Print a blank calendar from Outlook (2003)

A blank Calendar is helpful in several situations. Perhaps you're attending a project planning meeting and need a Calendar to flush out important project milestones. You don't want to deface your own calendar with all the information, so print a blank Calendar from Outlook instead.

The hidden benefit to the Sample All Layers option (Photoshop CS2/CS3/CS4/CS5)

Many tools in the Tools panel such as the Smudge, Blur, Sharpen, Healing Brush, Spot healing Brush, Clone Stamp and Smudge tools provide you with an option in the tool Options bar, to Sample All Layers. This is useful if you’re retouching a photo that has multiple layers and you want to sample pixels from all the visible layers and not just your active layer.

Determine group membership quickly with whoami

When you're in the heat of the troubleshooting battle, you need a quick way to determine exactly the groups to which a user belongs. This is especially true if you're trying to troubleshoot problems with insufficient permissions. Yes, you can find that information in Active Directory Users And Computers—but what if you're currently working at a user's computer? In this scenario, Active Directory Users And Computers isn't available to you. The solution then is to use the whoami command line utility. To do so, open a Command Prompt window. To view a list of all groups to which the user belongs, enter the command whoami /groups. If you want to view all available information for a user, enter whoami /all.

Customize the Track Changes color options and create just the view you need (Word 2003/2007)

If you use Track Changes, you already know that Word uses a different color to track the changes made by each user. Although you can't assign a specific color to each individual user, you can assign the same color for all users and you can assign specific colors for specific types of changes. When the revision itself is more important than knowing who made it, this technique can make tracked changes much easier to read through.

Merge styles and hybridize your designs (Illustrator CS2/CS3/CS4/CS5)

Styles are terrific timesavers and help keep your designs consistent. However, most Illustrator users set up styles that are very specific for the task at hand, such as a pink drop shadow or a marble fill. But what if you want to create a pink drop shadow with a marble fill on the fly? It's easy when you merge styles together. To do so, select the two styles you want to merge from the Graphic Styles pane (hold down [command] on the Mac or [Ctrl] in Windows to select more than one style). Then, select Merge Graphic Styles from the Graphic Styles palette's pop-up menu, give your new style a name in the Graphic Style Options dialog box, and click OK. Your new merged style appears in the Graphic Styles panel, ready for your next great design.

Sort your month and day names chronologically — not alphabetically (Excel 2003/2007)

If you sort data based on a column of month or weekday names, Excel sorts the data alphabetically. Chances are you'd rather sort the information in chronological order. Fortunately, it's easy to do so.

Avoid file corruption: Don't work on Photoshop files across a network (CS2/CS3/CS4/CS5)

If you’re experiencing frequent file corruption, you may want to re-examine your workflow. If it consists of working on your Photoshop files directly from a network or removable media, such as a Zip disk or Jump drive, that could be to blame. Opening or saving files across a network or removable media can cause serious problems to your files, ranging from performance issues to data loss and file corruption.

Tighten security by customizing the software owner account

For new database installations, consider picking a user other than oracle to own the software. Making the switch for existing installations can be a major pain and probably isn’t worth the trouble if the rest of the security strategy is sound. Discourage routine use of the account that owns the Oracle software.

Calculate your email delivery time by delaying it (Outlook 2003)

Did you know that you can create an email and send it, but delay its delivery until a later date or time? By doing so, if you change your mind about what you'd like to include in an email, you can go back and retrieve it. It’s also quite useful if you simply need to delay the delivery of a message; for example, if you're going on vacation and don't want to send a message until the following week. To delay an individual message, create a message and click the Options button on the Standard toolbar of the Message form. Select the Do Not Deliver Before check box in the Delivery Options section. Then, enter a date and time from the accompanying dropdown menu(s). You can manually enter a date and time to deliver the message precisely when you want.

Join your endpoints with greater distance (QuarkXPress)

You can use the Join Endpoints Merge command to merge lines and text paths. To do this, select the two items and choose Item > Merge > Join Endpoints. This option is only active when you have two text paths or lines selected. It joins them at one point provided the endpoints are close together. The attributes of the backmost line are applied to the resulting line. You can change the Join Endpoints distance to create more versatility in your designs. For two endpoints to be affected by the Join Endpoints command, the distance between them can’t exceed whatever the current Snap Distance is set to (between 1-216). It’s specified in the Preferences to access this choose QuarkXPress (Edit in Windows) > Preferences. Then, click Print Layout in the left pane and then click General. Enter your desired distance in the Snap Distance text box.

