When I started my last job the company that I was working for shared it's printers from one central server. While this method works in practice there are several benefits that a Windows Print Server brings to a network. This being the case until I was able to fully implement our new Windows Print Server into the environment I had to set up several shared printers on their Windows Server. The below directions are pulled from a Windows 2003 installation but have not changed much with the more recent iterations of Windows Server:

First, Log into server and navigate to Printers and Faxes. This menu can be found under control panel. Click on Add Printer

When presented with the Add Printer Wizard click on "Next"

Choose "Local printer attached to this computer", make sure "Automatically detect and install my Plug and Play printer" is unchecked and click "Next"

On the next screen choose the bullet located next to "Create a new port" and in the "type of port" drop down box select "Standard TCP/IP Port"

When presented with the Add Standard TCP/IP Printer Port Wizard click "Next"

When presented with the next window add your printers IP address in "Printer Name or IP Address". The "Port Name" field should be populated automatically. 

Verify the information is correct and hit Finish

Next, you will be prompted to install the printer drivers. If the driver is available via Windows it will show in the presented list otherwise you will need to add the driver manually by using the "Have Disk" button and pointing to the correct location. In our case the driver was found and so we select it and click "next"

In the next window, if you already have a similar driver installed on the computer, you will be prompted to "keep the existing driver (recommended)" or "replace the existing driver." More often than not you will just keep the driver that is already in place. Click "Next" to continue. 

In the "Printer Name" field add what you would like your printer to be displayed as and click "next". This will complete the installation and add your new printer to the computer. 

After the printer has been successfully installed go to "Printers and Faxes" (Printers and Devices in Windows Server 2008 and above - ed.)  

Right click on the server that you just installed and select "sharing". 

Select the box next to "Share Name" and type in the name you would like users to see when selecting the shared printer. Click "Next" 

In the next window fill out the location and any comments and click "Next". 

Click the box next to "Yes" if you would like to test your new share otherwise leave "No" selected and click "Next".

And finally in the next window select "finish"

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For quite a few iterations now iOS has had the option of something it calls text replacement. This feature allows a user to type in a string of characters and have the operating system replace it with whatever they have predefined. For example while texting a friend (or enemy for that matter - ed.) a user could put "oic" and have the actual phrase "oh I see" populate in the text message. This can be very helpful when quickly typing on a cell phone, tablet or other mobile device. A little known fact, however, is that Microsoft Outlook actually has this functionality as well: 

In Microsoft Outlook go to file in the upper left hand corner of the window. 

When presented with the new window select "options" from the column on the left hand side 

In the new window select "mail" from the left hand column

Your main window display should now give you an option labeled "Spelling and Autocorrect". Click this button. 

In the new window select 'AutoCorrect Options..."

you will now see a window with a "Replace text as you type" field option. Make sure the check box is checked next to this option. Type the shortcut you would like added underneath "Replace:" and what you would like it to relate to under "With:".  Ex: Replace: "oic" with "oh I see" (Please see image below) 

Click OK to save changes. Go to a new email and in the body type "oic" hit the space bar and "oh I see" will appear. 

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When working with Microsoft Outlook 9 times out of 10 everything will work relatively smoothly. That 10th time, however, can cause Helpdesk and Windows Administrators headaches. One such headache occures when emails get stuck in the Outlook outbox. This is especially prevalent when dealing with secondary attached group mailboxes. Users will only become aware of this problem when they stop receiving responses to messages, meeting requests, or task requests. Often times they will also see the error "There are still e-mail messages in your Outbox. Would you like to exit anyway." when trying to exit Outlook.

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When working at my last job we had a strange reoccuring issue with several of our users. When the user would exit their browser and reopen it, they would find their compatibility view options had been reset or cleared out. Our users would then have to re-add websites back into compatibility view in order to continue working on certain sites. While this issue was eventually side stepped with the implementation of group policy we still needed to find a solution for the short term. So to prevent this issue from happening entirely we made some very basic setting changes:

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During a recent installation I ran across a strange error: Key not valid for use in specified state. After much searching on the almighty Google I found that this issue can be caused by a corrupt Microsoft Crypto Folder. In order to correct this issue the folder must be renamed and then the software can be successfully installed: 

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