April, 2005

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I change the user and computer account Description attributes each time a user logs on? I’d like the Description to indicate who logged on, and when. -- GG Hey, GG. This is actually a pretty good idea. One question we get...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I purge all the print jobs on a Windows 2000 print server? -- KC Hey, KC. This is one of those questions we hate, not because we don’t have an answer for it - we do - but because we have to temporarily abandon one of the...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I tell if a specific Excel workbook is open and, if it isn’t, open it? -- RK Hey, RK. Every now and then we see a question and think, “We should answer this one; it’s so easy it won’t take more than a few minutes to finish...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I add all the users from an existing Active Directory group to a new group? -- TG Hey, TG. So you have a group (we’ll call it Group A) and you want to create an exact replica of that group (we’ll call it Group B). If we...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I configure a computer to use a dynamically-assigned DNS Server? -- JB Hey, JB. Ah, this question brings back memories. A couple years ago the Scripting Guys were faced with this same problem, and discovered the answer entirely...

Hey, Scripting Guy! Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I add two blank lines between each line in a text file? -- LW Hey, LW. You know, when we wrote the Microsoft Windows 2000 Scripting Guide we included 4 or 5 examples of how you might work with text files...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I’m using a script to monitor process performance, but every time I run the script the percent processor time for all the processes comes out as 0. What am I doing wrong? -- JL Hey, JL. We’ve simplified your script a bit to better...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I pass command-line variables to an HTA when it starts? -- DM Hey, DM. Ok, we admit it: you almost had us on this one. (Not that being able to stump the Scripting Guys is particularly hard, mind you.) We had no idea whether...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I tell whether the member of a group is a user, a computer, or another group? -- ON Hey, ON. Interesting question and - to tell you the truth - one we’d never really thought about. It’s easy enough to list all the members...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I extract version information for a DLL or other type of file? -- DM Hey, DM. There at least two ways we know of to retrieve the version information for a file: one designed for working on the local computer and one that...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I search for user names in a text file? In my case, the user names all consist of 9 digits, although they can be any 9 digits. -- GG Hey, GG. Interesting question. You want to search for 9-digit numbers (like 123456789)...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I display a multi-valued attribute that I get back when using ADO to search Active Directory? -- ES Hey, ES. For the most part Active Directory is a script writer’s paradise; with very few exceptions anything you can do...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I have a text file that contains a bunch of names. How can I read through that text file and eliminate all the duplicate names? -- MW Hey, MW. We’re assuming you have a text file that looks something like this: Ken Myer Dean Tsaltas...

Hey, Scripting Guy! Can I bind to an Active Directory account using the user’s mailNickname or their sAMAccoutName, something other than the CN? -- MB Hey, MB. When you bind to an account in Active Directory, you need to pass GetObject the...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I insert a column into an Excel spreadsheet? -- HE Hey, HE. Let’s assume you have a spreadsheet that looks something like this: And, yes, it is a very nice little spreadsheet, except for one problem. As you can see, we...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I get a list of all the .pst files on a computer - along with their size and their location - and then save that information to a comma-separated values file? -- DC Hey, DC. If you hang around baseball fields long enough...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I print a test page to a printer? -- RR Hey, RR. As long as you’re running Windows XP this is an easy one; that’s because the revised Win32_Printer class introduced in Windows XP includes a method called PrintTestPage ....

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I convert a comma-separated values file to a tab-separated values file? -- RV Hey, RV. Depending on the nature of your comma-separated values (CSV) file this is either very easy or a little bit tricky. Let’s follow the Scripting...

Hey Scripting Guy! How can I delete a folder and all its subfolders? -- FB Hey, FB. You know, a lot of people think the Scripting Guys know everything there is to know about scripting. Let’s put it this way: we wish. In fact, it’s only when we begin...

Hey, Scripting Guy! Is there any way to monitor a folder for file creations and deletions, all with just one script? -- HA Hey, HA. By the way, thanks for the question: you temporarily saved us from answering a different question, one that was proving...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I have a folder of about 1,000 .RTF files. I need to convert all of these to Word documents (.DOC files). Can you help me with this? -- LS Hey, LS. Sure, we can help you. We’re not going to, but we could if we wanted to. No,...