New release: 1.1

(Released on January 6, 2012)

The Sticky Notes application that comes with Windows 7 is pretty sleek. But it leaves out some important features. When you have a number of sticky notes, it is difficult to find the note that you want. You can, of course, use Windows Search to look for text in them. But there is no simple way to list and browse through the Sticky Notes.

Hence, I made this utility Sticky7List that saves a copy of all the Sticky Notes in a convenient list.

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How it works:

1. You need to temporarily stop Sticky Notes application so that this software can access the notes file.
2. Just click on a button “Get List of Sticky Notes” and a list is made up immediately.
3. After getting the list, you can restart the Windows Sticky Notes application by using the Start menu.

Browse through your notes in a convenient list:
Once you get the list of notes, you can go through the notes one by one or use the Search tab to look for text within notes. See the picture on the right.

If you want to print or export all of the saved notes, in addition to this software, you need another Note Organizer software called “WhizFolders” from us:
Sticky7List software actually creates is a special file “Sticky Notes.wzfolder” in your Documents folder. This file is a WhizFolder document that has the features needed for listing notes in this way. If you get WhizFolders software from whizfolders.com, you can do more things with the list of notes that is saved in the above file. You can print them together, join them to export or to copy to clipboard and so on.

What this software, Sticky7List, can not do:
In principle, a third party software utility should not modify any of the internal Windows files. Hence, by design, this software can not modify a sticky note or create new notes. You still need to use Windows 7 Sticky Notes application for that.

Tips:

• In Sticky7List, at the top of the list of sticky notes, you can see the date and time when the list was saved.
• You can continue to see the saved list of notes whenever you use the software again. But if you have modified some Sticky Notes or added new ones, you won’t be able to see the modifications in that old list. You need to refresh it by following the same steps as given above in “How it works.”
• Whenever you get a fresh list of notes, you get an option to save the old list of notes by another file name. This way, you can keep a series of WhizFolder documents, each keeping your Sticky Notes copies on different dates. In other words, If you often change your Sticky Notes, this utility can be a good way to save a copy of your notes that you can view easily.
• As already explained above, if you want to do any other operations on your saved list of notes, for example, to print them, to merge or copy them to clipboard, or to export them in a single text file, you need to get WhizFolders software from whizfolders.com.

A new version of CatchChar, 1.6, is now available. The earlier version didn’t work in some programs, such as, Thunderbird. This problem has been fixed. It also works better with Notepad now. Now you can also enter multiple characters in an item. This feature is just a sneak preview of things to come. Also, a Check for Updates feature is now built into the program so that you can quickly check to see if a newer version is available.

To download the latest version, please see the product page of CatchChar.

HOW TO UPDATE YOUR COPY

Just download the installer from the above page and run it. It will replace your copy. If you are using a portable copy, first install to the desktop and then copy the EXE file from the desktop to the portable copy, renaming it if necessary.

Do you know that there is a neat feature called “Show Desktop” in Windows 7? I use it all the time to quickly access an icon on the desktop even if my screen is choke full of running applications.

This feature has been there since Windows XP. But somehow, I never noticed it there. It became more prominent in Windows Vista where I discovered it for the first time. Since then, I can’t live without it.

Naturally, when I logged on to Windows 7 for the first time, I thought it has been done away with. But I knew it had to exist. I did a search and found it. It’s so subtle that new users may not even know that such a feature exists.

Here is a picture that shows you where to find it in Windows 7:

Show Desktop button in Windows 7

The Show Desktop button is placed on the right of the task bar. To see how it works, run a few programs so that your desktop is no longer visible. Then click on the Show Desktop button and you will see the original desktop again so that you can click on another shortcut icon.

We have updated our software WhizFolders Organizer to version 6.5.7 with many improvements and fixes. For a complete list of What’s New, please see:

http://whizfolders.com/blog/index.php/version-657

We have also released a User Guide in pdf format. This guide was prepared with WhizFolders itself and then printed to a pdf printer to produce the pdf document. The guide can be viewed at:

http://file.whizfolders.com/whizfoldersguide.pdf

We just updated our Unicode Character Insertion utility CatchChar to version 1.5. This version supports running from a portable drive. But to get that capability, please do not install to a portable drive. It won’t work that way. Instead, follow the steps given in the product page of CatchChar.

