Replies

Thanks Joe and Clint.
Turns out to be a virus after all.
I still don’t know how it got in, but a Nortons Full Scann revelaed Rootkit.Win32.TDSS in the Java cache.
I don’t know why a full scan found it, but that Norton didn’t stop it getting in.
Just doing the virus removal now.
I run secunia once a month, so all my programs were up to date.
I use OpenDNS, so that should have stopped malicious sites.
I’m the only one who knows the administrator password – everyone else runs as restricted users.
I suspect an IE ‘zero day’ exploit, but can’t be sure.
It’s a rootkit, so I know it’s worse than a ‘normal’ virus.
Any ideas how it may have got in? Does Nortons not stop all viruses from getting in?
Peter

When some programs are working they sometimes store their temp files in the temp directory.
(Not so Word, which stores it’s temp files in the same directory as the doc, but with the ~ prefix.)
Windows will usually prevent you from deleting the file if a program is currently using it.
Perhaps there are programs (perhaps running in the background) that are currently using those files, so Windows won’t let you delete those files.
Try restarting the computer, then deleting the files.
Or even starting in Safe mode and then deleting the files.
A program like Sysinternals ProcessExplorer can help you find out what program has it locked.
Peter

I’d do it this way. It’s often useful to have a ‘hidden’ intermediate cell to make entry simpler and output clearer.
1. In the entry cell (say A1), use a custom format like ##0 “ppm”
You’d enter 10 ppm as 10 and it would show as 10 ppm
2. In an intermediate cell (say A2), have an intermediate calculation like =A1/1000000 to get it to its ‘real’ value
3. If you don’t want to show the intermediate value on the sheet, you could hide the whole row.
4. In the output cell (say A3), convert the value back to it’s ‘displayable’ form with a formula like =A2*1000000 and a custom format like ##0 “ppm”
This will turn it back into an output like 10 ppm

That’s how I’d do it.
It would be nice if Excel had a way to harness what it does with percentages (I think this is really what you’re after, but with ppm rather than percentages). If a cell is formatted as a percent format, you type in ’10’ but it actually stores it as 0.1

Oh, also to make it easier to show that 4ppm is bigger that 1 ppm, you could use Excel 2010’s new sparklines or a formula like =REPT(“*”, A2) to create a repeat of a star.

Peter

As a programmer on other systems, you may find it interesting to note that most other languages’ dialog-box layout sytems automatically cater for widegets changing size. This can be when you translate the labels into another (more wordy) language, or change font sizes as you mention.
All the widgets ‘jiggle’ themselves under the direction of a ‘layout manager’ to stop them overlapping. It can be like a Word table resizing the columns.
It works this way in Java, Perl/Tk, Python Tkinter and others.
It’s more work to set up to start with,though.
Peter

I’m a fan of XXCOPY, from xxcopy.com. It does work on 64-bit Win 7.
It’s got a couple of advantages over Robocopy – see http://xxcopy.com/xxtb_030.htm.
Peter

I find it much easier to send the files from my phone to the computer by Bluetooth. You’ll need bluetooth on the computer – some laptops have this, or you can buy a USB Bluetooth adapter for not much $ (I think I paid $20 three years ago). Start the Bluetooth app on the computer and choose “Receive files’ and then on the phone pick the image and choose send – via bluetooth (my phone’s a Nokia but I’m sure yours would have it too). I use Win7, but I know even XP supports Bluetooth devices.

Yes, can add it to Quick parts; that works quite well.
I’ll try it in 2010 to see if I can customise the Insert, Shapes part of the Ribbon

I’ve got a pet peeve about error messages as well.
A recent classic fail I’ve had was MS Updates “Unknown error” (What? If the program doesn’t know what the problem is, how would I know?)

Google is much better than MS Help; Woody’s even better!

Ah. Thanks for that.
If it does expand to you guys, consider very carefully before using it!
Peter

Your Eval statement there is not evaluating the str function, it is only evaluating “5 + 2 * 2” which is an expression (such as you can use in a query), not VBA.

True. But this example has eval evaluating a VBA function:

Code:

Debug.Print eval("chr(65)")     'Prints A

What you are evaluating there is a straight expression (which would work in a query for example), not VBA.

Sorry, I still don’t understand.
Here’s some plain VBA using Eval, which works fine in Access 2002 and 2007:

Code:

Sub test()
    Dim num As Integer
    num = 2
    i = Eval("5 + " & Str(num) & " * 2")
    MsgBox i    'Displays 9
End Sub

Array(arg1,arg2,arg3,…) is a VBA function and eval cannot handle VBA functions or methods. It can do the regular math operations however.

Not true. Access VBA can handle some (most?) functions, but not all. So this works fine:

Code:

Debug.Print eval("chr(65)")     'Prints A

Thanks Rory.
What do you mean eval can’t be used to evaluate VBA?
I’m using it all the time to do just that – it’s just I’m having trouble using eval with arrays.
For example, this works fine:

Code:

num = 2
i = Eval("5 + " & str(num) & " * 2")    'Prints 9

Pete

It actually doesn’t matter what the arg is to Rnd, as long as it’s based on the record. Even if it evaluates to the same value, it forces Rnd to re-evaluate for each record.
You don’t need an ID or AutoNumber field.

Code:

Select TOP 2000  IDField, Rnd(Len([PersonsName])) As RField,Field2, Field3, Field4, etc
FROM TableName
ORDER BY Rnd(Len([PersonsName])) DESC