Last night as I was responding…
Last night as I was responding to an email message, I got a cryptic message when I clicked Send. It was so cryptic–and came amid other odd system happenings–that I failed to see exactly what it said. The upshot was that Outlook 2007 needed to be closed. When I tried to restart it, I got a dialog telling me I needed to reinstall Outlook.
Not good news.
So, I rebooted.
Same problem.
I checked the event viewer and found hundreds of these errors, all associated with Outlook:
Failed to determine if the store is in the crawl scope (error=0×80040155).
Not good. Whatever the heck that means. For more on this problem, go here. I was in flailing mode, however, and didn’t discover that discussion until the next morning.
Next, I tried starting Word 2007 and Excel 2007. Same problem. Word 2003 still worked. So, my next step was to attempt to repair Office 2007. I tried to launch Change from Programs and Features, but was told that the installation was corrupted! Uh, oh!
At this point, I was beginning to suspect either hard disk corruption or registry corruption. I backed up my key files to my Maxtor OneTouch II, and booted to my other Vista drive. It seemingly worked fine.
At that point, I was beginning to wonder about Windows Updates. Perhaps one of them had screwed me over. I worried in particular about this one, which I had been prompted to install after adding an additional 2 GB of RAM to the computer. Yet, that one was installed over a week ago, and the updates installed since that time didn’t seem particularly suspect.
Other suspicious factors include the fact that Outlook 2007’s search ability had stopped working. So, I had run a repair earlier in the day. The repair fixed the search. But, I was beginning to wonder if the repair had somehow set up a chain of events that led to the registry having become scrambled.
I tried launching Word with the /r switch to see if it would fix the registry. No joy.
Yet another factor among the recently changed is the use of the NoRereg registry item. Had it somehow prevented some kind of self-healing that Office 2007 sometimes performs?
The other recently added item were drivers for a ViewSonic 22″ monitor. Costco had dropped the price to $299, and I couldn’t resist. But, to work, it needed special drivers for the 1680×1050 resolution.
Having concluded that the problem simply had to be registry corruption, I decided to drop back to a restore point from the previous day.
That managed to fix the problem.
Now more paranoid than ever, however, I’ve changed my update settings so that it will no longer automatically fetch and install updates at 3 am. Instead, I will review updates and selectively decide whether to apply them.
And, now I’m worrying that the problem will recur. <sigh> It’s always something.
Peek-a-boo clipart
Someone asked:
I’d like to set up my clip art so it is peeking out from a page border. It should appear as though the area between the edge of the paper and the page border is blocking a part of the clip art. Can this be done?
I don’t think you can do it with the page border itself, since the border is just a line with no fill. However, if you insert–into the header/footer area (so it can be repeated on multiple pages)–a rectangular filled shape (using white fill, assuming that’s your background color), it will give the same appearance as a border. You can then layer your clip art object behind the shape. Both the clip art and the rectangular shape should be inserted into the header/footer area, and both have their wrapping set to Behind Text. You can use the order settings to send the clip art behind the shape.
Below, I’ve used an off-white colored shape so you can see the effect more clearly.
Send to Mail Recipient (Not as Attachment)
I keep seeing this question come up in the public newsgroups. In Word 2003—assuming you had Outlook 2003—you could choose FileSend toMail recipient. In Word 2007, that option does not exist in the default interface structure. However, you can add it to the Quick Access Toolbar (Quick Access Toolbar) to regain the same functionality (assuming you have Outlook 2007).
Right-click the QAT and choose Customize Quick Access Toolbar. Set Choose commands from: to Commands Not in the Ribbon. Scroll to the commands starting with S, click on Send to Mail Recipient, then click AddOK. Thereafter, you can use the tool on the QAT to toggle email headers on/off for initiating email from Word 2007.
