Blog: WhizFolders, Articles and tips

I hope you will find many helpful tips and articles on the use of WhizFolders here.

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The Seach feature: If you can't quickly locate a desired topic in Categories, please use the Search.

To make a PDF document from WhizFolders, you just need to install one of those pdf print drivers and print your document to it. The only limitation would be that the links won’t work. Other than that, this method works very well.

One very talented user of WhizFolders, a writer, made a monster 1000-page reference pdf book by this method. I came to know of this pdf export possibility only because of his efforts. Later, when I wanted to write a compact user guide for WhizFolders itself, I used this method to make a pdf file by using the clickbook pdf printer. I added some advanced printing features like print cover while making that compact guide.

I am soon going to look into the possiblity of exporting the links properly to the pdf document. The print driver type pdf exporters do not support this feature.

Some of my topics include screen shots so I was hoping to use the “continuation topics” feature to break them down into manageable chunks. But it is not working as documented. When I print the document, it prints the titles of continuation topics too even in the Table of Contents which it is not supposed to do. What is wrong?

You must be using a self-numbered list. This feature does not work with a self-numbered topic list. Please put off the self-numbering on File Options–Appearance.

For those of you who don’t know what “continuation topics” are, please see the help index on “Continuation topics.” This is a useful but advanced feature, especially if you are writing a very large book or a book with large topics.

In general, if you see that any print option is not working, please switch off the numbered list and retry. For example, the Print Cover option also does not work properly with numbered lists.

You can try exporting your notes as Microsoft Word Outline using the menu “Tools–Export Selected Topics–To a Single RTF File as Word Outline” on a document window. Then, Power Point will allow you to import this Word outline.

But you may have to experiment with outline styles a little bit to get the export styles for each level that you like. WhizFolders allows you to export a different font for each level heading so that it is easy to make a global change of style for headings in Word. To check the Export Feature, please check the menu: Tools–Export Selected Topics–To a Single RTF File as Word Outline.

The main thing to remember is that a backup document is nothing but a simple copy of a WhizFolder document with the name changed to show that it is a backup copy made on a certain date. Also, multiple copies of the same document are present in the backup folder. So all you need to do to reuse a backup document is to copy the file back to your documents folder and then rename it back to the original document name by editing the name a little bit.

Here are the detailed steps:

1. Open the backup folder in Windows Explorer.
2. You will see the backup WhizFolder documents with names starting with “Backup” and ending with a date. By looking at the date in the name, you can easily find the latest backup copy of a document.
   
   If this seems difficult, use the following steps to sort the file list in Windows Explorer on modified date.

   (a) Change the Explorer to show the “detailed” list by View menu. On Windows Vista, you may have to right-click on the column names and add “modified” column to the list.

   (b) Once you are viewing in the View–Details mode, click on the Modified column once or twice to sort the list such that the most recent date appears at the top.

3. By now, you should have selected a proper backup document–the one you want to reuse.
4. Right-click, copy the file and paste it in your regular documents folder, say “d:\my whizdocs”
5. Rename the copied file to remove “Backup” from the beginning of the name and the date from the end.
6. Double-click on the file name so that it opens in WhizFolders. Or, use the File–Open menu in WhizFolders to open it.
7. As soon as you open it, it appears in the main document list of WhizFolders.
8. Repeat the above steps for each back up document that you want to reuse.

Yes, you can. Select all the topics related to that Keyword by ctrl-click in the topic list. Then right-click on the topic list and click on the menu “Add keywords for the topic.” You can type a new keyword or select one from the pull down.

Note: The keywords feature is only available in the Deluxe edition.

We have released a new version 6.1 of WhizFolder Viewer. The instructions to distribute the new viewer with your documents are included in the new tutorial of the viewer.

WhizFolder Viewer is no longer used for creating self-running exe ebooks of your documents. That feature has been integrated in WhizFolders itself, starting from version 6.1 (not available in trial edition).

There are many features in WhizFolders for editing in separate windows. I assume that you already tried the advanced editor that opens topics in a tabbed editor window. Now here are some more tricks that show how flexible WhizFolders is.

Please try all these neat tricks that show different aspects of starting an editor:

• When the two topics are open in the advanced tabbed editor, right-click on the menu “New Editor Window.” This will transfer that topic to a new editor window. You can then arrange the two editor windows the way you want, side by side.
• If you want these two topics to remember their position, right-click on “Pin this topic” on both of them so that the menu is ticked (switched on). Now whenever you open these topics, they will open in their remembered positions.
• Click on the menu “Tools–File Options–Desktop” and switch on the option “Open each topic in a separate editor.” Once you do that, each click on advanced editor opens that topic in a separate editor window.
• You can even have all such open topic editors automatically restored on the next open of the document by “remember everything” option on the File Options–Desktop.
• You might have noticed that if you double-click on a topic name in the topic list (or hit the Enter key on it), it starts a quick editor in the right pane. What if you always want to open an advanced editor on a double-click? To do that, you can switch off an option in “Tools–General Options–Editor.” The option is “Start Quick Edit on Enter key.”

We have worked hard to release the new trial edition of version 6.1. For the same reason, we could not update this Blog regularly. Now that the trial is out, we can work on new features and demos to help the users.

