The start of the year was a cold and rainy Thursday here in the Philippines, and I experienced some cable signal issues with our Samsung monitor, a SyncMaster SA300. Before I drove off to visit relatives and greet them a Happy New Year, I chose the Shutdown button from the Windows 7 logon screen (even if I hadn’t fully logged out of my account).

Then I swiped my finger across the front, lower right corner of the Samsung LED monitor to switch it off. Around 5 hours later, when I booted my PC, the monitor showed: “Check cable signal.”

I removed then reconnected both ends of the monitor cable, but the error message persisted. I even rebooted and still got the same error message. I then connected the Samsung monitor to the VGA out port of a laptop, and the monitor just showed a black/blank screen (even if I set the laptop up for clone screen).

So I attached the monitor cable again to the desktop, saw the “Check cable signal” message, and switched the monitor off and then on. The error message persisted.

While looking for some other switch, I swiped my finger under the front of the monitor. The blue on/off light of the monitor went off. When I swiped my finger over the front lower right corner of the monitor, the blue on/off light went on, and I saw the Windows log-on screen again.

Is there something about the bottom part of the Samsung SyncMaster SA300? Anyway, I’ll let you know if something like this happens again in the future. In the meantime, Happy New Year! :-)

[ First posted on 01/01/2015 by Manuel Viloria ]

http://www.viloria.com/secondthoughts/archives/00001980.html

I tried to connect to my email via Outlook Web App (OWA) using Android and iOS, so here I am sharing with you my story.

Using the Email app in a Samsung Galaxy S5 can be quite intimidating. After entering the username and domain, the app warns me that I need to first give it permission to delete the contents of my smartphone, if ever the Exchange Server tells it to.

Yikes! So I just canceled the configuration of the Email app. I then tried OWA (Android).

Unfortunately, we were unable to connect to the email server. In short, we weren’t able to configure the app properly.

On the iPhone (iOS), it was easy to set-up the Mail app. We just chose Exchange, and entered the needed information.

I wonder why working with an Exchange email address is so much easier in iOS than in Android. Perhaps we need to research more.

[ First posted on 02/18/2015 by Manuel Viloria ]

http://www.viloria.com/secondthoughts/archives/00001981.html

Office 365 Business Premium Subscribed a few days ago to the Office 365 Business Premium monthly subscription service to see how great it is.

The login page is https://portal.office.com and the email address looks something like:

name@preferreddomain.onmicrosoft.com

I installed MS Office 2013 on a PC, and when I tried running MS Word 2013 the program kept closing after just a few seconds. The same thing happened with MS Excel 2013 – some kind of abnormal crash after just a few seconds.

The solution

1. Run MS Word in safe mode – Click on the Windows Start button, then in the “Search programs and files” rectangle type in the following: winword /safe

2. Next, click on File , and then on Options (you’ll find it on the left side, a few inches above the bottom of the screen.

3. Click on “Add-ins” (on the left side of the screen)

4. Click on the dropdown list beside “Manage” and choose “COM Add-ins”, then click on the “Go” button.

5. Uncheck the box of a third-party Addin. Just uncheck ONE box first.

6. Click on OK.

7. Exit MS Word, then run it the normal way (without the /safe part).

8. See if MS Word crashes unexpectedly, or if it continues to run. (For MS Excel 2013, type this in the “Search programs and files” box: excel /safe) So there, Word and Excel and working well with the PC desktop. We’ll be trying out OneDrive in the coming days. The monthly subscription to Office 365 Business Premium is US$15.

[ First posted on 02/03/2015 by Manuel Viloria ]

http://www.viloria.com/secondthoughts/archives/00001981.html