in large distributed environments.

When you configure the properties of the server running Routing and Remote Access, select RADIUS authentication as the authentication provider. Once the remote access servers are configured to use RADIUS authentication, the remote access policies stored on the remote access servers are no longer used. Instead, the remote access policies stored on the IAS server are used. Therefore, if one of the remote access servers contains the current set of remote access policies that are applied to all of the remote access servers, you can copy the remote access policies to the IAS server. Click here for the step-by-step procedure for copying the remote access policies to another server.

If you are a network administrator, the Sysinternals tools should be part of your troubleshooting and management toolkit. Here’s some information from Microsoft on the Sysinternals tool called PsPasswd that is very helpful in resetting local administrator passwords on domain-joined computers.

“Systems administrators that manage local administrative accounts on multiple computers regularly need to change the account password as part of standard security practices. PsPasswd is a tool that lets you change an account password on the local or remote systems, enabling administrators to create batch files that run PsPasswd against the computers they manage in order to perform a mass change of the administrator password.

PsPasswd uses Windows password reset APIs and therefore does not send passwords over the network in the clear. Just copy PsPasswd onto your executable path, and type “pspasswd” with the command-line syntax shown below.”

usage: pspasswd [[\\computer[,computer[,..] | @file [-u user [-p psswd]]] Username [NewPassword]

Download this FREE tool from Microsoft here.

Visual Studio has been a developer tool for years. Microsoft recently announced that it is going to offer a version of Visual Studio called Visual Studio LightSwitch (formerly code named Kitty Hawk) that will be available as part of Visual Studio Professional, Premium, and Ultimate. LightSwitch will especially be useful for non-developers or business users that don’t know how to write code but want to create fully functional line-of-business (LOB) applications for the cloud and desktop. To me LightSwitch seems to be Visual Studio for dummies, à la FrontPage, which was a Web site editor for the beginners and non-professionals. Let’s just hope that the apps we create in LightSwitch are not as messy as the Web sites created in FrontPage.

WebMatrix vs. LightSwitch

If you recall, Microsoft announced WebMatrix Web development suite not too long ago which is meant for developers, students, and just about everyone who wants to build applications. WebMatrix (currently in beta) is everything you need to build Web sites using Windows. It includes IIS Developer Express (a development Web server), ASP.NET (a Web framework), and SQL Server Compact (an embedded database). Although both WebMatrix and LightSwitch are meant to build applications, the main difference is HTML UI (WebMatrix) vs. Silverlight UI (LightSwitch).

Availability

LightSwitch is supposed to help you quickly create professional-quality business applications, regardless of your development skills. The beta version of LightSwitch will be available on August 23, 2010 to MSDN Subscribers. Later on it will be available to the general public. A final version is expected to be released sometime next year.

If you are not a developer, check out this page on Microsoft’s Web site.

If you are a developer, check out this page on MSDN.