Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2013 November 12

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

November 12

Can I use wildcard in searching with google or other search engine?

For example, If I want to search Anscombe's quartet but only know the first word starts with an A, what is the fastest way to find it?--58.251.146.130 (talk) 02:48, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

As far as I know it does not support that. It only has the wildcard * for complete words in phrases. However it will find things which are based on the same word if you don't include a phrase in quote marks. So no it can't find his works which start with A. With a suitable search it might find alphabetic indexes of the type of work though if you can specify that better or if you give the names of a couple of people who have written similar works. Dmcq (talk) 10:34, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

pre amp specs

Hi

I'm having trouble comprehending the below specs of a preamp more pertinently its frequency response specs 10Hz ~ 50kHz @+50dB (40Hz~15kHz : +0.06, -0.58dB)

So the part in the parentheses obviously says that the linearity from 40 to 15k is +0.06 -0.58dB, but the one before it: 10hz - 50khz @ +50db is the latter (@+50db) referring to the gain or is it the tolerance ?? The letter I kinda doubt since that'd seem awfully too large..

can someone clarify better on this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.35.30.99 (talk) 03:07, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

This page can't be displayed

When I edit a somewhat larger page on Wikipedia and save, the page I see next is "This page can't be displayed •Make sure the web address https://en.wikipedia.org is correct. •Look for the page with your search engine. •Refresh the page in a few minutes. •Make sure TLS and SSL protocols are enabled. Go to Tools > Internet Options > Advanced > Settings > Security." Is there a way to fix this? -- Jreferee (talk) 04:41, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps you are running low on memory ? If so, try a reboot and don't run anything else, and see if that makes a difference. StuRat (talk) 19:54, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I think it might my internet connection. I'll call them to see if they can address the problem. -- Jreferee (talk) 06:02, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Why are YouTube annotations off by default? How do I set them to always stay on by default?

I don't remember turning the annotations default options to "OFF." How do I make it stay "ON" for any video again? It frustrates me to realize that after nearly finishing a video, I missed all the annotations. Thanks. --2602:30A:2EE6:8600:D59D:C79F:6214:1B7 (talk) 05:56, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Vanishing whitespace

I'm unsure if this is a Wikipedia problem or something from my end. I using Ubuntu 13.10, FF 25.0 and gedit 3.8.3. I added references here (note all the whitespace removed) which I had copied from List of football stadiums in Scotland. The original references had an access date from September but I was just double checking them for accuracy. Because of the old access date I wanted to update them so I copied all the 2013–14 Scottish Premiership into gedit and did a search and replace, then pasted it back and saved. Next I copied the corrected references to here (no whitespace removed). It was after that I saw that the first edit had removed a large amount of whitespace and I assumed I had made an error.

Next I did the same thing here but being careful about only replacing 30 September 2013 with 11 November 2013. However the whitespace was still removed. So finally I copied the references to here. I copied that article to gedit and making no search and replace copied it straight back to the article. As you can see the whitespace is gone. However, on my computer in gedit all the whitespace is still there.

Looking at the article from a readers point of view they are the same other than the addition of the references. However, for the editor it makes quite a bit of difference to how things line up in the edit window. Any one know why that is happening? CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 08:09, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like the various software to render the page handles whitespace differently, with some removing it and some leaving it in. You might try using <br> to insert blank lines, instead.StuRat (talk) 19:57, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not really bothered about the whitespace vanishing but I know some editors really want it. I just copied the line "| bases =" from {{Infobox airline}} and pasted into an article that I was editing. In that article just the same as here it automatically removed the whitespace. Weird. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 00:26, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Printing file tree to a text file

I have a very specific task that I'm looking to accomplish. Given an arbitrary directory path in Windows, I wish to print out the paths of all the files and folders within it in a very particular way. For instance, say I choose to apply this operation in C:\Users\Owner\Documents\. The tree would be printed out in this manner:

Books\
Books\Nietzsche\Beyond Good and Evil.epub
Books\The Republic.edub
Scripts\
Scripts\Generate-GUID.ps1
Scripts\Search.ps1
Scripts\Tree.ps1
Brochure.docx
Calibri.ttf

Folders are ended with a backslash while files are not and the tree structure looks very much like that displayed in the sidebar of Windows Explorer in Windows 7. I've tinkered with PowerShell, but I can't get it to work like this. — Melab±1 ☎ 14:51, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

I think this should do it - from a command prompt, with your path set to the folder you want the information for, type

dir /s /b | sort /o:(some file location for your output)

