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All Posts (562)

• 

  Published on

  2024-11-12 4:40 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  MicrosoftExcelOneDrive

  "Performing cleanup" - Excel is stuck with an old, conflicted file and will never recover.

  This article explains how to untangle Excel when a worksheet file is conflicted and upload-blocked beyond salvation, thanks to a little demon inhabiting your computer. Don't believe me? Oh, do read on - there's plenty to be said about this particular gremlin. And if you're a regular reader, you probably already know which little fiend I'm talking about here... Background This is a rare case where I use a period in the title of the post.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-11-05 6:55 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  EntraIDTeamsToolkit

  How to add multiple app URIs for your Entra app registration?

  This article explains an issue that you probably shouldn't run into - unless you're doing something a bit dumb. Just like I was. Or still am. Namely, I really needed an app I registered in Entra ID to have multiple "app identifier URIs" for reasons that are not great, but that I'll go into momentarily. Background Well, this was a bit random 😁

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• 

  Published on

  2024-10-29 4:44 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  DevOpsGitHubActionsYAML

  How to access Environment Secrets with GitHub Actions?

  This article aims to clear the confusion around the GitHub Repository Secrets and explain how to successfully use them in your pipelines for fun and profit! Well, mostly for additional security and pipeline parameterization, really... But still - it's a good piece of functionality to wrap your head around and implement in your daily work. Problem When wanting to use Environment-specific secrets with GitHub Actions, the right sequence of steps is - in theory - quite clear.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-10-22 3:08 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  CopilotWindows

  Copilot app on Windows refusing to use your Personal account? Easy fix!

  This article explains a quick fix to a very topical issue: Copilot app suddenly becoming hostile to you due to your work credentials, and incredibly, carrying that grudge on and on, even after you've signed out of your work account (as per the bots demands) and signed in with your personal account. What a bitter and unforgiving person this bot is. Won't forget about your past mistakes. But no fear! We'll find a way to calm them down and keep on keeping on.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-10-19 10:27 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  ScottishSummitSessions

  Level Up Your Teams Extensibility Game with Blazor - Session materials from Scottish Summit 2024

  This article will contain links, materials, slides (should I get the permission to post them) and other stuff related to my session at Scottish Summit 2024. In case you stopped by my session - thanks! If you're just visiting for any reason - make sure to check the slides out first, and the rest should probably make more sense to you! Right now, it'll have a few missing pieces (everything that has a [TBA] tag will be added later).

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• 

  Published on

  2024-10-15 7:40 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  TeamsFXMicrosoftTeams

  What do you get from a Microsoft Teams App template in Visual Studio?

  This article explains briefly what the different Microsoft Teams App templates in Visual Studio are for and what capabilities do they come with. It's a lot to wade through, but I hope this article is able to explain the basics. Background Lately, I've been playing around with Blazor and Teams again.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-10-08 4:23 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  BlazorIntellisenseVisualStudio

  Intellisense not working for Fluent components in Blazor project? Easy fix!

  This article explains a couple of easy fixes for an issue, where Visual Studio refuses to properly recognize the FluentUI components you might have used in your Blazor projects. Because apparently that can (kind of randomly) happen! Problem The screenshot below shows a sample from Microsoft's basic Teams tab extension template. For me, Intellisense for FluentUI components didn't work out-of-the-box. Visual Studio would instead simply complain about unexpected markup.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-10-01 10:26 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  PowerShellWindowsWinGet

  winget is broken again.

  ... because of course it is! Ah well, winget is a great idea with a decent implementation, suffering from an unstable platform it's built on. I've now seen it break down seemingly randomly 3 times - once it was one of the many reasons I had to reinstall Windows completely. But as usual - let's take a step back. How and why did I get started on this via dolorosa? Background A while back I was going to use winget to update my apps to their latest versions, as I've done before.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-09-24 6:37 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  PowerToysWindows11

  How to fix PowerToys FancyZones in Windows 11?

