How do I turn a KB Article #, like Q191987, into a usable URL?

So, some schmuck in a newsgroup told you to go see Q191987, and now you're wondering how to get there? 
 
DUH! That's simple, it's http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=191987 ... okay, that DUH was funnier back when the KB was in a more cryptic format, with slashes inserted at various intervals in the middle of the 6-digit article number. 
 
If you have MSDN Library installed, you can open it and search for the Qxxxxxx string. (If you don't have an MSDN Library subscription, I highly recommend getting one. They're relatively cheap, and easily outperform searching the online versions of the KB and MSDN -- by about 50 times.) You can also search Google for the Qxxxxxx string; you will often find a cached version of the article, and Google's database is known to be more reliable than the knowledge base (currently there is a large flux of articles that are "in migration" -- in other words, missing). You can also switch to the groups interface to see discussions from newsgroups involving the article in question -- pretty neat feature. 
 
The following URL format is still valid, but will stop working at some point -- so you should consider migrating away from it (particularly if you store these URLs in your own knowledge base or web site). 
 
    XL98: Series Data Orientation Not Saved ... 
 
We actually store only the KB article, and the formatting is handled at generation time. This way, when Microsoft changes their URL format (which they do often), we only have to change one line of code and the entire FAQ is immediately updated. 
 
Not so hard, right? Now, to do this bit at will, copy the following piece of code and save it in a local HTML file, perhaps sitting on your desktop ready to launch: 
 

<form name=a onsubmit='return false'>      <input type=text name=kb>      <input type=button onclick='go();' value=' Go '>  </form>  <script>  function go()  {      var kb = document.a.kb.value;      var url='http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid='      if (!isNaN(kb))      {          window.open(url+kb,'','');      }  }  </script>

 
A fellow MVP (Alex Angelopoulos) has created HTA files for this same purpose, e.g. to search Google for specific KB articles: 
 
    http://dev.remotenetworktechnology.com/m...