Excel – Creating a Dropdown Box ‘From data on another sheet’
KB ID 0000711 Problem My wife asked me how to do this today. I don’t use Excel much, most people think because I work in IT I know everything about all software packages, and they are surprised when I’m asked questions like this, and I say ‘I don’t know I’m a network engineer’. But seeing as it was for the better half, I fired up Excel and worked it out. (This must be worth at least a cup of Tea!)...
Excel – IP Address Formula for ‘Auto fill’
KB ID 0000928 Problem I got asked this week if I know how to do this, a colleague was doing a spreadsheet, and needed to quickly put in IP addresses. The Problem is if you use ‘Auto Fill’ to continue your IP addresses, it does not behave quite like you would expect. Solution A quick search got me most of the way there, but the solution is different depending on which ‘octet’ of the IP address you want to...
Allow Users to Install Printers with Group Policy
KB ID 0000148 Problem Ordinary domain users cannot install printer drivers, because installing a printer driver requires “rights”. So unless you have installed the print driver as an administrator, the users cannot add a new printer, without logging on with administrative privileges, installing the printer and driver, then logging back on as the user, only at that point can they install the printer. To stop this happening...
Active Sync on Small Business Server 2003 with iPhone
KB ID 0000336 Problem I don’t know why but ActiceSync will NOT work out of the box with SBS 2003, for a long time I’ve just told my clients “it can’t be done”. However after the problem went off the boil for a while, it was the topic of conversation in the office, I did some searching and came up with a solution. You don’t need IMAP – you don’t need ISA server – you just need 5...
Windows – Remove the Username (Personal Folder) From the Start Menu
KB ID 0000398 Problem Normal users probably won’t care, but if you’re in a corporate environment or a school for example, you might not want your users having access to the personal folder in their Start Menu. The video below runs though how to remove this option on a single machine and how to remove it with Group Policy Preferences (GPP). Solution Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links Group...
Windows – Reset all User Passwords in an OU
KB ID 0000497 Problem I did some bulk user imports for a client this week, and then needed to set all the passwords on these accounts. Seeing as it was a school, and each year group was in its own OU in Active Directory, I needed a way to “Bulk Reset” the passwords. Note: Passwords can NOT be set with a CSV / CSVDE import. Solution 1. We are going to perform this procedure while logged onto a domain controller with...
Bulk Importing Users with CSVDE
KB ID 0000498 Problem This is not a task I’ve had to do for ages, so when I had to do it this week, I thought I’d just do a quick Google search as a refresher. What I can remember was a simple task took me far too long to work out. So heres a quick solution for everybody else. Solution Before I begin, the spreadsheet below, was the hard work of John Haddock, I have only made some minor tweaks and adjustments. 1. You will...
Granting Users Password Change Ability (Password Administration)
KB ID 0000503 Problem This is a two part operation, firstly you need to give the user(s) the rights to change passwords, then give them the tools to do so. Solution Step 1: Grant the rights (Delegation of Control) 1. Whilst logged into a domain controller with administrative access, open “Active Directory Users and Computers” and create a group that you are going to allow password reset rights to. Note: In this example...
Active Directory – Modify all users in an OU to “Password Never Expires”
KB ID 0000532 Problem A while back I did a job for a school, many weeks later their users have had to change their passwords. Nothing strange there, the problem is now their teachers DONT want to have their passwords changing at all. For a single user you can simply edit the user object and set it to “Password Never Expires” for a LOT of users this can be more time consuming. Solution Warning: There is a caveat! If the...
Bulk Export Users From One Domain, and Import Into Another
KB ID 0000794 Problem I’ve written in the past about bulk importing users with CSVDE, but what if you want to move/migrate your users to another domain? You first need to export all the users, then import them into the new domain. Solution Step 1 Export Domain Users to CSV File 1. Here all my users are in one OU, if that OU has ‘nested OU’s within it that’s OK. 2. The command to ‘export’ is as...