Server Application Unavailable: the movie

It was one of those days where I had so much junk on my computer that I decided to reformat it and start fresh. It was a "wonderful" feeling after the whole long process was complete (I since then made a recovery backup archive of my clean system). However, my feel-good story hit an interesting turning-point and started to turn into a B-rated drive-thru horror flick when I ran into a problem while running a .NET web site locally on my computer (cue the dramatic musical score): Server Application Unavailable The web application you are attempting to access on this web server is currently unavailable. Please hit the "Refresh" button in your web browser to retry your request. ...skipping the excessive violent fight and car chase scenes...fast forwarding to the happy ending... Here are the articles that saved the day from http://www.ironspeed.com (cue Tonto and the calvary):

Verifying the .NET Framework was Installed after Microsoft IIS Setting the ASP.NET State Service to Run Automatically

I "think" Microsoft's Automatic Updates must have installed the .NET Framework automatically before I was able to install IIS from Windows' Add/Remove Windows Components function (this can happen when you leave your newly reformatted computer running all day to download updates), OR ...and quite possibly...staying awake till 3am impaired my judgment and I just downloaded and installed all updates that I could possibly get. Who knows the real reason?!?!...it's fixed...and now I am waiting for the inevitable hollywood-cash-grab sequel.

Populating a validation list with existing entries

To populate a validation list with entries that are already exist in a field, here is what you do. 1. Open your textbase, go to your query screen and browse (F3) the field that you want to get the entries for. 2. Click on Print List 3. When the Print window pops up, check off the "Print to file" box 4. Save the file as a .txt file on your Desktop 5. Open/edit the file and remove all the unnecessary text (such as the term counts), spaces, and other messages at the top and bottom of the file, such as: "Term index for field 'Message', textbase.." and "Total number of keys: .." In the end, you want to have each entry on its own line with no spaces before or after each entry.

You can (and I recommend this if your list is large in size) import the file into Microsoft Excel (Select "Data > Import from text..."), select the text file to import and then select "Fixed width" under the Original data type section. There you can move the break line just before the first character of the entries. Once you have imported the text onto a worksheet, simply highlight the column with just the entries, copy and paste into a text editor (I use NotePad) and save your entries there. You may want to tidy up the new text file.

6. Your new validation list text file is ready for upload. With your textbase open, go to the Maintain drop-down menu, Edit Lists > Validation Lists... and then select your field. 7. The Edit Validation List should pop-up. Select either "Merge File into List.." or "Replace list with File..." 8. Select your file to import and then click on OK. (after uploading, you may want to check the Validation List for text errors).