Tag: Update

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Ctrl-Alt-Delete

This week will be my first week after officially terminating my previous job, even though I have been working for the new one for over a month. I had acquired a considerable amount of PTO hours, as I planned to wind down a bit, which allowed me to move into my new job earlier than expected.

I didn’t expect to move at all, but things get on your path you hadn’t imagined to be happening. If you asked me what 2024 would look like at the end of the year, I most likely wouldn’t have responded with an answer indicating I would be working for a company on the other side of the world.

I had a vacation scheduled in May, so I’m not entirely neglecting myself by starting a month before terminating the other. We returned from an impressive sea tour of the Mediterranean Sea and have been going through some updates that resulted from Microsoft’s Build 2024 Conference, which happened in the same week as my vacation, and, therefore, I was unable to attend.

This week will also be the week to celebrate my birthday, so everything feels like the big Ctrl-Alt-Delete … a milestone with the big reset of my life. Now, my fingers are crossed, and I hope the machine will return without moving into the Blue Screen.

With the vacation behind us and the old job terminated, we will start doing our livestreams again this week. If you have suggestions on what to look at first, let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to subscribe to the Soft as in Software YouTube Channel

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Want to upgrade but what version of Office am I using?

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Now Office 2016 is available you want to upgrade, but you are not sure what version of Office you are currently running. In my blog post yesterday I already provided a couple of links where to go if you upgrade from Office365 Personal/Home or Business. But to do so you need to know what is installed on your machine today.

To help you a bit with this Microsoft put all the version information for the various versions into one location:

What version of Office am I using?

Now identify your version and upgrade to the right edition.

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How to Install Office 2013 SP1 on Office365

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A little while ago Office 2013 released its Service Pack 1 and I explained where to download the Service Pack. On your Windows RT machine there was no option to download an installer to update Office 2013 like you do on a regular Windows machine so I added an additional post to explain how that is done.

Office365 or other subscription based Office installations are also a bit different than the other installations to update your installation. These installations are mostly offered using the so called C2R installations where C2R stands for “Click-to-Run” installations. C2R installations are completely different than MSI installations, you can read more about it here. So how do you update a subscription based Office installation?

When using Office 2013 as part of a subscription the service pack is not offered via Windows Update or standalone installer. In this post I will show you this other installation option: how to install your Service Pack 1 on a subscription based Office installation in the steps below.

  • Start an Office client application such as Word
  • On the top in the Ribbon, Click File
  • Click and go to the Account Tab
  • There you’ll find an Office Updates section:

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    Here above you see the Dutch localized version but the idea is the same. To the left of the Office Updates (Yellow highlighted section there is an Updates Options button (here in the Dutch version called “Bijwerkopties”. From there you can select to check and update your Office version. Right after clicking the update option you’ll get a notification dialog that will say a new version is available or in that is the case saying the latest version already has been installed:

    SNAGHTML6c6abed
    Again, for kicks I show you the here -Dutch- message box, not much different than the English one however … it told me there are Office Updates available and asks me if I wanted to install the update now.

  • Click Yes to continue installing the Service Pack 1 from here.

There you have it, I explained to you in this blog post that there is a slight difference between the installation options between the subscription based and the installed base Office version. To recap, here are once more the four options on how to install the Office 2013 Service Pack 1:

Confusing? A little bit if you ask me, especially if you are like me and have several different options to facilitate, but I guess most people just have one or two of these options in place. It seems that over time more and more people will shift to the subscription based option either in the context of Office365 or the Office Home program where you get five installations on a ‘family’ subscription for under hundred dollar a year.  

Showtime: Walking with Dinosaurs 3D

Walking with Dinosaurs 3D

The “Showtime” section on my blog is a reminder, mostly for my own reference but maybe helpful for other film enthusiasts as well, to remember what movies I’ve seen lately, what it was about and how I rated it in general.

Supposedly a spin off from the BBC series this is an animation feature where the viewer is brought back to the time on earth when Dinosaurs were around. I went to see this movie with my ten year old son and besides entertaining it probably also provided some learning moments as the movie explained some details around the existence of the Dinosaurs, differences between the various species and their natural enemies. As said, the movie was entertaining, some humor added and 3D effects on top to make it more impressing. Personally I like the ‘fun’ animation features like the Ice Age series a bit better that the more realistic animation feature like this one but I got the impression that for kids it was entertaining enough to earn a minimal Seven out of Ten.

