How to backup Outlook 2016 account settings

The Outlook 2016 email settings are maintained in a registry key.

You can export that key and import it back in to Office 2016 on a reinstall. This will put all of the settings for your previously configured email accounts, and data files, back into Outlook.

The key is: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Profiles\Outlook

This key does not store any the actual emails, just the email account and data file (pst and ost) settings in Outlook, which will save you from having to reconfigure all of that stuff. If you are using pop3 accounts, the emails will be in your pst files, which you must backup externally before you reinstall Windows. The pst and ost files will not be deleted, but will remain if all you are doing is uninstalling/reinstalling Office 2016. If you are using Exchange email, then your emails will be in an ost file, retained locally and online.

Keep in mind that when you reinstall Office, even though you have local copies in your backed-up pst file, it will probably download ALL of the emails in your online pop3 accounts (which could be several thousand). If you have your pop3 Outlook settings configured to delete the emails from the server (after 14 days is the default) after you retrieve them, then your old emails will be in your backed up pst file, and the new Outlook install will only be downloading the 14 days of emails that you left on the server. If you don't backup the pst files, and you have your pop3 accounts configured to delete your emails after 14 days, then you will have lost all of your old emails forever.

And that, my friend, is why you should always back stuff up.


Original post found on Microsoft Answers:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2016-outlook/how-to-backup-email-account-settings-in-outlook/d3a63184-da06-4ba8-93ba-7c3494185af5?auth=1

Weber BBQ Gourmet System compatibility with older Weber gas grills

I have a vintage Weber Genesis Gold model B from circa 2002 and was eyeing the new Weber BBQ Gourmet System in the stores the other week.

Unfortunately Weber only lists as compatible BBQ models the Weber Spirit 300-series from 2013- (part #7586), Weber Genesis-series from 2010- (part #7587) and Weber Summit-series any year (part #7585).

After a lot of searching on the net I found out that Weber does not publish any dimensions of their BBQ grates and accessories - only packaging sizes. After another couple of hours of searching I found some third party replacement grate listings with dimensions on eBay and Amazon for my old banger and I double checked the online found dimensions (17 1/4" x 11 3/4") against my BBQ which checked out rather well at (440mm x 300mm) per side (two grill grates side-by-side).

So off I went to the local Weber retailer in high hopes that I could possibly modify one of the BBQ Gourmet System grates to fit my old BBQ. When I managed to talk one of the shop clerks to open one of the sales packages to take measures I was greeted by slightly larger dimensions of the BBQ Gourmet System Grille for the Spirit 300-series (#7586) of 442mm x 302mm. I decided to take a risk and believe it was still within measurement tolerances being off a couple of thousands of an inch in both dimensions and bought one anyway.

As luck has it it fit perfectly into my old Genesis Gold B as a drop-in replacement to the old grille and now I have a nice shiny BBQ Gourmet System stainless steel grille and a bunch of the BBQ System accessories to go with it in my old trusty Genesis Gold. Good to go for another 10 years!

How to enlarge a drilled hole without a drill press

I, like undoubtedly many others, have bumped into the problem of how to enlarge a drilled hole without a drill press.

Today I made a little roller board for my mitre saw and as a good engineer I measured the padded feet of the saw to the millimetre and drilled holes for all four feet that were 1mm larger in diameter than the feet.

Now you would wonder why this wouldn't be a great feat of engineering and just how it should be done, since the saw feet did fit perfectly into the holes. The catch is that in order to get all four feet into their respective holes you have to align the 21kg (46 pounds) saw perfectly to a board on casters...

So to make life good again I had to enlarge the holes from 26mm to 35mm to just drop the saw somewhere there-about-ish and be done with it. Unfortunately drilling free-hand with a drill-driver using a 35mm Forstner bit around an existing hole with no centre spike location isn't exactly easy - I'd dare to call it next to impossible.

Enter the world of good old jigs and a simple trick. Since guiding a driver with a Forstner bit free-hand is impossible you can simply make a guide-jig by drilling a hole into a piece of scrap wood with the larger bit and then centre the jig over the hole you are enlarging and clamp it down.

Insert the Forstner bit into the hole you previously drilled into the jig and rev the drill up before lightly making contact with the edge of the work piece  Use the guide-hole to keep the drill from wondering and you get tear-free ingress edges as a bonus since the jig works as a tear-out protector at the same time.

Superdrive jammed up empty, not accepting discs - solution

I just experienced an weird lockup of the MacMini SuperDrive: It was empty, but would not accept a disc in more than half way in i.e. it had ejected the previous DVD successfully, but the eject mechanism had not returned back to its 'accept new disc' position.

