Microsoft TechStudent Blog
Microsoft TechStudent Blog
  • Microsoft Tech Student

    How-to Restore and Find Deleted Email in Outlook 2007

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    Help!!  I permanently deleted an email I need, I need to find an email I deleted, how to restore a deleted email.  If you’re in trouble, here’s a quick solution for retrieving email from the dumpster in Outlook 2007.

    When you delete an email from one of your folders it first goes into the Deleted Items folder.  To permanently delete an item, it has to be deleted from the Deleted Items folder and is sent to the dumpster.  If you’ve sent an important item to the dumpster, hope is not lost.  You can restore the items using the following procedure:

    1. Highlight the folder that originally contained the item.  (If you’re not sure which folder, than you have to repeat these steps for each possible folder).  In this example, we’ll restore something to the Inbox.

    2. From the menu bar choose Tools –> Recover Deleted Items.  Keyboard shortcut (hold down ALT and press ‘t’ and then ‘t’ again)

    image

    3. A window will pop up with the most recently deleted items:

    image

    4. Highlight the message you want to restore and select the icon with a message with an arrow on top, ‘Recover Selected Items’

    image

    5. To restore multiple messages, hold down ‘CTRL’ and select the items you want to restore

    This came in handy for me when one of my rules got corrupted.  Hope this helps, Happy mail finding!

  • Microsoft Tech Student

    Technical Book Club: Code Complete – Measure Twice Cut Once: Problem Definition, Requirements, and Changing Requirements

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    The next sections are fairly straight-forward.  Here’s a summary of some of the keypoints:

    • Without a good problem definition, you might spend a lot of time solving the wrong problem … and never solve the right one.
    • Requirements enable the user to agree/disagree before programming begins, which keeps the programmer from making decisions while programming and the cost of changes low.
    • 25% of change in requirements accounts for 70-85% of the rework on a project

    Cost of errors in requirements detected in

    • the requirements stage:  1 unit
    • the architecture stage:  3 units
    • the coding stage: 5-10 units
    • system test:  10 units
    • post-release:  10-100 units (closer to 10 for smaller projects with low overhead)

    How to best accommodate changes in requirements:

    • ensure high quality requirements
    • be transparent about the cost of requirement change
    • have a change-control procedure
    • choose a development approach that is a good fit for the project
    • dump the project
    • keep a business focus

    Your Turn:  Here’s an example project, what improvements would you suggest to improve the project?

    Company WebsitesRUs creates websites and recently completed the first revision of a website.  The website is ready to launch for the target deadline in 2 weeks.  They meet with the customer for their first review of the website.  The website creates a stream of family/friend information for recovering surgery patients to catch up on the time they missed.

    The customer is excited at their work and after the meeting 8 different emails are received by the company with 24 requests for changes.  Sarah receives the messages and is overwhelmed by both the response and the number of requests.  She knows the work requested would require significant re-work and would take 6-8 weeks to complete. 

    Spend your summer with Software for Students’ Technical Book Club to give yourself a competitive edge in the job market:

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  • Microsoft Tech Student

    Technical Book Club: How to Participate

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    Our Technical Book Club is underway with our first book Code Complete, but it’s never too late to join!  Some people have written to ask how to get involved, so I thought I’d pull together a post.

    1. Buy, beg, or borrowCode Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction 2nd edition
    2. Subscribe to the blog via RSS (or favorite this page):  http://feeds.feedburner.com/SpringboardFromMortarboardToOnboard using Outlook, Google Reader, or anywhere you follow feeds.  RSS provides the blog posts to you when they are posted.
    3. Read along.  I’m starting at a pace of one chapter a week, although the first chapters are shorter.
    4. Each Thursday I’ll post an entry summarizing some of the main points from the chapter and asking some questions.  Read over and let me know what you took out of the chapter.
    5. Post comments.  I love to hear what you’re thinking as you read through.  We all have different experiences with software and different points of view.

    Having trouble?  Email me and I can help

    We’re just getting started, please join in you haven’t missed anything yet.  Here are the posts so far:

    • Questions for discussion:
    • What metaphors do you recall from classes or projects you’ve worked on?
    • What illumination or confusion did these metaphors cause?
  • Microsoft Tech Student

    Winners of the 2009 US Imagine Cup Microsoft Student Competition

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    Huge Congratulations to all the Imagine Cup participants and winners!  Here are your 2009 US Imagine Cup winners:

    • 1st Place:  Multi-Point Web ($8,000 trip to Cairo, Egypt for WW finals)
    • 2nd Place:  Mango Bunnies ($4,000)
    • 3rd Place:  Special Child ($3,000)
    • People’s Choice:  Aurora Borealis

    Who are these teams making it to the top?  Here’s a summary of their projects and team members:

    Multi-Point Web

    The Project:  Our solution is to build upon existing education systems and proved a set of low to no cost web based learning activities that allow every child to participate with multiple mice on one computer, with limited available hardware resources and funding.