--LarryMac | Talk 15:52, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

You could also use the command "dir /s /b /o:e > [filename]" to print to a text file, then use your favorite text editor's Find-Replace function to replace "C:\Users\Owner\Documents\" with nothing, giving you the directory list you asked for. -- 140.202.10.130 (talk) 19:06, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

No. That fails to print the folders. — Melab±1 ☎ 11:06, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

The output looks a lot like find in *nix... Perhaps CoreUtils on Windows may be of use? →Σσς. (Sigma) 00:54, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Converting an Excel file to a Word file

I am trying to take my Excel file and save it as a Word file. In Excel, it is a spreadsheet; in Word, it would be a table. When I do a simple "copy and paste", it works; the information gets transferred over from Excel into a Word table. But ... the formatting seems to get all screwed up (margins, column widths, the way that words do or do not wrap around, etc.). What looks perfect in Excel comes out looking very messed up in the Word table. (I spent many hours formatting the Excel file, so that it looks just right.) So, is there some "trick" to getting the Word table to look like an exact replica (in format) of the Excel spreadsheet? The whole purpose of this is to transfer a "form" that I created from Excel into Word, so that a mail merge can then be performed in Word. Therefore, I can't transfer the Excel information over as a "picture"; it has to be regular text in Word, so that Word can do the mail merge. Thanks! Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:15, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

It's not trivial, but it looks like there are ways to emulate a mail merge in Excel. Here's a page with an example document: [1]. Maybe that will help if you can't get the formatting right in Word. Katie R (talk) 18:14, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I had already seen that, and I had tried that. It's more trouble than it's worth. I prefer to use Word; it's just a matter of trying to get the Word document to format properly (as does the Excel document). By the way, this question is an extension of the following question (Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2013 November 6#Generate a report in Excel 2010), in which that same Excel mail merge link was discussed. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 18:32, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, you would expect Microsoft to allow you to copy cell widths, word-wrap settings, etc. direct from Excel to Word, but it seems not to do this accurately. You will probably need to reformat the table in Word to match the exact formatting in Excel, and, even then, there are some differences in what you are allowed to do in Word and Excel. In future, of course, it would be better to design your documents in Word, but that advice doesn't help you with your current problem. Have a look at the table formatting menu and see how much you can match. I've had the same problem, and haven't found a solution other than time-consuming fiddling with layout, but perhaps someone else knows a trick? Dbfirs 22:19, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Wow, that is really frustrating. As you say, one would think that Microsoft would allow for a seamless transition from Excel to Word. I guess not. So, the only alternative is – before the transfer – to fiddle with the layout in Excel, so that it will come out correct in Word. Or – after the transfer – to fiddle with the layout in Word and adjust it to match the Excel. Very frustrating and very time consuming! Thanks for the reply. If anyone else has any suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 01:47, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I know you can embed an Excel spreadsheet in Word as an Excel object. I can't find anything with simple searches that says if that will work with Mail Merge, but I doubt that it will. It may be worth trying if you haven't already. Katie R (talk) 16:55, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I didn't think of that, and I may try it. My gut tells me that it will not work with a mail-merge. It's worth a try. I can't believe that what would seem like such a simple function with Microsoft integrated products is actually so complicated! Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:19, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Why could I only go to sites I had been to?

I keep the computer I use at home safe by limiting myself to Wikipedia and a few other select sites. I live near a college library and during the time I had spent on a computer there (Mozilla Firefox, Windows XP), I had gone to Hotmail, Facebook and imdb, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer comics (which don't work right at home), and Amy Dickinson, and I had done a couple of Google searches. I heard someone say the Internet was down. That couldn't be. I was going to Google and getting results, and I was looking at a children's feature called The Mini Page and able to go from page to page in that. I tried the other sites I had been on and they worked. I could go to any page In Facebook or imdb even if I hadn't gone to that page. But I couldn't go to any of the sites I hadn't seen yet, so I kept looking at Facebook and imdb. A few minutes later I heard someone say the network was back up. I still couldn't get to a site I hadn't gone to. A few minutes after that, everything worked. How could this happen?— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:14, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

It's possible that all of the pages you looked at when the Internet was "down" were cached locally (because you or someone on the same network had looked at them recently). It must have taken a few minutes for caching servers to catch up when international connections were restored. Dbfirs 22:09, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Not the individual pages.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 22:40, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

It probably has to do with name servers. Whenever you type the name of a site, such as google.com, a name server is consulted to translate that name into an IP address. Some systems are capable of caching those IP addresses for a period of time. So it's possible that if the computer lost access to a functioning name server (which is not all that uncommon), then you would only be able to use names that had been looked up recently. If that's the explanation, then you would still have been able to visit other sites by typing their IP addresses, if you happened to know them. Looie496 (talk) 00:34, 13 November 2013 (UTC)