TortoiseSVN shows PPT files as modifed upon open-close - tortoisesvn

I am sure some of you must have seen this behavior although I could not find an existing thread on SO regarding this very specific issue and hence posting it with hope that experts on SO might have an answer.
I noticed that whenever MS PPT files are opened and closed from a TSVN Working Copy, TSVN marks it as modified. For example, I check out a SVN repo which has PPT files stored in it. Now even if I simply open and close the PPT file (without making a SINGLE edit) from my local WC, TSVN will mark it as modified (red exclamation mark).
It gets very annoying after some time as it gets hard to track (without using some kind of diff tool) whether the red exclamation mark is because I actually changed the content in the file or if it is simply because I opened and closed the file at some point of time.
SVN Server: 1.4.6 (r28521)
TSVN Client: 1.7.6, Build 22632 - 64 Bit , 2012/03/08 18:29:39
MS Office: Office 2010 (Standard)

This is a problem reported by people who use repositories. Unfortunately, it's just something that PPT does. MS is aware of it, has been for several versions, doesn't seem to consider it a big enough problem to bother with (or fixing it would interfere with other features they consider more important, perhaps).

MS Office sometimes saves files automaticaly.I think from SVN point of view, you can set read-only attribute as workaround, or open files in read only mode from Powerpoint.Then it should not change modify timestamp.

PowerPoint automatically saves the presentation preview image when you open the presentation file, even if you do not save it manually. To avoid this you have to open the file, go to file properties dialog and uncheck "Save preview picture" checkbox. Now you presentation file will stay unchanged unless you save it by yourself.

Related

Is default open mode for ExCel (Office 365) configurable?

I googled around and found no answer for what I think should be an obvious question/problem, so I'll ask here.
I have an ExCel spreadsheet that I want to share with a couple other guys. Version, as far as I can tell, is "Office 365 ProPlus" (sorry if that's wrong, I'm a linux guy). I do the vast majority of the writing/editing, the other guys mostly just read it. I put it on a shared drive. But when they open it, it opens in edit mode and I'm locked out because one of the other guys (who just wanted to read it) opened it and the default open mode is edit.
I want to change the default open mode to be read_only. If I want to open for edit, I don't mind clicking a few times to get to that point. But what I can't have is being locked out because the read_only guys have it locked. If they have it locked because they're making changes, that's fine. But for the 95% of the time, where I write and they read, I don't want them to unintentionally lock the thing when all they want to do is read.
Is this sort of thing possible ? Can I configure this ?
You may save your document as "Read-only recommended" and get your friends to open it read-only whenever they do not need to edit the document:
For the new versions (2013 & 2016), while Saving or Saving As your file press Browse button, go to Tools | General Options and select the Read-only recommended check box. If you want you may enter a password too. After this, the users will be recommended to open the document as read only; if they want, they may still open the file in edit mode.
In addition you may use the shared workbook feature of Excel which allows multi users to edit the document at the same time. And using this way you may track which changes are made when and by whom too.This feature can be activated using Review / Share Workbook button. If you have a newer version of Excel, this button is hidden, you may unhide it using the instructions here: unhide shared workbook
Old post but I just had the same question and landed here. I was also suspecting the Office version but it turns out that's not it. I figured it out that instead of going to the File-Properties you have to go to the "Save As..." dialog box, and there, next to the Save / Cancel buttons, is the Tools... dialog where you can set a "Read-only recommended" check mark.
I think the implication is that it's not a document property, it's a windows file property - that's why it's not in the File-Options menu.
After I found it, I remembered that this is how I always used to do it in old versions of Excel many years ago, so it's really unchanged.

