Showing results for January 2005 - Scripting Blog [archived]

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I open an existing Excel spreadsheet, add some additional information to that spreadsheet, and then save my changes? Every time I call the SaveAs method a dialog box pops up asking me if I want to save my changes.-- RW Hey, RW. Generally speaking, you can avoid that dialog box by using the Save method rather than the ...

Hey, Scripting Guy! Is there any way I can use a script to present a user with a dialog box and let him or her select a file?-- BF Hey, BF. If you’re using Windows 2000, we don’t know of a way to do this, at least not a way that’s built into the operating system. That’s not the case with Windows XP, however. On Windows XP, you can use the UserAc...

Hey, Scripting Guy! Is there any way to retrieve the system time as configured on a remote computer?-- JJ Hey, JJ. There are at least two ways to do this, both using WMI. If you’re running Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, you can use the WMI class Win32_LocalTime. As you can see, that makes it pretty easy to get the system time: you simply con...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I scan the event logs of my servers and return only information about unsuccessful logons?-- LC Hey, LC. We’ll assume that you have enabled security auditing on your servers. If you haven’t, that’s step one. What you’ll want to do is - at a minimum - audit for logon event failures. That way every time someone tries - ...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I read only a specific line in a text file? For example, how can I write a script that reads only line 16 in a text file and then stores the value of that line in a variable?-- DL Hey, DL. You know we haven’t answered a question about text files in awhile, and that’s not something we should brag about; after all, it s...