Make security an integral part of your organization's business goals

Many business principals find the whole issue of organizational security rather esoteric and are generally reluctant to allocate resources to it unless they can see a return on their investment. At the same time, technical staff charged with managing organizational security often finds itself fighting an uphill battle because, without the appropriate resources, they can’t do their jobs. As a result, both parties fall into a reactive rather than a proactive role, responding to incidents only when they affect critical operations.

CISSP: Certified Information Systems Security Professional in Prague

CISSP represents a complete learning lifecycle. It focuses on knowledge transfer and knowledge retention to enable students to obtain skills needed to work effectively and apply the knowledge obtained during training in THE PRACTICAL ENVIRONMENT. CISSP learning approach is designed for the adult learner who learns best by combining visual, audio, and hands-on learning methods throughout the overall experience. The approach is simple and comprehensive.

Preserve your document’s flow — wrap text around your tables (Word 2003/2007)

When creating documents with tables, you may often find it necessary to wrap text around tables. You might expect that such a feat requires multiple steps, but actually Word’s text wrapping and positioning features allow you to easily format text around tables.

Enabling the [NumLock] key (Windows NT)

By default, Windows NT doesn't enablë the [NumLock] key when you first log on to a Windows NT-based computer. Even if you turn on [NumLock], Windows NT turns it off again whenever you log off, unless you're a member of Administrators. For users who aren't administrators, this can be an inconvenience. You can make the [NumLock] key stay on for non-administrative users by editing the Registry. Note that you must either log on as the user or have the user log on and edit their Registry remotely. To turn on the [NumLock] key, set the following Registry value to 2:

6 expert tips for creating HTML emails

Since most modern email clients have the ability to display emails as full HTML documents instead of plain text, there's no reason not to take advantage of this option. When you do create HTML emails, however, keep these following tips in mind:

Practical alternatives to storing BLOB data in the database (MSQL 7+)

Figuring out where to store images, PDFs, and other documents is a major architectural decision. While storing these BLOBs in your database may make it easier to search, secure, and manage them, it isn't always practical from a performance standpoint. Luckily, if you decide not to store BLOBs in the database, you have a number of different alternatives to choose from:

Keep your camera dry with a temporary rain cover

When you go out on a photo šhoot, be prepared. Even if rain isn’t in the forecast, sometimes sprinkles can pop up without warning. While you may be undeterred by a little liquid sunshine, there a few things you can do to keep your camera dry. If the rain is light or misty, a longbrimmed baseball cap may be all you need. It will shield your camera body as well as the lens from light moisture as you snap your shots.

Assign a shortcut key to your UserForm (Microsoft Excel 2003/2007)

Let’s set up a shortcut key alternative to quickly display the UserForm.

Don't leave your Mac OS X computer vulnerable

If you have your computer set up for multiple users, you might remember that by default they have access to potentially damaging applications stored in the Applications menu. For example, while the NetInfo Manager and Terminal applications require the administrator's password to do any irreparable harm, a user can still wreak havoc on the system. To protect yourself from this danger, create a folder named My Applications in your Users directory. Then move the programs from the main Applications folder into the Users' My Applications directory. This way, you'll be the only one who has accëss to the programs. Remember, however, to only move the programs that you want to limit access to.

Keep your customers happy by protecting their privacy (web)

With the concern for online privacy these days, it's important that your customers feel comfortable visiting your site. Without that comfortable feeling, they may only be one-time customers instead of repeat customers. When establishing a customer database, it's important to consider the following:

Reduce bandwidth for faster page load time

One of SEO ranking factors is the website page load time. If your site design has richer content, it is important to consider ways how to reduce bandwidth usage. This helps improve your site performance and better user experience.

Move an entire row or column without displacing your data (Word 2003/2007/2010)

When you’re shuffling around rows or columns of data, you probably do a lot of copying and pasting. This method is fine in many cases, but here’s a quicker alternative. You can move an entire row or column of data to a new position without replacing the existing data. Just select the row or column by clicking on its header, hold down the [Shift] key, and then hover your cursor over the row or column border until it becomes a four-headed arrow. Click and drag up or down to move the row or column. You’ll see a placeholder to help guide your movements.