After trying all possible tricks to eject a jammed disc i.e. boot with the mouse button depressed, use iTunes to eject disc, try resetting the PRAM and SMC, etc. I stumbled on this bit of advice worth its weight in gold:

Just gently force a DVD into the drive by tapping it gently strengthening the tapping force until it cycles the eject mechanism mechanically.

It took a dozen taps with increasing strength but eventually my drive found itself and cycled the mechanism and accepted the new disc. It spit it out 2 sec later, but after a second normal insertion the drive has worked flawlessly. 

Is it safe to move spanned drives between SATA ports?

With Windows 7 Home 64-bit this worked flawlessly and entirely automatically for me.

I tried this with a spanned volume of 9TB (3x2TB + 1x3TB) where by mistake I had connected the 3TB drive to a JMicron 363 SATA-port and the rest were connected to the integrated nVidia nvraid ports. The use of the JMicron port worked reasonably fine in IDE-mode, but when I tried to configure it in AHCI-mode it acted randomly giving varying write speeds between 18MB/s to 67MB/s whereas the same drive now connected to the nForce SATA-port clocks in a steady 80MB/s both read and write. (SATA-300).

Procedure:
1. Update all SATA controller drivers to the newest version just in case. My Computer -> Manage -> Device Manager -> Storage Devices -> <controller> -> Update Driver -> Update Automatically
2. Reboot computer to verify that the drivers work properly.
3. Shutdown computer, switch power supply off or unplug from wall before detaching the SATA cables
4. Move SATA cable to desired new SATA-port on the motherboard/SATA-controller card.
5. Replug the power supply. Start computer.
6. Login to Windows normally, wait for automatic device driver installation to finish and when prompted, reboot. (Device driver association is per port, but clearly volume information is writen on each disk in the spanning group and is not dependent on SATA-port numbers)
7. After reboot your are done. Have Fun!

Fixing Windows 7 Print Spooler crashing constantly (Event ID: 7031)

I got bitten by an irritating bug Microsoft introduced in some update during 2011 which causes the print spooler of Windows 7 64-bit (Home Premium and Xerox Phaser 6140DN network printer in my case, reported to do so on other flavours of Windows 7 and other printer manufacturers especially HP and Epson as well.)

Symptoms observed are: 

• Printer stops responding
• Network printers vanish from the Start -> Devices and Printers dialogue
• Event viewer will report in System evenlog continuous crashes (ID 7031) whenever the print spooler restarts (ID 7036)
• At least Xerox drivers cannot be reinstalled because the print spool service is down
• The print spooler service can be started and will promptly crash within seconds of restart

Mostly you get direction to run the Microsoft Printer Fix-it utility, which does absolutely nothing to this problem. Other suggested remedies are tweaking the registry which is printer manufacturer specific and might work for you or not. 

What works for me, though does not remove the problem permanently (it has reoccurred once for me and being fixed with the instructions below both times) is presented below:

Clear Printer Spooler files and enable the spooler service

1. Click the Start Button, type "Services" (without the quotation marks) in the open box and click OK.
2. Double-click "Printer Spooler" in the Services list.
3. Click Stop and click OK.
4. Click the Start Button, type "%WINDIR%\system32\spool\printers" in the open window, and delete all files in this folder. 

If you're not running with Administrator privileges you will be prompted to take control of the directory before you are shown the contents of it. 

Or if you can make a new shortcut on your desktop to CMD.EXE and right click the icon and select 'Run as Administrator...' since you need admin privileged to delete the spooler files. Then 

CD %WINDIR%\system32\spool\

DEL printers\*.*

Answer Y when prompted

5. Click the Start Button, click Run, type "Services" (without the quotation marks) in the open box and click OK.
6. Double-click "Printer Spooler" in the Services list to restart it

Fixing The Biggest Fault in Sun Sniper Pro Camera Strap

I bought a Sun Sniper Pro (SSP) camera strap a while back and since found that even though it is comfortable to use and many times over better than conventional camera straps it has one main fault - the shoulder pad slides on to your back after a while of repeated usage.

I solved this problem by acquiring a Blackrapid BRAD-strap which is an additional under your armpit extra strap for the Blackrapid camera straps, but happens to also fit the Sun Sniper Pro camera strap. It is a snug fit and when inserting on to the SSP-strap the integral steel wire is a bit in the way, but once you get the strap into the slots it works & fits perfectly. No more sliding!

So you can get the best of both worlds:
- the less clunky ball-bearing SSP camera connector and
- the Blackrapid BRAD-strapped shoulder pad.