How to solve: Skype displaying Japanese characters as boxes

Problem with Skype not displaying Japanese/Chinese/Korean characters? Here is the solution that worked for me.

Today, when I started Skype, I had something strange happened. The name of the contacts in Japanese were replaced by squares, ie Skype was not displaying Japanese correctly anymore. I could still type some Japanese text in the message but the name of the contacts were not supported. The menu was gone too (choice between square-square-squre and square-square-square).

The problem was only with Skype, the rest of the computer was working fine: notepad, the name of the directories and folders were fine etc...

I tried to reinstall Skype: did not help. I tried to Google the answer: did not help. Most websites would simply ask you to use another font (under settings, IM and SMS etc... and change from Tahoma to Arial Unicode MS) or to change the settings of your new PC). I still could not read Japanese characters! Just a bunch of boxes/Squares or whatever you want to call them.

Incredible test

I logged off the user I was using, logged on with the admin user and ... Skype was working! Completely fine, with Tahoma (?!!) and with the global settings of the computer set to Norway/Norwegian. How come. I logged again to the user that had the problem: it was still failing. So the problem was only happening for 1 user. It does make sense as many websites were saying that they had problems with some users only or some PC only.

Step-by-step solution

Update 16 October 2012: I have had the problem again and wrote a new post about it. Check it here:
http://smallittips.blogspot.com/2012/10/problem-with-asian-characters-in-skype.html

Of course, I was still not happy, as I wanted to use Skype for both users (admin and the one failing), so here is what I did:

1. logged in with the failing user
2. closed every program including Skype
3. logged off this user (not just switch user, completely log off)
4. logged in as admin
5. opened a directory and went to C:\Users\failing-user
6. added \AppData at the end of the address: C:\Users\failing-user\AppData
7. deleted everything in
• C:\Users\failing-user\AppData\Local\Temp (mind the "Local")
• C:\Users\failing-user\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Internet Explorer (Skype uses Internet Explorer)
• C:\Users\failing-user\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files (you have to type this one too)
• C:\Users\failing-user\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer
• C:\Users\failing-user\AppData\LocalLow\Microsoft\Internet Explorer (mind the LocalLow instead of Local)
8. logged again as the failing user
9. it was working

I really hope this will also solve the problem you have with Skype not displaying Asian characters properly (only squares/boxes).

1000 thanks to Servermin for a post he wrote about Chinese characters not being displayed by Skype (had a hard time finding it but it was mostly the solution I described here).

Linking Adsense to Analytics: updated howto with screenshots of the new interface

Want to link Adsense to Analytics and you are stuck? You don't find any "get started" link or have no idea where the "data sources" is? Welcome to this article! It took me forever to manage it by myself and I spent literally hours looking on the Internet without finding any good article on this topic.

This article supposes that:
- you have an Adsense account
- you have an Analytics account
- you want to link both
- you don't do anything stupid (delete stuff) and accuse this article afterwards for having done it. This is just some info to help you, you are 100% responsible for what you do on your computer

Before, we get started, please note, that you can only have 1 Adsense and 1 Analytics. Google mentions some multiple account possibility in its help guide but forget about it, it simply won't work. If you have linked to the "wrong" Analytics account, follow this link to unlink it.

1) Go to your Google Analytics page

2) Select the Analytics account you want to link to your Adsense account

3) Click on Admin on the right

4) Here is what you should have:

OK, then what? Where is the Data Sources button? Why is it so hard to place a button "Link to Adsense" here? Arghhhhh... Don't panic, I am here. Continue reading...

5) Click on the name of your domain/website (here Mysite) on the top, to go back two steps:

I am really sorry if this is obvious to many people or if many websites/blogs/official Google help pages mentioned it, but it was NOT obvious to me and I did not see it mentioned anywhere precisely.

6) Magically, a tab called Data Sources should appear:

7) Click on Data Sources, then on Adsense

8) Click on the link account button

9) Thank me on the comment section below, click on the Google +1 button below, give a 1 dollar donation to this blog (paypal donation button on the right) and enjoy your day :-)