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How to install Office 2013 SP1 on Windows RT

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In my previous post I published the fact that Office 2013 just had just released their Service Pack 1 and explained where to download the Service Pack. On your Windows RT machine however there is no option to download an installer to go ahead in updating Office 2013 like you do on a regular Windows machine. How would updating be provisioned on Windows RT?

Look no further, here are the steps to install Service Pack 1 on your Windows RT machine:

In this case you are looking for an update to be found in Windows Update. So go to the start screen and:

  • swipe in from the right and click on Settings
  • On the bottom right click on “Change PC Settings”
  • Find “Update and Recovery” and click the link
  • Select Windows Update
  • This will show you all available updates, look for the update that says “Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Office 2013 (KB2850036) RT
  • Put a checkmark next to the update
  • Click the Install Button

    • That’s it … you only need to reboot after installing the update and you are good to go to work with your fresh updated Office 2013 RT.

Showtime:Last Vegas

LastVegas

The “Showtime” section on my blog is a reminder, mostly for my own reference but maybe helpful for other film enthusiasts as well, to remember what movies I’ve seen lately, what it was about and how I rated it in general.

This movie does not lack the big names to bring it to a success story, but is that enough? The story is all about a ‘gang of four’ being friends since childhood. They are now well over sixty and Billy (Michael Douglas) decided to take a shot and marry a thirty year or so younger girl and calls his buddies to arrange a bachelor party in Las Vegas (where coincidentally this week is the big SharePoint Conference 2014).

Things never have been very smooth between Paddy (Robert de Niro) and Billy. I won’t go into details to avoid spoiling the plot in details so take this for a fact. The four friends Billy, Paddy, Archie (Morgan Freeman) and Sam (Kevin Kline) need to solve things around this issue.

It’s an old men movie, kinda slow and the ‘big names’ in the movie aren’t making it much better. Events are somewhat predictable and won’t give you the thrills you would expect from the title “Last Vegas – It’s going to be legendary”. It wasn’t that legendary if you ask me. Six out of Ten.

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Visual Studio Online Updates – January 22

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Last week Team Foundation Services, by now renamed and added additional features called “Visual Studio Online”, had its first update for 2014.

Updated features:

  • Querying Tags
    You can add tags to your workitems, but what is the use if you cannot query on these tags to find your workitems. That has been solved for this update. With the January 22 Update you are now able to create queries with for instance the “Contains” or “Does Not Contain” operator to find the work items you were looking for.
  • Removing Weekends from Burndown
    Somewhere in the world are developers who are not working in weekends. I’m not one of them as I tend just to work in weekends, but that is maybe because I don’t see work as work. For all others it is now a new feature to be able to ‘uncheck’ resources in weekends on your team and allow your team to have a couple of days off in the weekend (or every other day if you like) to get a somewhat more realistic Burndown overview.
  • Configurable Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD) Dates
    Previously the start date of your project was the day you created the project. Not always true so now you are allowed to change the start date of your project. So now you can create your project beforehand and set the start date to the actual date, again a more realistic view on your project.

“Is that all?” you may wonder? Yes that is all, but you must keep in mind that the updates are now on a monthly release cycle, or so called Sprints. Given that December has been an overall Holiday Season month I actually expected that they would skip the monthly cycle for this time but they didn’t so it is a real achievement they were even able to ship this last week.

Showtime: Frozen by Disney

Frozen

The “Showtime” section on my blog is a reminder, mostly for my own reference but maybe helpful for other film enthusiasts as well, to remember what movies I’ve seen lately, what it was about and how I rated it in general.

Just another great movie from the Disney animation studios. A familiar storyline, fight between good and evil, royalty, princesses and a good amount of humor.

The animation again is excellent, the storyline is touching and an enjoyable movie to go for young and old.

The story is about Anna and Elsa, two sisters who lost their parents and will now rule the kingdom. Elsa however has icy powers and as a kid almost killed her sister Anna in their play. Given that Elsa decides to move away from the castle to prevent her from doing harm to the community and most of all to keep her sister safe. In a search for her sister Anna meets Kristoff and his reindeer Sven and they try to get Anna to move back into the castle to be the new queen of their kingdom.

I always have been a huge fan of Disney and this again is a great piece of work they created to entertain us. It really does not matter if you have kids or don’t, you can go and watch the movie with or without kids, don’t be shy and just enjoy the story, the images and funny characters. Ten out of Ten (but hé, be aware,  I am biased as a Disney fan!)

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Installing Visual Studio 2013 Update 1

Yesterday I received the notice on one of my machines for the update 1 from within Visual Studio 2013. So for your entertainment I recorded the steps and in this post I will show you how the process of installing Visual Studio 2013 Update 1 evolves.

