OneNote Screen Grab Trick

OneNote is one of the standard applications for MS Office - but perhaps the most rarely used. I have have lived with is purple N icon resting in my taskbar and only pondered its purpose in a few passing idle moments. OneNote is designed to allow Windows users to compose and exchange notes among one another. It may or may not be living up Microsoft's grand vision for it, but OneNote can serve a useful purpose of anyone on a daily basis.

If you're like me you've long found occasion to use the PRTSC button to add graphic elements to your emails and presentations. A full screen grab can be cropped in PowerPoint, or you can use application like SnagIt to select a specific portion of a screen. If you have OneNote installed you can select a rectangular area of a screen without going to the trouble of installing specialized software.

Press the Windows key + S and you should see your screen be covered with a translucent white shade and your cursor change into a crosshair. (It may be necessary to open OneNote before doing this for the first time, but this should not be necessary in subsequent logins to Windows) Click and drag the area you want to capture.

After releasing the click button a new window should open giving you the option to copy the selected area to your clipboard.

Now you can paste the select area where you need it.

How to Install New Codecs

The Tip of the Night for April 13, 2018, discussed video codecs, and how to detect when Windows is missing a codec. If you don't have the necessary codec, you can download it for your system.

The example discussed on April 13th concerned a Lagarith codec. The Lagarith developer makes 32 bit and 64 bit versions available on its site. As Microsoft makes clear on its site, 32 bit codecs will not function on 64 bit operating systems.

After the zip file for the Lagarith codec is downloaded and the contents are extracted, the codec is installed by clicking on the install.bat file. You must be logged in as the administrator for the operating system in order for the installation to be completed. It's not sufficient to right click on the file and select 'Run as administrator'.

Office Configuration Analyzer Tool

Microsoft's Office Configuration Analyzer Tool, will help you determine why Outlook and other MS Office programs crash. OCAT allows you to select which of the MS Office programs you want to scan. It will then show areas in a program's function which may cause the software to slow down.

Note that OCAT can collect email metadata.