Computer Basics: Tips for Preparing to Re-install Software

Various circumstances can force you to re-install the software on your PC. Perhaps a program had a problem such as its corrupted settings, and you need to uninstall and re-install it.

Or you may need to re-install all of your software. Maybe your computer crashed and is irrevocable. Maybe you bought a new computer to replace an obsolete one. Either way, you now face the challenge of moving all your old software to a new machine.

These tips will help you prepare for the inevitability of re-installing your software:

PK Tip: Fixing Drive Letter Changes in Portable Mode

If you're carrying your notes between computers using Personal Knowbase's portability feature on a USB thumb drive or other removable media, locating PK data files and file attachments can get tricky if drive letters change.

PK Tip: Changing a File's Password

If you use password protection with your Personal Knowbase file, you may want, at some point, to change the password. Whether your entire file is password-protected or only a few articles are private, the password itself is the same for all articles and is stored at the file level.

Fonts in Personal Knowbase

Personal Knowbase allows you to set the fonts for your text at three distinct levels. Use Preferences to set the font for new data files. Use File Properties to set the font for new articles. And use the Font command to affect article content text.

The rule of thumb for distinguishing Preferences and File Properties is that everything in Preferences applies to all data files, but the File Properties is for settings that apply only to the current data file.

Computer Basics: Fixing Lost File Associations

Every file in Windows has a file type, also called a file extension. If you double-click directly on a file name in Windows Explorer, Windows uses that file type to decide what program to launch to read that file. The program associated with the file type is the file type association.

For example, the file type JPG is usually associated with your graphics editing software. So clicking on the name of a JPG file should launch your graphics software with that file already opened.

PK Tip: Suppressing the Warning Message for Saving Articles

When you first start using Personal Knowbase, the software always asks you to verify that you want to save an article when you close it. As you become more familiar with the software, you may find these verification dialog boxes unnecessary, perhaps annoying.

The dialog box itself gives you the option to stop showing it for the rest of the current PK session. However, the next time you start up PK again, the warning dialogs will be back.

If you find yourself always disabling these dialog boxes, you may want to turn them off permanently and never see them again.

PK Tip: Opening a File Automatically at Startup

Did you know that you can make Personal Knowbase automatically open a specific data file whenever it starts up?

To specify a file to open at startup:

PK Tip: Avoiding Changing a Data File

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.

Computer Basics: Setting a Default Printer in Windows

You can tell Windows to use a default printer for all Windows applications. You may need to change this setting if you connect a new printer. Also, unfortunately, sometimes programs interfere with this setting and change it without verifying the change with the end user, requiring you to reset it.

PK Tip: Changing the Date Formats

Dates and times are used in several places in Personal Knowbase. Most important is the Article Date which is (optionally) shown in the Article Window and Index Window's Titles column.