Scalix Connect for Outlook, Quickbase & Blank Emails

My employer uses Intuit Quickbase for some online databases and Scalix 11.4.6 with Outlook 2003/2007 for email/calender/etc. Starting this past Monday, all emails from QB were appearing blank to Outlook users (appeared normally in WebMail). Our short-term workaround was to request that all emails be plain text. This worked for simple alerts, but is not supported for emailed reports.

We contacted support, but Quickbase said they hadn't made any changes and "it worked for them". I knew that was not correct since previously, an email alert with a few lines of data would be 5KB...but they were now 75KB! I also contacted them via twitter (@IntuitQuickbase) and they responded, but were not very helpful. So, I started digging around. I had a copy of the email's raw formatting and started making changes, resubmitting, making changes, etc...

After a frustrating hour, I found the cause of the issue. It is related to some formatting that QB started including in their messages the previous weekend. Here is the specific section:

/* Because of the way tables are nested within a div and the scroll is set on the div,
all browsers with the exception of IE think the width of the div should not include scrollbar
width and therefore end up overlapping the field names with scrollbar. Adding some padding to avoid scroll-x and width setting changes.
Only for browers other than IE. Changes affect Field & Markers dropdown on NotificationEdit and Fields dropdown for formula builder.*/
html>/**/body #ftDiv
{
padding-right:10px;
}

The use of the “&” symbol on line 4 appears to be the issue. If I edit the message source and change the “&” to “and” or remove, I can resubmit the message and it displays properly. At first I believed that this is a reserved character that can not be used in this context, but now I think that it is just a Scalix Connect for Outlook bug. I have a support ticket open with Scalix, too bad they might be dead. Once I found this was the cause, I updated QB support and they have been very helpful. They have updated code on their test servers and worked with us to confirm a fix. Now we are just waiting for it to go into production. Thanks QB Support!

Embedded Excel Sheet Resizes After Editing in Powerpoint

One of my users was having an issue with Excel sheets embedded in Powerpoint resizing after editing. The sheet would shrink to almost 50% of it's original width. I was able to replicate the issue on my computer in Powerpoint 2003 & 2010 and struggled all day searching for a solution. Dragging, re-pasting, formatting the object and many other things we tried...failed. Finally a coworker passed me this link. 2 minutes later, all fixed.

Embedded Excel worksheets shrink when you edit them in PowerPoint

For a quick fix, paste this in notepad, save as a .reg and double-click:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Excel\Options]
"QFE_NICE"=dword:00000001
"QFE_ONTARIO"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Excel\Options]
"QFE_NICE"=dword:00000001
"QFE_ONTARIO"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Excel\Options]
"QFE_NICE"=dword:00000001
"QFE_ONTARIO"=dword:00000001

Excel 2010 Insert PDF "Cannot start the source application for this object"

While attempting to insert a PDF file into an Excel file while using Excel 2010 (Insert tab, Object, Adobe Acrobat Document), one of my users was receiving the error: "Cannot start the source application for this object". In my scenario, we are running Office 2010 Standard & Adobe Reader X. From reports I have read, the same thing may happen with Excel 2007. Here is how to fix:

- Close Excel
- Open Adobe Reader X
- From the "Edit" menu, select "Preferences"
- Select "General" on left
- Uncheck "Enable Protected Mode at Startup"

You should now be able to insert PDF documents properly!

Thanks Kublai99!

---

What is Protected Mode?

Protected Mode is a new security feature for Adobe Reader X that protects users' applications and data by limiting what malicious files can do and access. Protected Mode is enabled by default and Adobe recommends that you leave it on for security reasons.

Excel 2010: "Compile error in hidden module: ThisWorkbook"

In our case, this issue was caused by a NitroPDF 5 Add-In (but I imagine there are other add-ins causing the same issue). To remove this from loading, I moved the following file to another directory. Once removed, Excel started without the error.

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\XLSTART\NitroPDF.xla

Attempt to start VM stops at 95% using VMware Server 2 on CentOS 5

I am running VMware 2.0.2 on CentOS 5 to host a VM on one of our remote servers. We had a power outage over the weekend and everything came up normally except the VM. I attempted to start the VM using the VMware web console. It would get to 95% and then hang. I looked in the /var/log/vmware/hostd.log and saw a lot of this:

[2011-02-28 11:53:39.796 'Libs' 3080330128 info] connect to /var/run/vmware/root_0/1298359854662651_13997/testAutomation-fd: File not found
[2011-02-28 11:53:40.298 'Libs' 3080330128 info] connect to /var/run/vmware/root_0/1298359854662651_13997/testAutomation-fd: File not found
[2011-02-28 11:53:40.800 'Libs' 3080330128 info] connect to /var/run/vmware/root_0/1298359854662651_13997/testAutomation-fd: File not found
[2011-02-28 11:53:41.302 'Libs' 3080330128 info] connect to /var/run/vmware/root_0/1298359854662651_13997/testAutomation-fd: File not found
[2011-02-28 11:53:41.803 'Libs' 3080330128 info] connect to /var/run/vmware/root_0/1298359854662651_13997/testAutomation-fd: File not found

Here is how I fixed the issue:

- Stop VMware (service vmware stop)
- Make sure there aren't any processes still running (ps -ef | grep vm). If there are, kill them (kill procid or kill -9 procid)
- Rename /var/run/vmware to /var/run/vmware-old (mv /var/run/vmware /var/run/vmware-old)
- Create directory /var/run/vmware (mkdir /var/run/vmware), set 755 permissions (chmod 755 /var/run/vmware)
- Run /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl, I used all the default settings
- Start VMware (service vmware start)
- Start the VM

Using Word as your email editor for Outlook 2003 alongside Office 2010

If you have installed Office 2010 (minus Outlook 2010) alongside Office 2003, you may have noticed that you can no longer use Microsoft Word as your email editor. You will receive an error when you attempt to compose an email and it will use the default editor. While this does let you send emails; you lose the advanced formatting, spell-check & grammar-check that Word provides.

The problem is caused by Microsoft Office 2010 registering itself as the default handler for Word documents. We can fix this by turning this feature off. Here is how:

- Close Outlook, Word 2003, Word 2010
- Run "regedit" to open the Windows Registry Editor
- Select the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Word\Options (If you are having the issue with Office 2007, change 14.0 to 12.0)
- From the Edit menu, select New. Click DWORD.
- Type NoReReg as the name. Press Enter.
- Right-click NoReReg, and then click Modify.
- In the box, type 1. Click OK.
- Close Registry Editor
- Start Word 2003
- Start Outlook 2003

Instructions were adapted from Microsoft instructions for a similar issue with Office 2007:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=928091