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It seems like the last couple of months I’ve been doing nothing but data cleaning and transformations. As a result, I’ve been having to create all kinds of strange temporary functions to manipulate data to extract the required information. Particularly, date transformations. Of course, different installations of SQL Server (not to mention different database systems) handle dates in different ways - so it’s been important to handle them consistently. This little bit of T-SQL has been very useful in that regard…

Another day, another puzzle. This time, binding a multidimensional array to a Data Grid View Control. Ok, so it would be a lot simpler to just bind the data source directly to the control, but in this case I had to make a fair few tricky transformations to the data. Long story short - how do I dump my data into the grid view control at run time? The solution provided here proved perfect.

So why would you want to get rid of the html hidden viewstate field from your aspx files? My reason was that I was using the gridview control on a page and changing the response.content to excel Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-excel" to act as quick data extract into a spreadsheet - messy but it works, at least it did in classic ASP. Moving to ASP.NET and adding a form and gridview control drops in the __VIEWSTATE form field which then ends up in the first row of the spreadsheet.

Having had some problems with Outlook working with IMAP mail stores, and having a few computers needing setup quickly, and facing a lack of valid licenses - it seemed an ideal time to have a quick look around for alternatives. And its interesting to see Thunderbird being adopted in the corporate environment. This article being the inspiration for my trial… HowTo: Thunderbird & MS Exchange Server - Download Squad “It is now possible to use Thunderbird at home and work and still get all of your exchange server email as well as your company’s Global Address Book.