Word 2007 PDF Gives Error Message

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I've been working on creating a PDF file through Word 2007, but when I uploaded it to my website people were getting Adobe Reader error messages when they tried to open it. It turned out they had to have the latest Adobe Reader Version 8.0 to read the document I created with Word 2007. What a bummer. I did find this way cool free software called PrimoPDF that did the trick. PrimoPDF allows you to take any document you can print and convert it into a PDF. PrimoPDF saved the day!

Remember most of our posts are taking place at Design Ninjas.

Outdoor Wi-Fi Hotspot Installation

Last week we did an Outdoor Wi-Fi Hotspot Installation and had a lot of fun with it. We used two D-Link DWL-7700AP Access Points for the installation. Before doing the install we were surprised that we could not find much information on the Internet about these units, so we decided to create a document containing step by step information about the installation. You can view the document here.

Remember, most of our posts are taking place at Design Ninjas.

Medicare MCE Claims Not Sending

I hate dealing with transmitting medical Insurance claims, but that's what I did today. It all started about five years ago when I got a call from a lady at a local Doctor's office that told me her modem wasn't working. I thought, Gee, no big deal, that will be easy to fix. I went out and found out that she referred to her computer as her modem and when she said not working she meant she didn't know how to use it. I've now learned to ask people, "What do you mean so & so is not working, or how do you know it isn't working?"

Back to the story, after some questions I found out what she really needed was to get setup with Medicare to do electronic claim submissions. So, after about a week of me studying the software, and talking to Medicare, and learning about billing codes, and inputting a zillion codes, we were set and uploading claims.

Fast forward about five years and it stopped working. Claims were only being sent partially and sometimes not at all. We found that the Medicare Claims Express Software, or MCE, had corrupted data. The symptoms were when we went to "Workday Wrap up" the blue bar did not go to the top of the screen, but it did create the file to send. We could transmit the file just fine through Hyper Terminal, but Medicard did not receive it correctly.

As luck may have it, our the backup started failing last September and no one ever checked it. We were able to take all the files from the backup that started with ptnt* and overwrite the current corrupted files and then all started working fine again. Who would have thought a failed backup would save us?

Vista's Zip Extractor & Snipping Tool

I'm now into week 2 of using Vista and I have found that the built in Zip extractor is extremely slow. It took it over 2 minutes to extract a 1.38MB file. I did find that WinRAR works on Vista and it extracted the same file in seconds.

Now, one thing I have found that I love about Vista is the Snipping Tool. It works like Print Screen on Steroids! You click the Snipping Tool and then select which area of the desktop you want to cut out as a picture and then it automatically opens up a new box with the area you selected. You can then save the file as a JPEG and you're done.

Remember, most of our posts are taking place at Design Ninjas.

Getting Oriented with Windows Vista Business

I've been working on getting Windows Vista Business Edition loaded this weekend. Currently, I have it setup in a dual boot with Windows XP. I ran the Vista Beta for a few months, and enjoyed it even though it was a bit slow. I'm pleased to say the final release of Vista seems to operate a lot faster than the Beta did. Here are some of the things I've ran into during this initial setup.

1. The start menu of course has changed, and I believe for the better, no more pop-out menus. Hooray!!!





2. Windows Mobile center automatically detected my Dell Axim, and after I deleted current partnerships it started syncing up just fine. I like the Interface here also.





3. I keep getting these pop up messages about switching my color scheme. Currently I'm running Windows Aero, but anytime I open Macromedia Fireworks, Trillian, or any web page with Active X content it switches my Color Scheme to Windows Basic. It's somewhat annoying, but the good news is as soon as I close the program causing the problem Vista automatically goes back to Aero.





4. Vista has some black and white wallpaper choices...finally. I don't like my wallpaper to be noisy and generally I stick with just a plain color, but now Vista has added a few black and white selections.





5. Vista Help and Support is actually helpful. I had to search for where to change the hidden files settings and when I went to Help and Support there was an option that Vista would do it for me. I clicked and boom Vista changed the setting. I was shocked.





6. Of course there are some program compatibility issues that I have noticed. Zone Alarm gives a big warning and I had trouble installing AVG. My AVG Resident Shield still will not load, even though it ran in Beta and AVG claims it should work.





7. Adobe Illustrator fussed a little after install and told me I did not have privileges. I went to help and support and Vista suggested I right click the program icon and go to the Compatibility tab. Once there I could tell it to "Run this program as an administrator" and what do you know........Vista Help and Support came through again.






My overall Vista satisfaction rating is about an 8, even though Vista only rates my experience as a 2.6.





I would still recommend people wait 6 months to upgrade and give software companies time to work out these minor issues.

Remember, most of our posts are taking place at Design Ninjas.

QuickBooks Performance Issue

I've had a ton of trouble with QuickBooks lately, it was almost time to call in the QuickBooks Queen, but alas I solved the slow QuickBooks mystery.

Here's the scanario: Computer A hosted the QuickBooks company file and ran QuickBooks. Computer B ran QuickBooks locally, but pulled the data from Computer A. Both computers were had the same hardware specs and all other programs worked normally, except QuickBooks.

Symptoms: QuickBooks opened terribly slow after logon...32 seconds to be exact after entering the password. When switching company files it was the same thing, 32 seconds. (Keep in mind these are good computers with a lot of RAM and Processor power).

What we found: Computer A happened to also be the Spector CNE server and Computer A & B both had the Spector Recorders installed and reporting data to Computer A. When we uninstalled the recorder from Computer B the QuickBooks company file would open the file from Computer A 10 times faster.

The problem: Apparently if you host the QuickBooks file on a computer and that computer is also the Spector CNE server, and if the other computer wanting to open QuickBooks has the Spector CNE recorder then the performance of QuickBooks is degraded. It seemed that even if I switched the files around so that Computer A was pulling the data from B that there was still a performance issue, so I think that if you have Spector CNE Recorder installed at all then QuickBooks seems to take a hit over the network.

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Restore QuickBooks Updates After a Reinstall

I usually hate it when I have to reinstall QuickBooks and wait for all of the updates to load. It seems to take forever. I finally figured out that the QuickBooks updates are stored in the C:\Program Files\Intuit\QuickBooks Pro\Components\DownloadQB13 folder and all you have to do is back this folder up. Once you reinstall QuickBooks you then can copy the DownloadQB13 folder over the top of the newly installed folder, and then when you open QuickBooks it will load the updates.


If you don't see the folder DownloadQB13, then just look for a folder under the Intuit directory named Downloadxxxx. The folder number varies by version of QuickBooks.


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