That means, you can now run CatchChar from a DropBox folder too and it will be available on all the computers connected to the DropBox!

Latest update: 1.6.2
(released on December 4, 2011, see Update News at the end for changes)

With CatchChar, you can enter your favorite unicode characters in any edit box on Windows easily. CatchChar is a popup menu utility that you can customize to put your often used special characters. This is faster than looking for special characters in an on screen keyboard or in Windows Charmap utility that  requires an additional copy, paste operation.

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HOW TO USE

Download and install CatchChar. Then run it and it sits in the tray icon area. To bring up its menu, press the hot key combination Alt-Shift-C. Then select any character from the menu and it is inserted at the current position.

CatchChar menu starts with very few default characters. The idea is that you would like to add your own characters to it. Click on Settings. Enter a unicode character in “New Character” box and hit Add Character to add it to the menu. You can take help of Windows Charmap utility to enter the special character for the first time. In the new version, you can enter more than one character.

If you want to change the hot key combination Alt-Shift-C that brings up CatchChar menu, click on Settings, then Change Hot Key. Select a character other than C and hit OK.

Making a portable copy: If you want to carry catchchar on a portable drive to use on any computer, this is now possible in version 1.5 or later.

Please follow these steps: (Only if you want to carry CatchChar on a portable drive. Otherwise, please don’t use them for your regular desktop installation.)

1. Install CatchChar to a desktop computer first. This will also update any existing copy of CarchChar.
2. Copy catchchar.exe from the installed folder of the desktop computer to a folder on your portable drive.
3. Rename the copied file to catchcharportable.exe. THIS STEP IS IMPORTANT.
4. That’s it. Now you can run it from the portable folder and it will save any customizations to its own folder.
5. If you have already customized the CatchChar popup menu on the desktop computer, please save your menu to a file from the Edit Menu screen before performing above steps. Then restore the menu file in the portable CatchChar.
6. If you had customized the hot key for CatchChar on the desktop computer, you will need to redo it for the CatchChar on the portable drive.

Will work on DropBox (dropbox.com) too: The above modification makes it possible to run CatchChar even from a Dropbox folder so that your menu is always available on all the computers connected to the DropBox.

UPDATE NEWS

Version 1.6.2, Dec 4, 2011: Recent changes broke the insertion into Microsoft Word 2010. Hence, I made some changes in the way CatchChar works. It is now working in all Office 2010 applications on my machine. For one user, it is still not working in MS Word 2010. I don’t know why. If you see the same problem, please write to me using the Contact form on this web site and give me the exact version of Windows and Microsoft Word that you use.

Version 1.6, Dec 1, 2011:

• Earlier version didn’t work in some programs, such as, Thunderbird. This problem has been fixed. However, the position of the menu is always to the left in such programs due to technical limitations.
• Works better with Notepad now that earlier didn’t accept some characters.
• On some systems, the program gave an error message when the menu was edited. Fixed.
• Now you can enter multiple characters in an item. This feature is just a sneak preview of things to come. If you see any problems, please let us know.
• Check for Updates feature is now built into the program so that you can quickly check to see if a newer version is available.

Version 1.5, Aug 29, 2011: CatchChar now supports running from a portable folder as described above.

Version 1.2, Jan 14, 2011: This version fixes a problem in storing some unicode characters when the program is stopped and restarted.

REVIEWS

“CatchChar provides a simple and much needed functionality: a fast and efficient method for adding special characters. The application is easily customizable, unobtrusive and best of all, Free!”
– Editor’s comments, softoxi.com

Brainstorm your ideas better by outlining them with WhizFolders.