Excel crashes when loading file that contains userform

Excel crashes when opening files that contain a userform
This is a known problem with a known solution workaround which is to delete a file called Excel.box from here:
C:\Users\SlowLearner\Application Data\Microsoft\Forms\Excel.box
According to this forum post the purpose of the Excel.box (& Word.box) file is:
Files such as Winword.box and Excel.box are associated with the
Control Toolbox you see when you are designing a UserForm in the
Visual Basic editor. The files contain information about the layout of
the Control Toolbox (additional tab pages, controls that have been
added or removed, custom icons, ...) If a user has never modified the
Control Toolbox in any way, there will probably be no .box file. By
deleting a .box file, you will restore the Control Toolbox to its
default (factory preset) configuration - this is the only way to do
that. Sometimes, the .box file becomes corrupted and must be deleted.
There are no negative side effects to deleting it.
Unfortunately Excel.box returns :(
It would seem that for most users the problem is fixed by deleting the file, sadly not for me.
I'd like to understand what is causing this problem to recur. A few points to note:
this (touch wood) is not impacting MS Word on my PC
I am using Office 2010, 64 bit version on Win10
I have not made any conscious change to form settings
if I delete the file > start Excel > UN-DELETE the file: everything works :-/
some other experiences with this issue here
For the time being I'll just check for and delete the file before launching Excel, but this is hardly an acceptable solution for the long term. Appreciate thoughts for a proper fix... TIA
Additional Information:
I have not fully explored the crash but so far it happens when:
starting the application by opening an xl?.m file with a userform
application does not get past the splash screen
crashes with the application's CRASH screen (... encounted an error...)
starting the application with a blank worksheet then adding a userform
crashes immediately with the applications CRASH screen displayed (see below)
The above crash happened after rebooting my PC, had a chance to explore it some more.
First I opened the file I had been working on (contains userforms):
annoyingly it opened without crashing
I did NOT enter the IDE
I closed the file (Excel closed normally)
Then I created a new worksheet
I opened the VBA IDE
right-click 'add UserForm' - Excel crashed immediately
(I aborted the recovery / search for a solution attempt)
Then I re-opened the file I had been working on
opened the VBA IDE (the project is PW protected)
the very instant that I entered the PW and hit enter Excel crashed
crash was same both times...
Safe Mode:
Crash still happens in safe mode - steps to reproduce:
Run: Excel /safe
Open VBA IDE
r-click add userform
crashes immediately
Creation of the EXCEL.box file
Based on visually observing the folder which had the Excel.box file I did some tests to try and see when it was created. Basically it seems to appear when one of the following happens:
- the UserForm tools box is closed
- the IDE is closed (after showing the userform)
I've also now tried to modify the userform toolbox by removing everything from it. Excel is still crashing after every restart of the application (which is odd as I was not able to crash it like that earlier).
Office Repair - not tested (yet)
Reluctant to try Office Repair as based on the following quote from here (scroll down: pg 1 reply 8 by Steve IT) I'm not expecting it to work :-/ (but will try if no other suggestions surface).
Thanks for the continued suggestions, however I have tried a repair and also removed Visual Studio 2013 and Office altogether (just in case VS was interfering) and reinstalled both, but it still throws the errors reported previously.
Other user profiles
Created a brand new user called 'test'. Test has the exact same problem.
This problem eventually resolved itself, not sure why. I continued to use Excel normally and it continued to crash so I would delete the offending .box file and start over...
As of Nov 2017 Excel no longer crashes with respect to this issue; my best guess is there was an automatic update that resolved the issue.
Looks like this issue still occurs and it is not just limited to Excel but also Powerpoint.
The fix as mentioned above works where you move / delete any files in the below folder location resolves the issue.
C:\Users\%username%\Application Data\Microsoft\Forms
It is highly likely that this error is caused by bad code in a macro or an Add-In that uses forms. The problem is replicating this can be difficult so you have to debug this in some way when it does crash out.
POWERPNT.box
EXCEL.box
are some of the files that get generated, where Excel or Powerpoint crash on the splash screen.
Try adding the command
ThisWorkbook.VBProject.VBComponents("UserForm").Activate
just before your
"UserForm".Show line.