In the past, we have had problems with the trial where it used to expire if the user changed the system date or clock for any reason. Then, it was a problem to issue an extension and so forth. In the new Trial Edition, there is a built-in extension feature to deal with these problems even on the newer Windows Vista systems.

Here are some tips on using the trial edition effectively:

1. Trial period: The trial period runs for 15 days. When it expires, you can probably get one extension. The Deluxe Edition features are not included in the trial but we are adding flash demos to show them in the demos section of whizfolders.com. If you were using an old version 5.6.3 or 6.0 trial, note that this trial edition gives you a fresh 15 days trial period.
2. Purchasing: If you decide to purchase WhizFolders, please always do that from the Buy Now button that you see in the first trial screen. This gives us a chance to show you any promotional offers or give credit to the web site or affiliate who introduced you to WhizFolders.
3. The Tutorial: When you start the trial for the first time, a tutorial document comes up with some helpful hints. Both are important. You can start the hints or tutorials again from the help menu any time. Please go through the tutorial thoroughly as it demonstrates many features. If something is not clear, please take a look at the demos and this blog and finally the help file.
4. The flash demo movies: You should also go through the demos on whizfolders.com web site. Start with the introductory demos and then work your way through the more advanced ones.
5. This Blog: You will also find many useful articles on this blog. You can search the blog by using the search box on the right.

   If you still have some question unanswered, please feel free to write to us by email. We usually reply within a business day.

These things do happen, and that’s why we have an all automated web site just for this purpose at support.whizfolders.com. Please login there with your contact email address that is on our file, and you should be able to get the latest installer download along with the license codes. This facility is free of charge for a period of two years after your original purchase. After that the facility is renewed once you buy an upgrade.

This takes care of installing WhizFolders. What about your documents? You should have kept a backup copy of all your .wzfolder files by using simple copy from Windows Explorer. WhizFolders also includes a simple backup feature that allows you to copy a document to a safe location from time to time. Whatever method you choose, you are alone responsible for keeping a safe copy of your documents.

When you reinstall WhizFolders on a new machine, put your documents in a documents folder of your choice using Windows Explorer so that you remember where you have them. Then, just double-click on a document name to open it in WhizFolders and it appears in the main window list. Do that for all your documents. Or, add them all at once by the right-click menu operation “Add an existing document to List…” You are all set to go. Don’t forget to continue keeping a backup copy of the documents in case it happens again. We can help if you lost WhizFolders but we can’t help you get back your documents.

You already know that the primary purpose of the main window is to list the documents in the recently used order and to launch a document quickly by double-click. Here are some more nice features. We also have a flash demo in the demos section of whizfolders.com to show some of these features.

Auto hide: Click on “Auto Hide” to switch it ON, and the main window goes out of the way whenever you are working on a document. It comes back when you close all the documents.

Minimizing to the tray by default: WhizFolders now minimizes to the tray icon or notification area by default when you close the main window or minimize it using the red minimize icon on any window. If you don’t like it, you can switch off this behavior on the “Tools–General Options–Taskbar.”

Documents list: The Main Window displays the list of Documents and their corresponding location. You can sort the list by document names or by location by clicking on the column heading. When you open a document it adds it to the list. So that, next time, to open that file again, you just need to double-click on its name in the list of documents or right-click on the menu “Open selected file.”

Last used document on top: When you open a WhizFolder document, it goes to the top of the list of documents. This means that the main window keeps the documents listed in the most recently used order, which is convenient most of the time. However, if you want to keep documents sorted alphabetically on their names, just right-click on the menu “Keep sorted on file names.”

Other ways to add documents to the list: You may want to do this, for instance, when you bring a usb disk containing your WhizFolder documents from home to the office and want to add them to the list. You can add the file names yourself by right clicking on the menu “Add file to list…” and then selecting the desired file names from your usb disk. You can also drag and drop file names from Windows Explorer to add to the main window list.

Removing from list: You can remove a document from the list by right clicking on the menu “Remove file…” But this does not actually delete the document from your disk. It is still there. To also delete it from the disk, use the “Purge” menu item that allows removing and deleting a file at the same time. However, be cautions when you do this. It goes to the recycle bin if you purge so you can still recover it till you empty the recycle bin.

Other useful right-click operations There are right-click operations to move or copy documents too. Another useful operation is to open the folder containing the document in Windows Explorer. Very useful for organizing the stuff accompanying the documents outside WhizFolders.

Search for words in multiple documents

WhizFolders give you an easy way to search for words in all your documents in the list or in the documents selected in the list.

1. On the WhizFolders main window, click on the menu “Search–Advanced search in all the listed files”. This will search all the documents listed.
2. Or, select those files (ctrl-click) in which you want to conduct the search and click on the menu “Search–Advanced search in selected files”. This will search only the selected documents.
3. Both the search options will give an Advanced search Dialog. Enter the words you want to search.
4. Switch on the options “whole words” or “case sensitive search” if needed.
5. The search result will be shown and the Topics found are listed on the left.
6. If you want to further narrow down the results, click on the button “Search within results…” that operates in a similar way but now looks for the search text within the list of topics on the left.

Backup

I hope you are taking advantage of the backup feature from the document windows. But multiple documents can be backed up from the Main Window. There are two menus: “Backup All Listed Documents” or “Backup Selected Documents”. Both the menu items are present in the “Files” and “Tools” menu. You will have to assign a backup folder. This can be done using the menu “Tools – Backup options..”.