  This article explains how to fix an issue where FancyZones (from the fantastic Windows PowerToys toolset) fails to work because it conflicts with the built-in window management in Windows 11. I guess it's too much to ask for a level of coordination here from Microsoft... Oh well.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-09-17 12:23 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  CertificatesOpenSSLPowerShell

  How to export the whole SSL (or TLS) certificate chain based on the original using PowerShell?

  Every now and then, you run into a situation where you have a certificate for a website or service, but for one reason or another, you don't have the whole chain. You're missing some or all of the intermediaries, and even the root certificate, perhaps. This is something I run into constantly. This article explains how to fix it! Background In my day-to-day work, I maintain a number of customer systems running in Azure.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-09-10 7:08 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  GoogleChrome

  How to solve keyboard shortcuts not working in Google Chrome on Windows?

  This article explains a fix to a puzzling issue I had with Google Chrome, where my keyboard shortcuts would seemingly randomly stop working and I'd need to click around (or change to another application with Alt+Tab) to get them working again. Luckily, the solution (or I guess it's more like a workaround, as usual) turned out to be simple.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-09-03 2:43 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  OneNoteWindows

  Search (and secretly, sync) broken in OneNote? A quick fix!

  This article explains how to fix sudden and surprising synchronization problem(s) in OneNote, that first surfaces as search (the one you open with CTRL+E, not the unified/M365-wide top bar search) not finding any results from the page content, even if it might find some from the page or section titles. This exciting story has it all: Manually triggering a job that should be automatic, finding some secret broken files and boldly removing them, and of course a daring registry hack!

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• 

  Published on

  2024-08-27 9:50 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  Windows

  "Destination Path Too Long" when copying files in File Explorer? Easy workaround(s)!

  This article explains another situation where you might run into a " The file names would be too long for the destination folder. You can shorten the file name and try again, or try a location that has a shorter path " error, and how to get around it. Don't install "LongPathTool", which is what all the spam comments online tell you to do. Maybe it's even on Google/Bing Ads nowadays. Instead, learn to use Windows the way it was meant to be used - without windows.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-08-20 2:22 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  BackupsNetspotWindows

  Where does NetSpot (wifi heatmapping tool) store its project files?

  This article explains where NetSpot Wifi Heatmap software stores its project files. These files contain all of your measurements, pictures, and other files associated with your heatmaps. They're pretty important, but you don't get to choose where to store them. And that might be a problem, unless you're prepared.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-08-13 3:38 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  BitlockerGrouppolicy

  How to fix Bitlocker failing to activate?

  Alright, so my months-long via dolorosa to achieve a functioning Windows workstation has now cost me a few weeks worth of hours of work and around $4000. And I'm finally at a point where I have Visual Studio working again, and I'm only missing some totally unimportant and irrelevant things like BitLocker. No biggie, right? What's weird, though, is that I'm only missing it because it decided to randomly break. Let me explain. Problem

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• 

  Published on

  2024-08-06 2:43 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  Windows

  Why You (unfortunately) need a Local Administrator account on Windows 🙃

  This article explains why having a local (non-AD) user account with administrator user rights on Windows is a must. I know, I know - this is horrible design from security perspective. You shouldn't use local accounts in the first place, let alone ones with unlimited admin powers! Microsoft has been trying to stop users from creating local accounts on their machines for years now, and in theory, for understandable reasons.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-07-30 1:36 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  MVPAwardMVPBuzzOpinion

  5 Years an MVP - a Humble Reflection

  A few of my friends were already worried since I didn't publish the now-classic " Humbled & Honored " post on LinkedIn - perhaps I had not been renewed this year, dropped out of the program or even been kicked out? But no, reality is much more boring: I've just been on vacation and haven't spent much time near my keyboard 😅 So long story short, I was indeed renewed as Microsoft MVP for the 2024-2025 season. 🥳 This year, I've been able to disconnect quite thoroughly.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-06-18 7:48 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  CertificatesOpenSSLPowerShell

