Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 January 14

= January 14 =

Microsoft Office problems
I received a Powerpoint presentation that I need to do a little editing on so saved a copy to my desktop. When I clicked to open the .pptx file I get the popup saying Windows can't open this file, the only way I can open the file is to go to Start, All Programs and open PowerPoint and from inside Powerpoint go File, Open and navigate to my file on the desktop, anyone any ideas what has gone wrong. This doesn't happen with Word docs. Mo ainm ~Talk  10:23, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Right-click -> Open with -> select PowerPoint and check the checkbox "always open with this program" -> press OK. If you do not see the "open with" option in the context menu you need to hold shift while rightclicking. Von Restorff (talk) 10:30, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I tried that, it isn't picking up PowerPoint in the selections of programs to use. Mo ainm  ~Talk  10:35, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * There is a browse button near the bottom right corner of the "Open with"-dialogbox. Click it, a window appears in which you can browse to the folder where powerpoint is installed and select powerpoint (usually named powerpnt.exe). Which windowsversion are you using? Von Restorff (talk) 10:37, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Got it working doing it that way thanks Von, I'm using Windows 7, any reason why this happened, I notice too now that txt files I had saved also on my desktop which were saved using Notepad also no longer open without going through the above steps, what the hell happened, have just ran a Virus check which came back clear, running MalwareBytes as I type see if that picks up anything. Mo ainm  ~Talk  10:47, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * YVW. I do not know what caused it, lets blame Bill Gates. Von Restorff (talk) 10:56, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * All scan came back clear, so have to back you up, "Bill you incompetent..." :) Thanks for the help. Mo ainm  ~Talk  11:08, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Don't jest! His Billiness had a very highly responsible position in Microsoft. If anything didn’t work out right, -he was responsible. Oh, Scrub that. The penny's just dropped! --Aspro (talk) 22:50, 14 January 2012 (UTC)


 * It's possible you installed some other program which registered itself as the default to open Powerpoint files. Perhaps then you uninstalled it again, so it was not available to open the file when clicked. I'm not sure whether a well-behaved uninstall program is expected to restore previous defaults.- gadfium 22:48, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * How do you explain the same thing happening to .txt files? Virii, malware, or weird bugs. Von Restorff (talk) 03:49, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

livejournal
Out of curoisity, if I post something onto this livejournal site, would there be any way of finding out whether anyone has read it? 148.197.81.179 (talk) 17:32, 14 January 2012 (UTC)


 * What you're probably looking for is typically called a "hit counter" or "web counter". These typically only track page visits, and can't tell if it's someone actually reading it, or if it's just a web spider, or you reloading the page to check the hit counter. I'm not familiar with livejournal, but searching for /livejournal hit counter/ give a few hits, although nothing I would class as definitive. -- 71.35.113.131 (talk) 19:00, 14 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Most modern web analytics tools — like Google Analytics — can give you pretty sophisticated views of who is reading it, how long they spend there, how many times they reload, if they are a bot or not, what search terms they used to find it, what links referred them to it, whether the same user is coming back later to read more pages, etc. Googling "Google Analytics Livejournal" turns up this page, which seems to imply that it is compatible. I don't use Livejournal myself, though. Google Analytics is dead easy to set up (and free) — I recommend it if you want to be able to suss out who is reading your stuff. --Mr.98 (talk) 19:19, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, and I see that's only for people that have their full paid account. Of course. 148.197.81.179 (talk) 20:42, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * wordpress.com Von Restorff (talk) 22:45, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I was on there, but I never bothered to update my blog, then lots of things changed and I wanted a fresh start to try and do better. A few hours in and I'm already regretting the move. 148.197.81.179 (talk) 23:29, 14 January 2012 (UTC)