Internet Explorer 9 - how to open History, Favorites, Feeds on the left

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When opening your History (Ctrl-h) in Internet Explorer 9, it opens the pane (or should I say "Explorer bar") on the right hand side. That's the way they made it - and it's a big annoyance.

To open the History bar on the left, you have to use another keyboard shortcut instead - Ctrl-Shift-h (ie hold down both the Ctrl and Shift keys, tap h, release them all).

And it's Ctrl-Shift-i to open Favorites on the left, Ctrl-Shift-g for the Feeds.

If you used the old hotkeys and it opens on the right, you can click the green arrow (top left of the pane) or use the Ctrl-Shift-h combo to move it over to the left. But if you close the Explorer bar, Ctrl-h will open it on the right, all over again. So it's best just to learn the "new" shortcut keys.

Prime example of if it ain't broke why fix it…?!!

Thunderbird - public holidays won't display?

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In my Thunderbird email app (with Lightning for calendaring), I'd subscribed to Google's public holidays calendar for the UK. but lately, holidays no longer show up. They used to display fine, but that's stopped working.

What finally sorted the problem for me, after many unsuccessful troubleshooting attempts to try to get the Google calendar to display, was a workaround rather than solution or fix, but it's good enough for me! So here's my tip to get round this issue, step by step:

1. download the ICS calendar file for UK public holidays (or other holidays of your choice) from Apple, and save it on your computer
2. in Thunderbird, go to the Events and Tasks menu, and choose Import
3. navigate to the saved ICS file and Open it
4. choose which calendar in Thunderbird you want to import the file to, and OK it
5. the public holidays should show up properly, hooray!

This should work with Apple ICS files for other holidays or events too. I tried Google's ICS file for that calendar first but it doesn't contain the necessary info for importing.

Apple 1, Google 0.

(Google Calendars of public holidays may display properly in later versions of Thunderbird, but I've stuck with Thunderbird 9.0 because add-ons I need aren't compatible with later versions.)

Windows Live Writer won't start or open?

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If Windows Live Writer won't launch, it can be a heart-sinking experience if you depend on it as much as I do - it's the best free blogging tool I know.

For me, trying to "repair" Windows Live Essentials via the Control Panel Programs and Features didn't work to get WLW to open again. Nada, not even an error message.

Here's how to fix it when Windows Live Writer stops working, or at least some steps to try:

1. Open up Windows Explorer or Computer.
2. In the address bar at the top, type or paste the following (not case-sensitive), then hit Enter or the right arrow:
   %AppData%\Windows Live Writer\
   
   
3. You'll see folders like these:
   
   
   
4. Open the LinkGlossary folder. Copy the linkglossary.xml file there, then paste it somewhere you can find it again, as backup in case.
   
   
5. Now delete the linkglossary.xml file from the LinkGlossary folder. (Thanks to Scott Lovegrove).
6. Try opening WLW again. If that doesn't work, try opening the Keywords folder, and deleting all the files inside that folder that start with 'keyword..'.
7. I also found a registry fix - see this link (scroll down)

For me, step 6 didn't work, but step 5 solved the problem for me, so I didn't need to try step 7.