  How to generate Certificate-Signing Requests using OpenSSL

  This article explains how to generate a CSR using the OpenSSL CLI toolkit. We'll go through a step-by-step guide to create a private key and a CSR. This should be helpful for system administrators and developers who need to set up secure connections for their servers or applications. In the code samples, you can see how some undefined sausage is made, and it's not pretty. But it works.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-06-11 11:33 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  HomeAssistantHomeAutomation

  Home Assistant 2024.4 changes weather forecasts - what to do?

  This article explains how to fix your template sensors, automations and other functionality that is broken by the 2024.4 update of the Home Assistant platform, where forecasts are removed from weather entities. Fixing the issue requires some YAML, and while you'll loose debuggability and possibly encounter some performance hits and run awry of your weather provider's rate limits, what wouldn't we do to keep up-to-date with the latest community goodness of Home Assistant?

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• 

  Published on

  2024-06-04 3:32 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  NodenpmViteVisualStudio

  External path "**" cannot have more than one "*" wildcard with vite?

  This article explains a couple of workarounds to a frustrating issue I had with vite and yet-another-weird-frontend-build-toolkit. Because every toolchain for frontend stuff is different, apparently. And they all fail in different ways. Anyway - let's get to it. Background I was just creating a tiny bugfix to an older project, minding my own business, not bothering anyone, when all of a sudden my development environment practically just imploded. Any backend builds worked just fine.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-05-28 5:25 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  NodePowerShellDevEnvironment

  Removing node_modules under a folder

  This quick article explains how to clean up all dependencies installed with npm or yarn, and stored in folders called "node_modules" within your project and solution files. This regrettable step might be required to either free some disk space or clear weirdly broken dependencies from your project(s).

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• 

  Published on

  2024-05-21 1:03 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  SharePointSharePointOnline

  How to solve "You don't have permission to invite people to this item, but you can still add people and send an invite request to the file owner." in a SharePoint document library?

  This article explains a solution to a puzzling problem, where you might be the owner of a SharePoint site and have all the imaginable permissions on a Document Library, but still be unable to share a single item, let alone a folder with edit permissions to anyone. Turns out this is a dumb-ish configuration quirk in SharePoint. Who would've thought, right? 😅 Anyway. What did the issue look like? Problem So about 2 years ago I created a SharePoint site.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-05-14 9:50 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  AkamaiPostman

  Suddenly receiving "The requested URL "[no URL]", is invalid." in Postman?

  This article explains how to get around a sudden issue, where Postman suddenly starts showing you a nondescript and slightly misleading error about a missing URL in your request when you haven't removed any parameters and the request just worked. But don't let me get ahead of myself. Background So me and my team have had the questionable honor and privilege to build some integrations to SuccessFactors - a SAP product - lately.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-05-07 7:57 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  StreamdeckMicrosoftTeams

  How to enable Stream Deck integration in "New Teams"?

  This article explains how to configure the Teams integration in the Microsoft Teams Stream Deck plugin. Because chances are the documentation you've read does not match how it actually goes 😄 Also, I'll share my over 1-year-long story with Stream Deck. It, unfortunately, has not been uneventful. Want to skip the rant background story? Jump right down to the solution ! Background My road with StreamDeck has been a bit of a rocky one.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-04-30 12:51 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  AzureAzureAppService

  How to solve "Error occurred during a cryptographic operation." in Azure App Service

  This article explains a couple of ways to fix an issue where after deployment, your Azure App Service suddenly starts throwing an error along the lines of "Error occurred during a cryptographic operation. at System.Web.Security.Cryptography.HomogenizingCryptoServiceWrapper.HomogenizeErrors". The error or the StackTrace doesn't point to anything helpful (understandably, it'll point to a StartUp.

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