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How to comment a block of code in the Office VBA Editor

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Being able to comment a block of code is a standard operation in any IDE, but for some reason the Microsoft Office VBA Editor does not include that functionality by default. However, the functionality is there and waiting to be used, it’s just hidden in the “Edit” toolbar which is not visible be default.

How to add the comment & uncomment buttons to the Office VBA Editor

  1. Open the VBA Editor (Alt + F11).
  2. Right click anywhere on the toolbar.
  3. Select the “Edit” Toolbar.
    Image showing how to add the "edit" toolbar in Office VBA to allow you to easily comment and uncomment blocks of code in VBA
  4. You will now be able to quickly and easily comment a block of code (or uncomment) using these new buttons on your toolbar:
    Image showing comment and uncomment buttons on VBA Toolbar
  5. Done!

 

Here is a short video showing how to enable the edit toolbar to get access to the comment and uncomment buttons:

Hope this helps!

How to install telnet client on Windows Server 2016 or 2012

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Windows Server does not install Telnet by default, it’s such a tiny executable I cannot understand why it is left out by default. however it is very easy to enable telnet on Windows Server 2016 or 2012. If you do not have telnet installed you will see this message from the command line:

Image showing telnet not available in Windows Server
Telnet is not recognized as an internal or external command.

 

Install Telnet Client on Windows Server 2016 or Windows Server 2012 using the command line

The command line is the quickest way of installing the telnet client, very simply just type:

dism /online /Enable-Feature /FeatureName:TelnetClient

Image showing how to install telnet client on Windows Server 2016

 

Install Telnet Client on Windows Server 2016 using Server Manager

You can use Server Manager to install the telnet client, but it is a much longer process than doing it via the command line, here is a short video of the correct options to select.

Check that Telnet is installed

To check if your installation was successful, just go into a command prompt and type “telnet” and you should come to the interactive telnet prompt, like this:

Image showing successful installation of telnet client on Windows Server 2016

How to change network profile on Windows Server 2016

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Under some circumstances Windows Server will automatically select a network profile for you which does not match your needs. It’s not very clear how to change it between public and private within the network and sharing center. In my opinion the easiest way is to use Windows Powershell to change network profile on Windows Server 2016.

Image showing network conneciton in Windows Server 2016 set to public profile.

Here is how to change the profile from public to private for your network connection on Windows Server 2016. There are several methods of doing this but I find the GUI method to be very unclear. So here I am going to document how to change the network profile using Powershell.

How to change network profile on Windows Server 2016 to Private using Powershell

  1. Open Powershell
  2. Type Get-NetConnectionProfile
    Image showing Powershell to get the current network profile
  3. If you have only one network connection you can change the profile to private by typing: 
    Get-NetConnectionProfile | Set-NetConnectionProfile -NetworkCategory Private

    Image showing how to change network profile on Windows Server 2016 from Public to Private

  4. If you have multiple network interfaces and would like to change a specific adapter use the Interface Index Property like this: 
    Set-NetConnectionProfile -InterfaceIndex 3 -NetworkCategory Private
  5. You can then verify the change has taken place by running Get-NetConnectionProfile again:
    Image showing Windows Server 2016 Network Connection with a Private Profile

Obviously you can also use this method to switch back to a public profile:

Switch to public network profile

Set-NetConnectionProfile -InterfaceIndex 3 -NetworkCategory  Public

Switch to domain network profile

You cannot use this method to switch to a domain profile because that happens automatically.

How to append to a file with PowerShell

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It’s easy to append text to a file with Windows Powershell with the Add-Content cmdlet, here are some examples:

  1. Create a sample text file using notepad. I have created mine like this:
    Image showing text file which will have text appended to it using Powershell Add-Content cmdlet
  2. Open a Powershell Window and type: 
    Add-Content C:\temp\test.txt "Test"

    If you open the text file again, you will see the text has been appended on to the end of the existing line:
    Image showing how text file after text has been appended with Powershell Add-Content cmdlet

The above example is fine, but as you can see the data was not written to a new line.

