How to Ignore Reply to All Messages in Outlook

One of my pet peeves is people who use Reply to All on general messages sent to a large number of recipients. If for example someone sends a message to 100 employees asking who is attending a training session, there is no need to hit reply to all, as majority of people on the recipient list don’t care if you are attending or not.

If you are using Outlook, you can ignore the conversation, and all future emails in the conversation thread will be sent directly to Deleted Items folder. Just be aware that if someone does reply with useful information, that email will end up in Deleted Items folder as well.

To ignore the conversation, select an email from the thread and in the top left corner of the Home tab click on Ignore. That’s it.

Click here for related article and more info on Microsoft Support site.

Use PowerShell to View BitLocker Encryption Status

Using BitLocker to encrypt hard drive can take a while to complete, so it runs as a background process. While the drive is being encrypted, you can click on a tray icon to monitor the progress.

However, if you restart or shut down the computer during encryption, after the Windows starts up again BitLocker tray icon may not appear, which means that you can’t monitor the encryption progress.

To work around this issue, you can view the encryption status via PowerShell. Open PowerShell (you may need to run it as administrator), and type the following command –

manage-bde -status

This will display encryption status, along with percentage encrypted –

PS C:\windows\system32> manage-bde -status c:
BitLocker Drive Encryption: Configuration Tool version 10.0.10011
Copyright (C) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Volume C: [Windows]
[OS Volume]

    Size:                 237.72 GB
    BitLocker Version:    2.0
    Conversion Status:    Decrytpion in Progress
    Percentage Encrypted: 7.2%
    Encryption Method:    AES 128
    Protection Status:    Protection Off
    Lock Status:          Unlocked
    Identification Field: Unknown
    Key Protectors:
        Numerical Password
        TPM And PIN

How to restart stuck Windows 10 Update downloads

In some cases, Windows 10 Updates can get stuck while downloading – the download will get to a certain percentage and will not progress further. You can try and run Windows 10 Update Troubleshooter, but it won’t always resolve the issue.

To resolve stuck downloads manually, do the following:

Stop Windows Update service – open command prompt and run the following command

net stop wuauserv

Then open Windows Explorer and navigate to

C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution

This is where Windows Update stores downloaded files before installing updates.

Delete everything from that folder.

Go back to command prompt and start the Windows Update service by running the following command

net start wuauserv

Go to Setting and then go to Updates and click on Check for Updates button. Any updates that were not installed will start downloading from the beginning (0%). This time the download should finish without issues.

How to Display HTML with MVC’s NullDisplayText Attribute

Adding DisplayFormat attribute to model’s property allows you to set formatting options for that property’s value. One of options is NullDisplayText, where you can set what to display if the value is null.

Sometimes you may wish to have NullDisplayText return a piece of HTML. To be able to render this HTML correctly, you need to set HtmlEncode value to false.

[DisplayFormat(NullDisplayText = "<div>My HTML<div>", HtmlEncode = false)]
public int? MyProperty { get; set; }

Hide URL Path When Printing in Chrome

When you print (or print preview) web page in Chrome, printout will include URLs for each link on the page.

For example, if you have a link “Back to Homepage”, when printed it will display as “Back to Homepage (www.mysite.com)”.

To stop URLs being printed, add the following style –

 <style media="print">
    a[href]:after
    {
        content:none !important;
    }
</style>

ASP.NET MVC – Prevent Browser Back Button Openning Page After Logout

If you have ASP.NET MVC application with login / logout functionality (for example using Forms Authentication), you may have noticed that after logout, if you hit back button in your browser, last page you were on will open. In secure application this could present a problem, as it could expose information that only authorized users should view.

Culprit in this scenario is our browser, as it will quite happily show cached version of the page after you’ve logged out.

There isn’t much you can do, except tell your browser to not cache your application’s pages. You can do this for individual pages in your applications, or if you want all pages not to be cached, you can add an event in Global.asax file.

Add Application_BeginRequest() method to your application’s Global.asax file, and add code below which will disable browser caching for each request.

        protected void Application_BeginRequest()
        {
            Response.Cache.SetCacheability(HttpCacheability.NoCache);
            Response.Cache.SetExpires(DateTime.UtcNow.AddHours(-1));
            Response.Cache.SetNoStore();
        }

How to Force Refresh iOS App Store

If you wish to refresh iOS App Store, you can either force close and re-open it, or you could force refresh content right from the App Store itself.

To force refresh App Store, tap 10 times on one of the options at the bottom – Featured, Top Charts, Explore, Search or Updates. Make sure you pick one option and tap on it 10 times (e.g. tap 10 times on Updates), rather than tap on different options.

Once you’ve tapped 10 times, App Store content will reload, along with any updates as well.

 

Visual Studio – Enable Debug for new Build Configuration

When you are setting up new build configuration which you want to be able to debug, you need to set Debug info to Full.

Right click the project in Solution Explorer and select Properties. Select build tab and then select desired configuration from Configuration drop down list at the top of the page.

Click on Advanced at the bottom of output section and select Full from Debug Info drop down list.

Save changes to project settings and rebuild your solution.

Font Awesome and IIS

If you are using Font Awesome in your ASP.Net web app which is hosted on IIS, you need to set appropriate mime type for Font Awesome files, otherwise IIS won’t know how to serve them.

To do this, you’ll need to add mime type mapping to <system.webServer> section in your application’s Web.config file.

Before registering each file extension (woff and woff2), we’ll want to remove them first, just in case that mime types for those are already registered on IIS host.

<system.webServer>
<staticContent>
<remove fileExtension=”.woff” />
<mimeMap fileExtension=”.woff” mimeType=”application/x-font-woff” />
<remove fileExtension=”.woff2″ />
<mimeMap fileExtension=”.woff2″ mimeType=”application/x-font-woff2″ />
</staticContent>
</system.webServer>

How to Hard Reset HP Laptop

Doing a Hard Reset (or Forced Reset) on HP laptop to clear and then set up again connections between BIOS and the hardware. You can use this to resolve a range of issues, such as boot issues, Windows not loading properly, or software freezing when you use it.

To do a hard reset, perform the following steps:

1. Turn off you laptop.
2. Disconnect power and anything else you might have connected (e.g. printer, USB hard drive, mouse).
3. Remove the battery.
4. Press and hold Power button for 30 seconds.

Once you’ve done all this, re-insert the battery and power up your laptop.