Enable 'Appear Offline' status on Lync 2013

Most of us use Microsoft Lync 2013 at work. There could be various occasions when one might have wanted to be online but invisible to contacts. I bet the ‘Managers’ want this badly.

By default, Microsoft Lync 2013 enable users to set their presence to one of the following six states:-

There is a way to enable ‘Appear Offline’ mode in Lync 2013. When a user selects this option, he or she appears to be offline. In fact, all of the user’s contacts see a presence icon indicating the user is offline.

For the users to have the option of "Appear Offline" you must create a new registry key and registry value on the computer running Lync 2013.

Caution:
Incorrectly editing the registry may severely damage your system. Before making changes to the registry, you should back up any valued data on the computer.

Here are the steps:-

To add Registry entry using Command Prompt

1. Open Command prompt with Administrative privileges.
2. Type or copy paste below registry entry and press Enter button from Keyboard.

reg add HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Lync /v EnableAppearOffline /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f 

3. Now Exit Lync 2013 and reopen the same. Now you will “AppearOffline” status.


To add Registry entry using Windows Registry

1. Open Registry and go to

HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Lync

Note: If you are unable to see any folder then create folder.

2. Right click on blank space and select REG_DWORD (32 or 64 bit) per machine.
3. Type value name as ‘EnableAppearOffline’ and value data is “1”.

4. Now Exit Lync 2013 and reopen the same. Now you will “AppearOffline” status.

Use Office Communicator in 'Appear Offline' Mode

Most of us use Microsoft Office Communicator at work. There could be various occasions when one might have wanted to be online but invisible to contacts. I bet the ‘Managers’ want this badly.

By default, Office Communicator 2007 R2 enable users to set their presence to one of the following five states:-

There is a way to enable ‘Appear Offline’ mode in Office Communicator. When a user selects this option, he or she appears to be offline. In fact, all of the user’s contacts see a presence icon indicating the user is offline.

For the users to have the option of "Appear Offline" you must create a new registry key and registry value on the computer running Office Communicator.

Caution:
Incorrectly editing the registry may severely damage your system. Before making changes to the registry, you should back up any valued data on the computer.

Here are the steps:-

1. Log on to a computer that is running Office Communicator.
2. Click Start, and then click Run.
3. In the Run dialog box, type regedit, and then press ENTER.
4. In Registry Editor, expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, expand Software, expand Policies, expand Microsoft, click Communicator.
5. Right-click the Communicator registry key, point to New, and then click DWORD (32-bit) Value.
6. After the new value is created, type EnableAppearOffline to rename the value.
7. Double-click the new EnableAppearOffline registry value.
8. In the Edit DWORD (32-bit) Value dialog box, type 1 in the value data box, and then click OK.

 

After making above change, exit from Office Communicator (from system tray) and relaunch it. After signing back to Office Communicator you should able to see "Appear Offline" on the  option of the Office Communicator.

How to play .mkv file on Sony Bravia LED TV?

 
I am noticing that people are complaining about Sony Bravia LED TV not playing .mkv files. So here is a guide on how to play them.

.mkv is a multimedia container file format. This shall be converted to .m2ts (MPEG-2 Transport Stream) multimedia container file format. Sony Bravia supports the m2ts file format. .mkv is a container and .m2ts is also a container. This application only change the container. It doesn't reencode the video. So there is no huge cpu requirement.

 tsMuxeR (Transport Stream Muxer) shall be used to mux the mkv file format to the m2ts file format.
(http://www.videohelp.com/tools/tsMuxeR)

1. Download tsMuxeR GUI. It's a freeware. You can download it from here.
2. In the Input tab, Add the .mkv file you want to play.
3. If you select the video track, there is an option to change level, if it is greater than 4.1, change it to 4.1.
4. In the Output tab, select M2TS muxing and point the output to a destination folder and click on start muxing.
5. Now thus obtained m2ts file can be played by the Sony bravia.

It will take about 2Mins., if you are muxing 2GB file and so on.

Bravia can read exFAT, FAT32,FAT16 (File size support 4GB, Disc size support 32GB).

So don't just buy a TV on the basis of playing .mkv files. Choose the TV with the best picture quality and features.

How to set homepage for new tabs in Mozilla Firefox?

To permanently set new tabs to open on your homepage (or any web page you like), do the following:

1. Type "about:config" in the navigation pane.
2. A message will appear, informing you that, you could really screw something up if you don't know what you're doing. Click "I'll be careful. I promise".
3. Search for "browser.newtab.url".
4. Double click on it, and change the value to whatever web page you want new tabs to default to (i.e. http://www....)
5. Click OK and you're done!

How to Take a Screenshot in Microsoft Windows

Full Screen Screenshot 

Press the "Print Screen" button on your keyboard.

The "Print Screen" button may be labeled "Prt Sc", "Prnt Scrn", "Print Scrn", or similar. On most keyboards, the button is usually found next to the "F12" and "Scroll Lock" keys. On laptop keyboards, you may have to press the "Fn" or "Function" key to access "Print Screen".

Active Window Screenshot

If you want to take a screenshot of just one window, make sure that the window is the "active" window on your screen. This means that it should be in front of all your other windows. Then, hold down the "Alt" key and press "Print Screen".