    The Team: 

    • Jimmy Dickinson is a student at GSU University working towards his Masters in Information Systems. Jimmy plans to graduate in 2010 and writes mini games in his spare time in Flash and Silverlight and loves to travel.
    • Mark Dickinson is a college student at Portland Committee College majoring in Computer Science. In his spare time, Mark likes making custom game mods.
    • Luke Dickinson is a high school student at Tigard High School. In his spare time Luke has made some mini flash activities and would like to learn Silverlight.
    Special Child

    The Project: 

    This project was chosen because the State of Arkansas Department of Human Services (DHS) Children’s Services does not currently have a centralized database holding information for all children available for adoption in the custody of DHS. Case Workers for the Division of Child and Family Services are aware only of those children for whom they are personally responsible and perhaps others whose cases are handled within the same office. The pool of children available to parents wishing to adopt is limited to those known to the Case Worker assigned to the parents. In order to reach outside of this narrow collection of information a great deal of legwork is required on the part of the parents to contact DHS offices outside of their county of residence.

    Special Child is dedicated to providing a quality product to our clients that not only assists and organizes the adoption process for our customers, but sees to it that every child awaiting adoption spends as little time waiting on a list as possible. The goal of the Special Child Adoption Services application is to put in place a centralized database as a location to store information about children in need of a permanent home and potential adoptive parents. Special Child’s design will provide quick access to shared information. Thus, the adoption process is handled efficiently and effectively.

    The Special Child project brings together the 2009 Imagine Cup theme “Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems facing us today” by utilizing technology in a way that resolves an issue yet to be addressed on the local level.

    The Team: 

    • Joshua Thacker is currently working on a Master’s Degree in Management Information Systems at UALR
    • Sandy Callahan conceived the main idea of Special Child and is the overseer of the quality of the project.  She is a current graduate student at UALR. 
    • Shreyasi Dutta has been working on the technical aspects of this project. 
    • Tomica Seals is in her second year of graduate school at UALR and is pursuing a Master of Science in Management Information Systems. 
    Mango Bunnies

    The Project: 

    The application, Computer-Assisted Medication Regimen Adherence (CAMRA), will assist people with complex medication regimens. CAMRA is targeted to HIV/AIDS patients and will be convenient and discreet. CAMRA is unique because it uses mobile technology and only requires a mobile device, something many people already own. There is no product on the market that leverages the portability and convenience of mobile devices to turn them into stand-alone health care products.

    The Team: 

    • Ashley is a junior Computer Science major at DePauw University.
    • Erin ‘Ed’ Donahue is a senior Computer science major at DePauw University.
    • Malisa is a sophomore Computer Information and Technology major with a focus on web development at Purdue School of Engineering and Technology.
      Aurora Borealis

      The Project: 

      This proposal presents a cost-effective mobile health-care infrastructure that would address the needs of the expecting mothers and children in rural areas around the world. It, therefore, addresses two problems identified as Millennium Goals – maternal health and child health. The rural health infrastructure is inadequate or totally absent in developing and underdeveloped countries. The proposed solution deals with the challenge of inadequate infrastructure to ensure that medical help reaches the expecting mothers and infants in a timely manner. The solution requires global partnership for purchasing the components involved in operating the proposed business model. The core of the solution is a graphical expert system tailored for maternal and child health. The patient condition is captured through pictures and the system can be customized for any local language or dialect. The overall quality of life of the people living in rural areas can be improved by extending this system and adding the extra functionality for addressing other challenges like agricultural problems or combating AIDS/HIV.

      The Team: 

      • All the three team members are pursuing their Ph.D. at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
      • Ritu Arora is doing her research in the area of generative programming and high performance computing.
      • Zekai Demirezen is doing his research in the area of domain-specific modeling and semantics of domain specific languages.
      • Yu Sun stood 3rd in the regional ACM South East programming contest.

      Follow the news about Imagine Cup through Microsoft Press Releases:

      http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/imaginecup/default.aspx

      Technorati Tags:  Imagine Cup, Student

    • Microsoft Tech Student

      Technical Mom Picture Time: Send in Pics with O’Reilly Books

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      O’Reilly is collecting pictures of Technical Moms for their O’Reilly Mother’s Day Page and discount.  Take a pic with your O’Reilly books and send it into press@oreilly.com.  They plan to post a picture page of technical mom’s with their books.

      Don’t forget to order your Mother’s Day O’Reilly book and receive a 40% Discount by using the code:  MDAYT at http://oreilly.com

      Read this great story about O’Reilly responding to my Tweet

      Technorati Tags:  Mother’s Day, Women in Tech

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