Mind Manager 6 and Outlook 2007

Paul June 20, 2006 1:01 am 4 Comments

As I mentioned yesterday MindManager’s Outlook Add-In to Export to MindManager doesn’t get on very well with Outlook 2007. Microsoft tech support gave two options:

• Uninstall MindManager 6 and use Outlook 2007
• Revert back to Outlook 2003 and be able to use MindManager 6

I wasn’t particularly happy with either option since I use MindManager more than Outlook, and I do quite like Outlook 2007. So I investigated how to turn off the Add-In, and here’s how:

• Run Outlook 2007
• Go to Tools menu / Trust Center…
• Add-ins option. Select COM Add-ins from the Manage dropdown and click Go..
• Look for Export to Mindjet MindManager and untick it. OK the popup.
• Close Outlook (watch it crash) and Restart it.
• Job done!

The snag is that if I do want to export anything from Outlook to MindManager I have to turn it back on… and if I’m totally honest I’ve kept it turned on since I use that functionality a lot!

So, yes Outlook does crash on exit still, but it’s my own choice and at least now I know what the cause is! If Outlook does hose itself, it’s totally my own fault!

Outlook 2007 Crash Update

Paul June 19, 2006 9:23 pm 12 Comments

My previous, Sir Crashalot post on Outlook 2007, prompted a comment and email from Steve Greenberg, the Program Manager for the Office Diagnostics tool. He was very interested in sorting out my crash problems and it started a series of email’s between myself and various peeps at Microsoft to help sort it out.

After two days of email’s my problems were sorted. The first was what I initially thought, an incompatible Add-In / Plugin for MindManager 6, whilst the second was the remains of my Office 2003 install. Outlook 2003 should have been removed when I installed Office 2007 but for some reason didn’t. The Office Diagnostics tool correctly noted it as a problem though, which was the start of my little adventure.

The Add-In problem, which was the cause of Outlook 2007 crashing, is simply because Mindjet don’t support pre-release versions of other software, which I found out via these two Mindjet forum links:

• Outlook 2007 crashing
• Office 2007

So I just like to say a big thanks to Greg Mansius (Outlook Beta Support Engineer) and Steve Greenberg for their help. It’s very much appreciated!

Bob update

Paul June 17, 2006 1:00 am 0 Comments

I’ve not posted on how Bob’s been getting on since his last visit to the vet’s. Well, the symptoms of Haws Syndrome hadn’t got much better so we had him back at the vet’s last week. The vet wasn’t worried though since he said it can take 5 to 6 weeks to clear (the previous vet said 3 to 4). Other than his funny eyes he has been fine. He’s still eating like a horse, and both him and Weebl are out most of the time since the weather is good.

All in all, he’s ok. Thing is if his eyes don’t get any better we’ll have to book him back in again at the vet’s and this time they’ll take blood samples. Ouch. We’re hoping it doesn’t come to that.

Powers of Ten

Paul June 17, 2006 12:01 am 1 Comments

Biff posted this in #terrafusion. It’s an old IBM sponsored video about the powers of ten. The music and voice over is strangely hypnotic. Oh and of course there’s the Simpson’s version of it!

Google Browser Sync

Paul June 16, 2006 11:14 pm 1 Comments

Uninstalled. In theory it’s a great idea. You install it on all your machines that have Firefox on and it’ll saving whatever tabs, pages, bookmarks, etc you have. So I can look at stuff at work, go home and view the same pages.

Except for me, my home machine never managed to sync up. It kept timing out. I’ve given it a good week and it’s just not connecting. I even tweaked the options to just sync tabs (it can do Cookies, Saved Passwords, Bookmarks, History and Tabs and Windows) but it wasn’t having it.

Amusingly it ran perfectly on my work machine first time. Oh well. Wait for version two me thinks.

Mobile phone ring tone you can’t hear!

Paul June 15, 2006 1:00 am 0 Comments

I get the impression that Ed Bott thinks this story is a wind up. It’s about a new mobile phone ring tone that only teenagers can hear. Personally I think it could be legit. I can’t hear the mp3 linked. All I get is the feeling of a faint buzzing sound in my ears, but that’s it.

It was inspired by a device, called the Mosquito, developed by Welsh Company, to help break up gangs of youths from shops and other areas. Perhaps the ring tone isn’t real but the Mosquito is, the BBC have a full write up on it. At the time there was a ton of coverage in the national newspapers and on the various news channels (it was a slow week).

It would be great if this technique could be applied to say Crazy Frog or most kinds of pop music. Actually some form of device that you could point at a person to make their voice turn into a high pitched noise would be ace. Yeah.. BBBBZzzzzzzzzzzzz…

Greatest 404 ever?

Paul June 14, 2006 10:30 pm 0 Comments

Creepy me thinks. I’ve not been chatted up by a webpage before… hopefully it’ll not happen again!

College work ahoy!

Paul June 13, 2006 1:00 am 0 Comments

The next few weeks are hectic due to various bits and bats of college work to finish off so my updates will be intermittent at best.

Also I’m going to have a think about what I post. My work related articles / guides will continue me thinks since the reason I post them is because I couldn’t find anything relevant to start with. My attempts to update everyday though, I think that’ll stop. If I don’t have anything interesting to say, why update?

British Grand Prix

Paul June 12, 2006 1:18 pm 0 Comments

Let’s see if I can keep this relatively short. Bullet points to the rescue:

• Alonso 1st, Schumacher 2nd, Raikkonen 3rd.
• Alonso showed that he is currently the world’s best driver in Formula One. His qualifying lap on Saturday was stunning given out of the top three, he pitted last. A flawless performance from start to finish.
• Schumacher’s car just wasn’t fast enough. Looks to be down to poor tyre choice. Excellent set of laps however around the 2nd pitstop put him ahead of Kimi.
• Kimi (Raikkonen) needs smack round the lughole for letting Schumacher past. 2nd place was his if he’d been a bit more proactive after his 2nd pitstop.
• Poor Jenson. Utter disaster of a weekend, especially so at his home race! I really hope he is changing teams next year, because it’s just not happening at BAR.
• Scott Speed had a good attempt at car skittles by taking himself and two others (Ralf Schumacher and Mark Webber) out before the first corner. A little more angle next time?

Linky links:

• Race Result (F1 ITV)

PDF support to be removed from Office 2007

Paul June 10, 2006 1:00 am 0 Comments

Not completely mind, it’ll most likely be a free download, but that’s not the point. This was one of the great new features I liked about Office 2007. The idea of being to save straight to PDF would be a real time saver. I’ve used the plugin Acrobat sell (!?) and it’s a bugger to work with.

Why has it been removed you ask? Well I’d like to think it’s because Adobe want to screw money out of people, but it seems to be more complex than that. And no one has yet to give a straight answer. Adobe don’t want Microsoft to include the feature out of the box, so they won’t.

But this strikes me as odd given the fact that OpenOffice and numerous other applications have provided this functionality for years. Oh well, go figure!

Related links:

• Brain Jones – Legal issues around PDF support
• Brain Jones – Follow-up on PDF legal issues
• Arstechnica post
• Jorris Poelman – To PDF or not to PDF?