Microsoft Word – WhizFolders Knowledgebase

Sending a WhizFolder document to someone who does not have WhizFolders

I want to send a WhizFolder file to my friend. How can she view my notes without WhizFolders?

Ask her to use the freeware WhizFolder Viewer available from the downloads section to view the notes. If you want her to be able to add to or update the notes, give her an exported RTF file that she can view and edit in Word or Wordpad. Ask her to mark her modifications so that you can find and import her text by copy paste into your original WhizFolder file.

Using the table tool

WhizFolders 6 or later displays tables very well as it supports the use of new Microsoft RichEdit 4.1. Unfortunately, there is no inherent table designing or modifying features in Microsoft RichEdit control. It only allows you to edit the text and other contents of the tables, not the tables themselves. For example, you can’t insert or delete columns and rows.

Design tables in Word: If you have Microsoft Word then you can design the tables in Word and then copy and paste them in WhizFolders. After that, you can edit the table text within WhizFolders itself and it works very well. But if you have to modify the table design, you need to copy the full table and paste it in Microsoft Word, make your change and bring it back.

Use the Table Tool: If you don’t have Microsoft Word then you might consider using the new Table Tool in WhizFolders. Let me tell you frankly that this table wizard uses a different editor control. This editor control has its own limitations, quirks and bugs. However, it does have all the basic features of designing and editing tables. Some tables may not look exactly same when the wizard puts them back in WhizFolders RichEdit. Most of the time it works well. You need to experiment and see what feature works and what doesn’t. Here is a picture of it in action:

Table Tool in WhizFolders

No, this editor control is not from Microsoft and is not an RTF based editor. We had to go through considerable effort to interface its use with WhizFolders editor. To summarize, we don’t guarantee that the table editor will work perfectly all the time with Microsoft RichEdit, an RTF control that we use in WhizFolders. But it works for most primary purposes when designing a table. The modify table doesn’t work that well yet. But the nice thing is that you can cancel out of the changes if you don’t like them in the Wizard. Or, if the table doesn’t modify well after you hit OK, you can do an Undo in the WhizFolders editor to go back to the earlier state as long as you have not saved the document.

That’s why I recommend using the Advanced Editor when working with tables. You can use the quick editor but remember that it commits the changes if you move to another topic. So if you plan on doing an Undo, keep editing the same topic or better still, use the advanced editor. This is true for most of the editing, not only table editing. The quick edit should be used only for that purpose, for “quick” editing. Use the advanced editor whenever possible.

Still, if you have Microsoft Word, I recommend that you use it for designing a table and then put it in a WhizFolders topic and it will display very well. You can even edit text in it quite well. Perhaps, in a future version, we will use Microsoft Word itself as our table tool if it is present on your system.

Is there a feature like the Format Painter of Microsoft Word?

A tool like that is already there on the Editor but works in a different way. It is called Pick and Apply format. You will find two different buttons on the editor toolbar, one to pick a format and other to apply it. This way, you can pick a format from some selected text and go on applying this format to another selected text. The picked format is remembered for the session till you pick another format.

There is also a feature to include the paragraph properties in the picked format. But you have to put on that option. It is off by default. You will find it in the General Options–Editor.

How do I copy many notes to my Word document?

This article is old. You can find the latest information in the User Guide that you can download from whizfolders.com downloads section.

There are many ways to copy notes in WhizFolders. Before we describe them, there are two basic operations you need to know.

Selecting many notes in the list: You can use the Ctrl-click to select multiple notes. This is similar to Windows Explorer.
Deciding whether you need the note names in the copy: Many operations that we describe below copy or omit note names depending on the option “Include Names” that you put ON on the Edit menu. So decide whether you want the names along with text and put this option ON or OFF.

To copy the notes, you first select multiple notes and put on the Include Names option as described above. Then do one of the following:

Copy then Paste: Click on the Copy toolbar button and then paste in your word processor document.
Drag and drop: Bring both the list of notes and the word processor windows in view. Start dragging from the icon part of the selected notes to a suitable position in the word processor document.
Export to an RTF file: Click on the menu “Tools–Export Selected Topics–To single RTF file.” Then you can open that RTF file in your word processor.
Export to multiple RTF files: Click on the menu “Tools–Export Selected Topics–To multiple RTF files.” It asks you for a folder to create one file for each note.
Export ALL the topics to an RTF file: This operation is useful to make a complete RTF back up of all your notes from time to time. It is available on the File menu as “Save RTF text of all the topics for backup purposes.” It always exports all the topics and always includes the note names.

Then, there are many other possibilities that you will see on the Edit and Right-click menu on the topic list. For example, you can only copy plain text of notes or the note names only.

Tip: On the Edit menu, you will see an operation “Copy selected topics as they would appear in viewer.” You will understand this only if you know how hyperlinks are coded as Jump statements in WhizFolders. This operation beautifies the links so that the Jump statements are hidden in the copy if possible.