Author Archives: Bitsmith Software

Seven Tips for Coping During “Shelter in Place”

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Many of us are currently self-isolating, under orders to shelter in place, or under quarantine. Even if you’re still working from home, you probably have time on your hands when you would have been commuting, socializing, or running errands. Those not used to having a lot of unstructured time, trapped with only immediate family members, or even completely alone, can rapidly succumb to cabin fever.

You might feel like you’ve lost control of your life. Constant stress and loss of focus can lead to ennui.
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Using Personal Knowbase to Organize Recipes

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Whether you’re an ardent chef, you’re gathering together all your extended family’s recipes, you’re studying mixology, or you just bake occasionally for holidays, Personal Knowbase provides a natural and flexible way to organize your recipes. Collect all your recipes in one place where you can access them on your computer, print them, or export them to text files.

Here are some ideas for setting up a PK data file for your recipes.
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PK Tip: Avoiding Changing a Data File

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When browsing a Personal Knowbase data file — opening and closing articles while checking or looking for something — you can easily make changes accidentally.

If you realize you’ve made a change to an article that you didn’t want to change, you can immediately return the article to its last saved state. While the article window is still open, select the Undo Article Changes command from the Edit menu.

But if you know that you don’t want to make changes to a file before you open it, it’s safer to open the file in Read-Only mode to start with. In Read-Only mode, you have no risk of making unwanted changes. You will not be able to modify existing articles or create new ones.
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Cleaning off Your Desk with Personal Knowbase

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Today is National Clean Off Your Desk Day, which falls on the second Monday of January every year. Personal Knowbase can’t help you get rid of old pens, half-used batteries, and that broken coffee mug. But it can help you tidy up all those scattered bits of paper.

As part of your efforts, try this:
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PK Tip: Typing in the Index Column

In Personal Knowbase, normally we locate keywords in the Index column by clicking them with the mouse. But we can also locate keywords using the keyboard. Typing to locate keywords can save you from constant scrolling in long lists of keywords.

When the highlighted cursor focus (when the highlight has a dotted outline) is in the Index column, you can type the first few letters of a keyword to move the highlight to that keyword in the list. So, for example, if you type “sm”, the highlight will move to the first keyword starting with “sm”.
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Computer Basics: 3 Tips for Effective Backups

Disaster can strike at any time, whether it’s computer failure, fire, or human error. For anyone doing computer work that involves creating new data — whether your work is writing, business and finance, or programming — backing up your files is critical. Even losing a day’s worth of writing or artwork can be devastating.

Keeping safe backups of all of your original data is important.
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