Importing Visio diagram to PowerPoint

If you try to copy paste a Visio diagram (for eg: Organization chart, Timeline or Workflow) into PowerPoint, you will notice that it gets copied as an image. You can only resize this image in PowerPoint and cannot do any editing operations on it - like modifying the text in the image or changing the shapes in it.

To get around this limitation, make use of the Windows Metafile format. Here's how...

1. In Visio, select the page containing your diagram. 

2. Click File > Save As and save the diagram as a Windows Metafile (wmf).

3. In your PowerPoint file, click Insert ribbon tab and select Picture

4. Browse to the folder containing the wmf file saved in step 2 and select it. The image will now show up on the slide. 

5. Select the image and go to Format ribbon tab. Select Group > Ungroup option. 

6. Now if you click at any place on the image, you will be able to edit the text or make changes to the shapes in it. 

This does not give you a lot of control on the editing, but it is definitely a good work around if you ever need to share your Visio diagrams in a PowerPoint file and keep the text in the diagram editable. 

PowerPoint slide shows for wider screens.

According to recent statistics at http://www.screenresolution.org/year-2012/, compared to 2011, significant number of people are on screen resolutions above 1024.
Around 14% use screen width of 1366, 22% use screen width of 1280 and 16% use screen width of 1024.

When prototyping and designing a mockup for new websites, if you are using PowerPoint, a hidden feature in it is the ability to setup the page size so that the slides occupy the full screen width. You can access this feature by going to Design Tab and selecting Page Setup. By default, the slides are sized for 4:3 display size which works great for 1024 x 768 screen resolution. However, if you are preparing a presentation or storyboard for a wide screen device, change the resolution accordingly. On my 1366 x 768 screen size, I prefer to go with 16:9. 

Fix for "Can not log on locally to WebRole with virtual directory password"

Recently after a domain password change, I got the following error in trying to run the webrole. 

Can not log on locally to WebRole as user "domain\username" with virtual directory password 

Resolving this error is simple. 

1. Open IIS Manager

2. Select the site. Default Web site in my case and click "Basic Settings..."

3. This opens the Edit Site dialog.Click "Connect as". 

4. In the Connect As dialog, click Set and provide the new password in the Set Credentials dialog. 

5. Come back to Edit Site dialog and click "Test Settings..."

6. Once the connections succeeds, you should be able to successfully open the site in your browser.

Converting time zones in Excel.

If you have one column (C) in Excel with a list of date time values (PST) and want to have another column (D) in Excel that should show IST, you can use the following formula in the column D.

= C1 + TIMEVALUE("12:30")