Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2014 September 8

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.

September 8

Computer won't load most sites

I apologise for asking here, but I can't get help anywhere else. Just this evening, my HP Pavilion Windows 8 computer has decided that it won't load any sites except for wikipedia.org, commons.wikimedia.org, and various Google domains. I know it's not a case of "network's dead and computer's simply relying on caching", because it's returning normal results for gibberish searches (I can get https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=bfoubsg, for example), and I can view anything on Wikipedia; I've never seen Järveküla, Saare County before, for example. Can anyone suggest what to do? Here's what else I know:

• Today, like other days, I was able to use my home network to load anything I tried
• This evening, I had a few browser tabs running with a Google application, something from Commons, and a Wikipedia article. At this point, I closed the computer (it's a laptop) and went to a friend's house; my friend has no wireless Internet access
• My friend used a web-enabled cellphone to look up how to set up a local wireless network (see footnote). He then went into the command prompt and changed around things, and the wireless network worked fine. After we were done using it, we closed the computers, and I returned to my house.
• After returning, I discovered the problem in question. Except for the websites with tabs that were running when my friend was working on the computer, I can't load a thing; if I search for something else in Google, for example, it returns results, but it won't load any pages.
• I've tried restarting the computer and turning off-then-on the computer's wi-fi (no differences) and running the built-in HP Network Check software (the software says "HP Network Check is unable to fix your network issues at this time"). When I try to load one of these pages in IE10, I get a message of "This page can't be displayed", and Firefox says "Problem loading page/Server not found/Firefox can't find the server at [pagename]". I've used sites well known to me, such as http://www.iub.edu, and I check them before starting a search, so it's not a matter of me making typos. As well, I can get Google to display results for a search, but I consistently get the error message when I click on any of those results.
• Footnote — my friend and his wife wanted to set up a simple network generated by our computers so that we could play a multiplayer computer game, but their Windows 7 machines and my Windows 8 couldn't recognise each other's networks well enough to permit gameplay. I was playing with their cat while he was looking up the fix-it method and implementing it, so I don't have a clue what he did or how to undo it.

I would ask my friend for help, but he's normally in bed well before now. Thank you for your help! Nyttend (talk) 04:28, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

PS, it feels as if there were some sort of filter on the system, like what one occasionally sees on library computers that are intended for doing nothing except searching the library catalogue — but he did all this in about five minutes, and I know him well enough to be confident that he wouldn't do such a thing. Nyttend (talk) 04:55, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Quick guess: you can't connect to the DNS server you've got set up. This would cause you to be able to browse to http://192.0.43.10 but not http://example.com. You can connect to sites you visited recently because they still reside in Windows' DNS cache. I'd normally link instructions for changing this, but since you can't see them...

• Hit Windows+W, type 'Network and Sharing Center' (or some part thereof), and open the Network and Sharing Center
• Click Change Adapter Settings
• Double-click your connected adapter
• Click properties
• Double-click Internet protocol version 4...
• Set the DNS to "Obtain DNS server address automatically" if it isn't already. Or, try manually setting the DNS servers to, e.g., Google's DNS servers at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

-- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 05:05, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

It could be a virus infection. Often these mess with the browser and run the sites you can see through a filter altering web traffic. Try using a different computer through your home network, and using you computer on someone else's network. This is to isolate the problem, to see if it is you computer or your network connection. Try downloading a different browser onto a flash drive and installing that. Grab a bunch of standalone virus scanners from http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ you might need to check for root kits.--Salix alba (talk): 05:49, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

An easy fix to a lot of windows problems is to use system restore to restore the computer to how it was a week ago. If you have corrupted a setting it should fix that.--Salix alba (talk): 05:57, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Consumed Crustacean, you solved it! The IP address had been set to a specific address, rather than obtaining it automatically. Immediately before doing this, I tried to load some pages and got nowhere, and immediately after doing it, I'm able to access other sites easily. And Salix alba, everything changed after I'd been offline and while my networking settings were being changed, so I didn't expect that it was a virus. Were you thinking a delayed-action trojan horse perhaps? Not objecting, just trying to understand — I'm very much a non-expert with most computer issues. PS, Salix, thank you for the system restore idea. I never would have thought of it, and now that I know what happened, I'm confident that it would have worked. Nyttend (talk) 11:37, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Microsoft Excel: Can the number in a cell be circled?