Better writing involves being able to cope with new ideas as and when they strike you. With WhizFolders, you can write your ideas in pieces, outline them with drag and drop, and join then to make a document any time. Manage all kinds of notes, ideas and writing projects with this versatile outliner and organizer software. Additional features include a rich text editor, automatic pastes to collect text from Internet browser and other applications, hyperlinks to other notes, documents or web sites, boolean search, and so on. Includes a nice tutorial to get you started quickly.

Download a 30-day trial copy

Buy Now for $25 only

Learn more. Visit the WhizFolders web site…

In Windows 7, if you right-click on any file on the desktop, you will see a menu that allows you to open the parent folder of that file. Very convenient! The following picture shows that menu.

Click on “Open file location.” It will open the Program Files folder where this program is located. I have found this feature to be a great addition to Windows. This not only works on the desktop shortcuts but also on the files and folders in Windows Explorer. If you select a folder in Windows Explorer and right-click, this menu item changes to “Open folder location” which again means the parent folder of the selected folder. This menu operation is available in explorer all the time. For example, if you searched for files in the Explorer and are looking at a search list, you can quickly get to the parent folder of a file or folder in the search list.

Update: This feature, Open File Location, has been there since Windows Vista. But in Windows 7, there is a little difference. In Explorer, if you click on this option, it opens the parent folder in the same window. If you want it to open in a new window, press Shift key before you click on the “Open file location.”

The “Open file location” feature is missing in Windows XP. But it’s possible to make a short program to make this feature available in Windows XP. I don’t use Windows XP any more. But if you do, and want this feature, please do write to me by using the menu About–Contact at the top. If enough users request it, I can make this freeware utility and add it to this web site. May be, such a utility can grow to add more features, even for Windows 7.

Get great discount offers on our Software News

• Go to Microsoft Download Center on microsoft.com. We can’t give exact address here as it keeps on changing.
• Search the downloads for “hcwsetup” or “Windows 95 help authoring kit.”
• Finally it will show the link and the download page. When you download, you get a file hcwsetup.EXE. Run it to install the compiler. If you are using Windows Vista, better install to some other drive (not to the regular Program Files). I have not tested if it works in Program Files on Vista. It might not work because it is old software.
• If you are using Windows Vista, please run this Microsoft Help Workshop from the Start menu at least once as an administrator so that it is able to initialize its registry entries. You can even set it up to always run as administrator and in Windows 95 compatibility mode by right-clicking on its properties.

If you find that something has changed, please let us know.

Manage disk space on huge drives and network volumes easily. Find biggest folders and files taking up your disk space. Print contents of folders easily.

ShowSize is an amazing utility that gives you seven useful disk reports after a single scan of a disk location. You can also print contents of folders easily. ShowSize gives you a clear picture of disk space usage on your drives. As a result you can find out what folders, file types and files are consuming the most disk space. You can also find some interesting things. For example, do you want to know what is the largest file on a paticular drive? You can do that with Only Files report by sorting it on the file size. You can’t do that with Windows Explorer because it doesn’t have any report like that where all the files are listed in a straight, sortable list.

Once you realize the power of ShowSize, you can use the software for different purposes as shown in the following examples.

Some examples of using ShowSize:

1. A disk F: is filling up fast. I want to quickly find the big-size folders and see if I can delete some. You can do that with “Folder Sizes report.” To see more details on this report, please click on the Learn More link below to go the product web site.
2. I have a big folder “F:\Photos and Travel docs” containing lots of JPG photographs in many subfolders that also contain other types of files. I quickly want to see how much space just the JPG files are taking so that I can put them on a CD. I can’t do that with Explorer as it doesn’t show subtotals by file types and doesn’t show space taken by files in subfolders. You can do that with “File Types report.” To see more details on this report, please click on the Learn More link below to go the product web site.
3. I have a mixture of big and small files on a usb hard disk in many subfolders and just want to delete some large files to make space. You can do that with “Only Files report.” To see more details on this report, please click on the Learn More link below to go the product web site.

Download a 30-day trial copy

Buy Now for $25 only

Learn more. Visit the ShowSize web site