PDF Converter Professional 7 – A First Look

January 2, 2012 By

PDF Converter Professional 7 – A First Look

Program: PDF Converter Professional 7.0
Publisher: Nuance Communications, Inc.
License: Commercial
Price: List $99. Price on Apr. 3, 2011 at Amazon: $48.59
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Every once in a while, a program that’s designed for business use is so helpful and priced so reasonably that it’s useful for home users, too. That’s the case with PDF Converter Professional 7. I quickly bought my own personal copy.

I use it at the office to convert PDF documents into Word documents so that I can do redline edits ("Track Changes") to them.

I had been using Adobe Acrobat Professional 8 for this purpose until recently. However, for some reason, Adobe Acrobat Pro was starting to convert documents using Word’s text boxes. If you haven’t ever dealt with them, text boxes are some of the most frustrating and useless functions in Word, at least in my opinion.

I found that some other people were using PDF Converter Professional, so I decided to give it a try.

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Filed Under: Software, Tips & Tricks Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Why Don’t Deleted Emails Appear in the Recycle Bin?

October 18, 2011 By

Subscriber JPB had a question about deleting emails, and why they don’t get recycled:

When you delete files (normally) they go to the recycle bin. How come E-mail doesn’t work the same way. it get’s compacted? I’m using Thunderbird and Windows 7.

The reason that deleted emails don’t show up in the Recycle Bin is that the Recycle Bin stores files after you delete them (note that some programs will delete files without putting them into the Recycle Bin). This is sometimes a problem with older programs or programs that are simplistically ported from another operating system.

Most Windows email programs store emails as data in large files containing multiple emails. They’re not stored as individual files. Email “folders” are actually files, in most cases, although some email programs may not create separate files for the folders.

Thunderbird is one such, as is Eudora OSE (which I use), which is based on Thunderbird. Thunderbird stores all its emails in a database file called global-messages-db.sqlite.

JPB still had some concerns, though:

Filed Under: Communications, Email, Software, Tips & Tricks

Icons Missing From Vista Status Bar

June 8, 2010 By

Sometimes, I can read and understand the problem, but I’m not using the software that the subscriber uses, and can’t give a good answer. Even then, I try to steer them to an answer.

Such was the case with the first question from Chet Norris recently:

Hi Terry,

Weird problem..I’m running vista home premium (32 bit) on my HP LAPTOP and I just noticed the icon for my wireless program is missing from the task bar.

Usually it sits next to the HP power plan icon but now it’s gone. I’ve gone to “network and sharing” in control panel and played around for 30 minutes and can’t find a mention of the icon.

I was able to click on it and know the signal strength etc and if I was connected thru it or the dsl modem.

Any thoughts?

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Filed Under: Software, System Stability, Tips & Tricks, Vista

Compacting Folders in Email Programs

November 15, 2009 By

Longtime subscriber Peter wrote recently from the U.K. to ask about an Outlook Express problem he’s having:

Hi Terry, Many thanks for the latest issue of your newsletter, which always arrives here in the UK on a Sunday evening – a great time for reading it through.

My question is: Do you know a way of permanently stopping Outlook Express from compacting all its stored files? Every so often OE pops up a dialog asking if it can do this and if I let it go ahead it then makes a complete pigs mess of all my folders.

Very old deleted e-mails suddenly reappear in the Inbox folder bolded as unread, with dates months before the real latest message, although they drop in after it – so it has apparently also managed to mess up the date sort order, something I thought a computer couldn’t do.

Some other stored messages…

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Filed Under: Communications, Email, Software, System Stability, Tips & Tricks

Keeping Old Hard Drive Backup Files

February 26, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Subscriber JNC wrote to me to say that he’d been using Acronis True Image for a while and wanted to know about keeping old backups:

I have just completed a total backup via Acronis on my external hard drive. Is there any reason to save previous total backups?
My external (500) hard drive is over 2/3 full.
jnc

I wrote back to JNC to say that I wouldn’t get rid of all of them. I suggested that he keep some recent ones and one or two full backups from the past — including the oldest one he had.

I find that, most of the time, I’m reaching for a backup file or backup image file because my brain messed up, not because of a hardware failure. It’s too easy to change a file and not realize that we haven’t done the change correctly. We find it out later when we try to use the file, or that part of the file. It might be days, weeks or even months later.

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Filed Under: Hardware, Software, Storage, System Security, Tips & Tricks, Vista, Windows Xp

Using Acronis True Image to Back Up to DVD’s

November 7, 2008 By Leave a Comment

In a recent article about how I use Acronis True Image to back up of my computer, I wrote about using Acronis True Image to make an image of my C: drive (my C: partition) to an external drive or to another computer, so that I can reinstall it in its entirety. This saves me from having to reinstall Windows, find all my device driver disks, find all my program disks and reinstall the programs, locating and installing all the add-ons that I want to use in Firefox, and many more such tedious tasks.

In a comment on my Terry’s Computer Tips blog, a subscriber requested that I write about how to use Acronis True Image to back up to CDROM’s or to DVD’s, as many people don’t have home networks.

Rather than recreate all the images that are common between the “Schedule Task Wizard” (which I used last week) and the “Create Backup Wizard” that I’m using for the DVD example, I’m just changing the images that are different. (it doesn’t make sense to me to use the scheduler for DVD backups, since I wouldn’t be there to change DVD’s when needed.)

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Filed Under: Backup, Software, Tips & Tricks

Accessing and Reading Usenet Newsgroups

October 13, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Reader Greg H. wrote recently to ask for help solving his inability to access the Usenet newsgroups on Verison’s servers.

For those not familiar with Usenet newsgroups, think of them as a mailing list type of system that has been around for well over 25 years. Rather than emails sent to our computers, though, the postings stored in special servers at the Internet Service Providers or at companies that specialize in serving newsgroups (I use GigaNews as my Usenet newsgroups provider).

The postings to the newsgroups are readable by special newsreader software, but some more ubiquitous software like Outlook Express, Opera and Netscape also read newsgroups. They’re also readable via Google Groups, as are other groups that are available only via Google Groups.

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Filed Under: Communications, Free Software, Resources, Software, Tips & Tricks
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