May, 2005

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I open an Excel workbook and retrieve the names of all the worksheets? -- JG Hey, JG. It’s the first day back after a three-day weekend, and this morning all the Scripting Guys stumbled into the office and just stared blankly...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I change the Copy music to this location folder in Windows Media Player? -- BD Hey, BD. You know, a lot of people think that the reason we Scripting Guys don’t do very much work is because we’re just plain lazy. Those people...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I’m using the Win32_ComputerSystem class to get the name of the logged-on user. The name comes back formatted like this: Domain\Name . How can I extract just the user name? -- KW Hey, KW. As our much-beloved and highly-respected...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I save (to a separate file) all the paragraphs in a Word document that are formatted using a particular style, like Heading 1? -- RN Hey, RN. You know, when we first read this question we thought, “Interesting. But why would...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I use ADO to open a text file that has spaces in the file name? -- TL Hey, TL. You might not even remember sending us this question; to say it’s been awhile would be an understatement. (You should have seen all the dust...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I correlate logical drives and physical disks? -- LB Hey, LB. We’ll make a deal with you: we’ll show you a script that can tell you which logical drives are found on which physical disks, and you promise not to say, “Wait...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I remove the last carriage return-linefeed in a text file? -- LEK Hey, LEK. From the rest of your email you note that you’re using the FileSystemObject to read a text file, then using the contents of that text file as a...

Hey, Scripting Guy! At work we need to use a proxy server to connect to the Internet; when I take my laptop home to work, however, I don’t need to use a proxy server. I know I can use the Internet Options in Control Panel to change between using a proxy...

Hey, Scripting Guy! Our auditors have suggested that we randomly pick projects to examine and ensure that each project was completed and signed off per company policy. Because these projects are numbered sequentially I thought maybe we could write a script...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I access Active Directory on a specific domain controller? -- SD Hey, SD. You know, one of the cool things about Active Directory is that you usually don’t need to access the directory service on a specific domain...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I lower the priority of a process using a script? -- HS Hey, HS. As many of you know, all processes are not created equal; instead processes are assigned priority values. Processes with a high priority are executed more...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I display the vertical and horizontal resolutions of a .JPG file? -- ST Hey, ST. This is a very commonly-asked question, and for the longest time we had no answer for it: nothing built into the operating system seemed capable...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I get a list of all the disabled user accounts in Active Directory? -- RT Hey, RT. Now, just remember, you asked for this. We have a script that returns a list of disabled user accounts in Active Directory; the only problem...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I rename a local area connection? -- AP Hey, AP. You know, you hurt our feelings here: we Microsoft types spent a lot of time coming up with clever and catchy names like Local Area Connection, Local Area Connection 2, and...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I add an email address to the proxyAddresses attribute without overwriting all the existing attributes? -- DH Hey, DH. For those of you who aren’t too familiar with the proxyAddresses attribute (and, alas, that includes...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I create a shortcut in My Network Places? -- KP Hey, KP. You’ll have to excuse us if we sound a little out of breath; we’ve been running around like crazy looking for a complicated and highly-technical solution to this problem...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I make sure that Internet Explorer 6 checks for a new version on each visit to a Web page? -- MD Hey, MD. In baseball lingo we’d call this a can of corn: a lazy fly ball we couldn’t possibly drop. This is a tricky little...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I determine the week of the month a date falls in? -- AK Hey, AK. You’re probably familiar with the book Moby Dick , the story of a crazy sea captain who became obsessed with hunting down and finishing off the great white...

Hey, Scripting Guy! Is there any way to exit a loop in a script? -- MW Hey, MW. You know, when we started writing this column we intended it to be a simple little thing that answered those basic questions so many beginning scripters have: ...

Hey, Scripting Guy! Awhile back you showed people how they could combine several text files into a single file . I’d like to do the same thing in Word. How can I insert files into a Word document? -- HK Hey, HK. Believe it or not it’s actually easier...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I add a site to Internet Explorer’s Restricted Sites zone on a remote computer? -- NS Hey, NS. When it comes to scripting, Internet Explorer has a sort of dual personality. If you want to program the application itself,...