Example PowerShell to append text to a file on to a new line

To append content on to a new line you need to use the escape character followed by the letter “n”:

So to continue the example above you could use:

Add-Content C:\temp\test.txt "`nThis is a new line"

And then the resulting text file would look like this:

Image of a text file which has had data appended to it on a new line using Windows Powershell Add-Content cmdlet

 

Append formatted data with Powershell by using tabs and new lines

This example creates a tab formatted file, the output looks like this:

Image showing how to format a text document using tabs and newline with powershell Add-Content cmdlet

The Powershell to create the above example is:

Add-Content C:\temp\test.txt "`nItem`tQty`tValue`tTotal"
Add-Content C:\temp\test.txt "`nPants`t4`t32.22`t128.88"
Add-Content C:\temp\test.txt "`nSocks`t3`t5.07`t15.21"
Add-Content C:\temp\test.txt "`nShoes`t12`t136.57`t1638.84"

As you can see, the tabs are added with the special character “`t”.

 

Disable Server Manager when logging in to Windows Server 2016

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By default, when logging in to Windows Server 2016, Server Manager automatically starts with your session. I find it really annoying. Here are three ways to disable automatic startup of Server Manager:

Method One: Disable Server Manager using server manager properties.

  1. Within Server Manager click on manage and then “Server Management Properties”:
    Image showing how to access Server Manager Properties to disable startup of Server Manager when logging into Windows Server 2016
  2. Within Server Manager Properties, tick the box that says “Do not start Server Manager automatically at logon”:
    Image showing how to disable server manager at logon on Windows Server 2016 using Server Manager Properties.

Method Two: Use Group Policy Editor (Will change the setting for all users)

  1. Run gpedit.msc to edit the policy of the local machine or domain wide Group Policy Management Console
  2. Go to Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System -> Server Manager:
    Image showing how to disable server manager at startup using group policy

Method Three: Disable Server Manager from Task Scheduler

  1. Open Task Scheduler
  2. In the left hand navigation pane,  go to Task Scheduler Library -> Microsoft -> Windows -> Server Manager
  3. Right Click on the “ServerManager” Task and choose disable:
    Image showing how to disable Server Manager in Windows Server 2016 using the Task Scheduler Library

Method Four: Use PowerShell to disable the Server Manager Scheduled Task

  1. Run Windows PowerShell
  2. Enter the command:
Get-ScheduledTask -TaskName ServerManager | Disable-ScheduledTask -Verbose

You should see output like this:
Image Showing how to disable Server Manager using Windows Powershell

 

So many methods to achieve the same result. Depending on how many servers you are looking after will determine which is the best option for you. I hope this helps.

Office 365: Change Primary email address of Active Directory user

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It is simple to change the Primary Email Address of an Office 365 user when your tenant is not being synced to your on-premises active directory, but if you are syncing to Office 365 with any of the following tools:

  • Windows Azure Active Directory Sync (DirSync)
  • Azure AD Sync (AADSync)
  • Azure Active Directory Connect

Then you will be unable to change any of email addresses associated with that account, and you will get the following error:

 

The operation on mailbox “Mailbox” failed because it’s out of the current user’s write scope. The action ‘Set-Mailbox’, ‘EmailAddresses’, can’t be performed on the object ‘Mailbox’ because the object is being synchronized from your on-premises organization. This action should be performed on the object in your on-premises organization.

Image showing error from Office 365 when trying to change the primary SMTP address for an account that is synced to a local active directory.

How to change the Primary Email Address for an Office 365 account using Active Directory Users and Computers

  1. Open Active Directory Users and Computers
  2. Ensure you have “Advanced Features” enabled from the view menu:
    Image showing how to enable the "Advanced Features" in Active Directory Users and Computers
  3. Double click on the user that you want to edit the email addresses for.
  4. Go to the “Attribute Editor” tab.
  5. Go to the “proxyAddresses” attribute and click edit.
  6. Edit the email addresses as per your requirements. Note that the primary address (which is the address that the user will send emails from) is in uppercase “SMTP”.
    Image showing how to edit the proxyaddresses attribute for an Office 365 user synced to local active directory.

 

How to change the Primary Email Address for an Office 365 account using Powershell

You can perform the same operation using Windows Powershell, the basic syntax is like this:

Set-ADUser paulie -Add @{ProxyAddresses="SMTP:[email protected]"}

The problem with running this command is that you may already have a primary SMTP address set and this will not stop you from adding another one. So first of all run:

get-aduser paulie -properties proxyaddresses | Select-Object Name,ProxyAddresses |fl

This will show you all the current proxy addresses for this user. If you want to remove an existing proxy address you can use:

Set-ADUser paulie -Remove @{ProxyAddresses="smtp:[email protected]"}

It is possible neither of the above methods will work if you have never had Exchange installed locally, as the users will not have these attributes. You can follow the instructions on this page in order to get the attributes enabled for your users.