What you see below is the notification in Visual Studio 2013. It shows you the information area containing the information that the Visual Studio 2013 Update 1 is available and that it includes security updates, critical updates, hotfixes and feature packs.

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Once you start the process of installing the Update the Extensions and Updates dialog is displayed with the option to install the Update. Click the Update button to proceed.

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As you started the update from within Visual Studio 2013, the Update process warns you and asks you to close Visual Studio. Close all instances of Visual Studio and click Continue to go on.

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Next you’ll see the license terms and privacy policy dialog you’ll have to agree on and accept if you want to install Visual Studio. You won’t see the buttons to continue if you don’t check the checkbox to agree with the license terms. So check the checkbox.

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The Install “button” will be added to the dialog. Click Install to continue and a security dialog will be launched to allow the installer to run in Admin Mode.

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Now, sit back and relax … wait for the installer to do its work and install Update 1 for you. There is no more interaction needed until the Update is fully installed.

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Done! If all went well you’ll now see the Setup Successful dialog and can launch Visual Studio 2013 Update 1. Click the Launch “Button”.

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Step into the menu … Help – About Microsoft Visual Studio and check to see if it has the Update 1 in the version information.

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That’s it, that was easy, not much to go wrong on,  the Update 1 is now installed and you can enjoy the fixes and other things added to the update (see my earlier blog post with references to what is updated in this version.

Enjoy, and don’t forget to share your feedback!

Showtime: 47 Ronin 3D

47 Ronin

The “Showtime” section on my blog is a reminder, mostly for my own reference but maybe helpful for other film enthusiasts as well, to remember what movies I’ve seen lately, what it was about and how I rated it in general.

47 Ronin is a highly computer generated graphical production (CGI) on the story of a group of samurai, the 47 Ronin that will take revenge of the loss of their leader who was forced into committing Seppuku (A tradition where someone is offered to take his own life instead of being ashamed and executed).

Not only does the movie contain a lot of special effects but also the legend was dramatized by additional witchcraft, spells and other special sauce to put more flavor to the whole of the movie.

Keanu Reeves plays the role of Kai, who as a boy was adopted and with the samurais sets out for revenge against the Shogun’s order responsible for the death of their leader.

The images in the movie are quite spectacular where the storyline in itself is not. The movie takes you into the world of Eastern rituals of the eighteenth century covered special effects from the twenty-first century. It all is entertaining to watch, especially on the big screen so definitely a candidate to go to and watch in the cinemas, you won’t enjoy the effects as much on DVD at home. The story isn’t all that great though so overall I think the number on this movie does not get higher than a Seven out of Ten.

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Visual Studio 2013 Update 1

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January 20th Microsoft released Visual Studio 2013 Update 1, the first update for Visual Studio 2013 containing feature additions and bug fixes. This way of working started with Visual Studio 2012 and that version already has four updates of this kind.

The latest Update for Visual Studio 2012, Update 4 van be found here: Visual Studio 2012 Update 4

But today is today and now is now so here we talk about Visual Studio 2013 Update 1, the first update for the 2013 version of Visual Studio. The periodic updates enables Microsoft to enhance and expand Visual Studio at a somewhat higher pace than the ‘big’ version releases allowing you to get the latest software earlier and no need to wait for another three years before getting new features of fixes.

Not only Visual Studio 2013 was updated but also:

The list of fixes for this update can be found on a separate KB Article: Description of Visual Studio 2013 Update 1

You can either wait for the notifications from within Visual Studio 2013 or go out today and get the update by downloading it from Visual Studio 2013 Update 1

Showtime: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

WalterMitty

Walter Mitty is a kind of a day dreamer type of a guy dozing off in his fantasies but in real life Walter really didn’t do much more that maintaining the stock photos for the the company he is working for. When his job is about to be canceled and something simple like hitting a like button fails he decides to go out into the real world and start hunting for the one missing photo his boss decided to put on the cover of a magazine.

Crazy things happen on his hunt that I won’t get into telling you here in this Showtime item as I found that the movie trailer alone already spoils many of the ‘experiences’ he is about to get over with. And that is my main complaint concerning the movie. Although the movie is light, fun to watch I thought it was a bit shallow. The movie, produced and performed by Ben Stiller is entertaining though, nice scenery on many locations most of you (or Walter in this case) never imagined to go to. I liked the soundtrack of the movie, especially David Bowie’s Space Oddity implementation so overall my rate on the movie would be seven out of ten.