Microsoft Excel, U.S. Dollar ($) Symbol & U.K. Computer

One of my UK users was trying to work with an Excel file that contained cell with values in US Dollars ($). Things appeared to be working normally until they tried to use formulas. Rather than calculating normally, it would only output "0".

After closer inspection, we figured out that because the computer's region was set to "English (United Kingdom)" it was not treating the "$" symbol as currency. It was treating is as text, resulting in broken formulas. I assumed I could simply select and format these cells as "Currency", "$ English (U.S.)", but that doesn't change anything.

Here is the workaround that we came up with (to replicate, you must set region to UK):

• Create an Excel file with dollar values and a formula that will sum the cells. You can see that they are being treated as text, since they are aligned to the left and the formula result is "0".
  
• Select the cells with the dollar values.
• Press Control-F to open the "Find & Replace" feature.
• Click the "Replace" tab
• In "Find what" enter "$" and in "Replace with" make sure it is blank. 
• Click "Replace All"
  
• The formula will now calculate properly, but we need this to display as currency.
• Select the cells.
  
• Right-click and select "Format Cells..."
• Click "Currency" on the left. In the right pane, select "Symbol", "$ English (U.S.)".
• Click OK
• Values will now display properly with US dollar symbol and the formula calculates properly!
  

Kaseya Antivirus: "Your license will expire in X days"

Over the past year, we have had the issue of Kaseya Antivirus (KAV) displaying "Your license will expire in X days" even though the Kaseya administrator interface shows the license as valid on numerous systems. Our fix has always been to uninstall, reboot, reinstall, reboot. It works, but it is time-consuming and the user can't use their system. Thankfully, Kaseya addressed this and has an easier way to fix:

http://community.kaseya.com/kb/w/wiki/877.why-do-kav-endpoints-show-a-different-license-expiration-than-shown-in-the-kav-ui.aspx

Update 7/9/2013: Because of a recent increase in the incidence of endpoints displaying the "License will expire in 'x' days" message, an update to  KAV 1.4 has been released that adds a "Fix Kaspersky Key" button to the KAV UI that will delete the currently assigned rolling Kaspersky key(s), and reapply both the initial and update key currently available on the VSA.

Contractually, we cannot completely disable the license expiration pop-up, and because of the licensing schema outlined above, the license expiration information is only available on the local endpoint, we do not have the means to gather the local endpoint license expiration for reporting to the VSA and/or KAV module.

ASUS Vivotab Smart Charging Issue

We just ordered a few dozen ASUS Vivotab Smart tablets running Windows 8 (full, not RT) to run some offline surveys. I'm going to try to post any quirky issues I come across, as I haven't been able to find much about them when searching.

The first thing I noticed is that if the battery is extremely low on the tablet, it will not start. Even if you connect a power cord, you must wait a bit for the system to start up. When the battery is low and you press the power button for a few seconds to start...it will flash orange 3 times. Once it has enough battery, it is able to start normally. These charge very slowly, so if you are at 0% battery...you might be charging for a while before it will start.

Can't export from SSI Web CAPI - "An error occured while getting..."

I'm trying to run Sawtooth SSI Web CAPI 3.0.2 for field administrators on a Windows 8 tablet. The software appears to install normally and I can run surveys. After completing a survey, I try to use the "Get Copy of Data..." button, but receive an error:

An error occured while getting
c:\users\username\Desktop\surveyname_data.csv
Please make sure the server is started (using menu item File | SSI Web CAPI Module Settings)
and try getting the data again.

After downgrading to SSI Web CAPI 3.0, I was able to export the data properly. I found the download here: http://sawtooth-software-ssi-web-capi-module.software.informer.com/3.0/