Changes don't get saved in Crystal Reports report

I've started using Crystal Reports recently. Have been able to create a report and mostly done with it. But suddenly I started to lose any change made inside a textbox object. I edit a textbox, save the report and close it. And then I reopen it to see that the change hasn't remained. I restart the Visual Studio and even the machine but nothing helps. I use VS 2012. Has anyone experienced anything like this?
In the report preview see if the checkbox "Save data in the report" is checked. If so, try unckecking this checkbox. It is causing me some trouble to save the report crashing Visual Studio interface.
In fact I found the reason for the problem. This happens when I try to save the changes while the focus is on the edited object, in this case textbox. But if I click somewhere else (in order to lose focus on the edited textbox) before saving, then the problem gets solved. Happy to have found it.
Welcome to the club :)
Crystal Reports can behave very strangely in some cases. For instance, some times when i edit a report file in Windows XP, it crashes the interface and corrupts the file when i save it. The same problem doesn't appear in Windows 7. However other strange things happen in Windows 7 also.
I would recommend you to
Always apply the latest Service Pack available for the Crystal Reports Engine.
Always check if the asterisk sign disappears from the opened report file when you save it (some times it doesn't when you hit save and it does when you hit save all and vice versa).
Always backup your report files once in a while because to recover a corrupted file is a very hard task.
You can try the following to find out what causes the problem
Create a new blank Windows Forms project, add the same report file there and check if it behaves the same.
Create a new blank report file and check if a change in a field behaves the same way after saving it.
Try it on another OS.
Go to Database | Verify Database and make sure the database is up to date.
Also Go to Database | Show SQL Query and reset the query. Now enter in the Selection Formula again and save.
Updating the SQL will replace the Selection Formula.
Good luck,

Monodevelop - when does it save csproj files?

When MonoDevelop crashes (somewhat often unfortunately) I usually have to re-do changes to the project that seem to not be written to disk. As a result my work flow has become - change project, restart monodevelop (hoping changes are saved during a close). I find this to be a little frustrating. Ideally there would be an explicit save button in the UI so that I know for a fact my changes are written when I expected them to be. I am not sure where to file enhancements requests - through Xamarin (since this is monodevelop with monotouch)? Any chance someone has written an Add-In to do this?
If everything is OK with your MD installation the Save All command/button should save all the project files and solution. I regularly use this command as a safeguard. On my experience just hitting Save only saves the file you are editing on the moment, keeping the solution and project files unsaved.

How to open the actual file from changeset details in Visual Studio 2012, and not some hashed read-only server copy?

This is the first time I've tried this in a VS, much less VS 2012, so if the answer is common knowledge, I guess I'm just not that common. (Yeap, Google failed me as well --- or my Google-fu just needs some oiling.)
I'm looking through my TFS code repo history, and from the list of changesets, I opt to view changeset details. Up on the VS 2012 right sidebar, I get a list of all changed files for this particular changeset.
However, I want to open up one of these files and modify them directly (basically for purposes of light code review and housekeeping), so I right-click on one, and select Open.
Unfortunately, this doesn't open up my local copy of the file, but instead (seemingly) downloads the file from the server and gives me the server copy, with a modified filename (suffixed with a short hash). I can't modify this at all.
Is there a way to open my local file copy from the changeset details?
What you could do is right click the file.
Then choose open in source control explorer.
Double click the file there.
Bob should be your uncle now.
If you right click and compare it to your workspace version, that will open a diff between the workspace version and the changeset version. I don't believe there is a way to open the local version of the changeset file directly, as that version doesn't really exist in your local workspace. What you are opening when you open it from the changeset is the specific version associated with that changeset. The file may not even exist in the current solution, so opening the workspace version in same cases wouldn't even be feasible (or you may have never gotten the file).
To the best of my knowledge there is no good way to do this (I wish there was). It's a bit time consuming, but you can get the same effect with a bit of manual effort:
Open the changeset, rollback changes, go to pending changes, and open all of the files. After the last file has opened, go back to pending changes and undo changes (i.e. your rollback). All of the files from that changeset should now be current and open in visual studio.

Resources