In Excel 2013, is there any way by which I can draw a circle around a value in a cell? For example, let's say that I have a list of sales for each day of the week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. And, out of all the seven data points, I want to circle the highest number of sales for that week. So, for example, the cell A5 contains the value "100" for the amount of sales for Thursday. Can I circle that "100"? If so, how do I do that? If not, is there some other equivalent function in Excel? Basically, it should look something like the second chart down on this page: Bird Food Preference Guide. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 15:52, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

There is "conditional formatting" which allow certain cells to be displayed in different formats depending on its value or some other condition. You can change font, foreground and background colour, the border style and color and add coloured icons. I don't think you can circle a number. --Salix alba (talk): 16:28, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, I am aware of all those conditional formatting features. I really need the numbers circled, though. I am hoping someone knows how this can be done, if it's possible at all. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:11, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

In the ribbon bar at the top, click the Insert tab, then click "Shapes". You'll need to adjust the default shape for color and to make it have no fill; when you first insert the circle, a tab named "Format" will appear. -- 17:45, 8 September 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.202.10.134 (talk)

That creates a little picture (of a circle or oval) that gets superimposed over the cell. Correct? It's not really taking the number within the cell and "drawing" a circle around that value. Or am I misunderstanding your post? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 18:00, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

The person who made the picture that you are referencing (bird food values) is highly likely to have used the method I described. As far as I know, there is no other way to draw a circle over it. -- 140.202.10.134 (talk) 18:04, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

OK, thanks. But, I guess I am confused. When I tried your method, my spreadsheet did not look anything at all like that Bird Seed example. I just got a "picture" of a circle. And that picture just "hovered over" a cell. It was not within the cell. Sort of like when I insert pie charts and graphs. They appear on the page, but they really overlay the cells. They are not inside the cells. Hope I am making sense with my explanation. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 18:51, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

It may be my ageing eyesight, but the relationship between the red ovals and the contained text does not look particularly consistent to me. The horizontal alignment in the left column (w.r.t the text in the cell) is different to that in the right column, and the vertical alignment of each isn't consistent. It seems to me that the red circles were manually added to a screengrab by someone using a drawing program - that it's not a feature of Excel. -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 22:15, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

That's my guess as well. Looking at the options under conditional formatting, there is something called "icon sets" that does draw little pictures in cells, but I don't see red circles as one of the options. This site has some suggestions. I haven't tried it myself, but maybe you can cobble together something? You'd also need to finagle the positioning, which by default I think is always to the left of the cell text. Matt Deres (talk) 16:15, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 01:27, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Microsoft Excel: Can words in adjoining cells be concatenated?

In Excel 2013, is there any way by which I can concatenate (if that's the proper term) the words in two adjoining column cells? For example, say that my Excel spreadsheet has a list of 100 names. Column "A" has the last names and Column "B" has the first names. So, for example, Cell A1 says "Smith" and Cell B1 says "John". Can I somehow "join" the two words together in one column entry, so that the new cell says "Smith, John"? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:04, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Type the following into the cell in which you want the combined items to be in:

=CONCATENATE(A1,", ",B1)

And that will get you what you want. -- 140.202.10.134 (talk) 17:00, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Or more simply =A1&B1 --Phil Holmes (talk) 17:05, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

That works as well, but outputs "SmithJohn". You need to add a comma and a space in there for it to look like Mr. Spadaro wants it. You could use "=A1&", "&B1" -- 140.202.10.134 (talk) 17:15, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I will try both methods. Thank you. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:12, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, I tried both methods. Works perfectly. Thank you. (I did have to adjust for the comma and space, as was mentioned above.) That's exactly what I needed. Thanks so much. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:56, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Simpler method yet: copy/paste the contents of the two columns into Notepad; highlight the tab character between the two columns and copy it; hit CTRL+H to bring up find/replace; paste the tab into the "find" portion; put nothing into the "replace" to get SmithJohn, or put your comma and space into "replace" if you want Smith, John; hit replace; copy/paste back into Excel. This will leave an empty column, so just highlight the column and delete it. Nyttend (talk) 22:00, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 01:27, 10 September 2014 (UTC)