This is how people often produce written reports based on data that’s accumulated and updated in an Excel spreadsheet. We’ve offered a lot of really cool tips and tools for Excel over the years, such as Saikat’s article on producing professional looking charts, and Steve’s article on cool Excel templates for project management.

In this article, I’m going to dive a little more into the background VBA scripting that allows you to actually program connections between data that might be stored in an Excel file and Word documents where you may be producing reports.

It’s actually surprisingly easy to accomplish this once you know how to add the right references, and how to lay out the syntax of the background VBA code.

Integrating Data From Excel Into Your Word Document

In this example, I’m going to start out with a fairly simple Excel spreadsheet. In reality, the Excel file can consist of multiple spreadsheets with lots of data, it doesn’t matter.

So long as you know where the data resides in the spreadsheet, you’ll be able to reach in and grab it using VBA.

Here’s what my sample spreadsheet looks like. It’s a list of expense totals that have been calculated throughout the entire year.

Now, lets say you have a manager that would like to see a nicely formatted report that describes the expenses, grouping together like items and laying it all out in a layout that’s a little more pleasing to the eye (and easier for the big boys upstairs to understand).

You can do this by incorporating objects like textboxes or labels into your Word document. When you’re in Word, just click on the Developer menu tab, and then select “Design Mode” in the Controls box. Use the Legacy Tools dropdown icon to find where you can insert labels into your document.

Once you have the label placed in the document where you want it (not always an easy task), you’re ready to program the data feed. But first you’ll need to name the label so that the VBA can identify it. Right click on the label and go into Properties. Find the “(Name)” field and call it something that you’ll remember.

Now, add a Command Button from the same Legacy Tools dropdown list, place it in your document, and double click it to open up the VBA editor. When you get your code working later, you can modify it so that the code runs on the Document Open() event. You’ll see that in the object dropdown boxes in the editor window.

To get started connecting Word to Excel, you’ll need to reference Excel. Click on Tools, and then References. Scroll down the list until you see the “Microsoft Excel 12.0 Object Library” and select it.

Once you’ve done this, the rest is just a matter of writing a ridiculously simple VBA script to pull in data from an Excel spreadsheet and automatically update the label caption with the data. Here’s how that works.

Private Sub CommandButton1_Click()
Dim objExcel As New Excel.Application
Dim exWb As Excel.Workbook
 
Set exWb = objExcel.Workbooks.Open("c:\temp\expenses.xls")
 
ThisDocument.yrTotal.Caption = exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(12, 2)
 
exWb.Close
 
Set exWb = Nothing
 
End Sub

See how that works? The “exWb” Excel application object opens the Excel file at the path you provide it, and it’ll go right into the specific sheet and cell number, extract the data, and place it into the Caption property of the label that you named “yrTotal“.

Here’s the VBA macro in action.

The hard part with dealing with labels in Word is that it’s sometimes hard to align it at the end of a sentence or alongside any other text.

One way of overcoming that is actually incorporating some of the text alongside the data in the VBA code itself.  As you can see here, I’ve put the static text right into the Caption when I create the label itself.

Now, all you have to do is include that text when you update the label with your VBA script, and just append the data from the Excel file to the end of that text. Here’s what that kind of code would look like.

Dim objExcel As New Excel.Application
Dim exWb As Excel.Workbook
 
Set exWb = objExcel.Workbooks.Open("c:\temp\expenses.xls")
 
ThisDocument.yrTotal.Caption = exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(12, 2)
ThisDocument.totHotels.Caption = "Hotels: " & exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(5, 2)
ThisDocument.TotDining.Caption = "Dining Out: " & exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(2, 2)
ThisDocument.totTolls.Caption = "Tolls: " & exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(3, 2)
ThisDocument.totFuel.Caption = "Fuel: " & exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(10, 2)
 
exWb.Close
 
Set exWb = Nothing

You can use the string concatenation “&” symbol to place connect the static text with the data extracted from the Excel sheet. Here’s what the final results look like in the updated Word document.

Again, if you don’t want to have a big, ugly grey command button in your word document, just have the data-update script run on Document.Open(), and it’ll all take place behind the scenes.

In fact, in many cases you could create the initial document once, and then you’ll never have to create it again. All you’ll have to do is open it, and all of the labels will automatically update for you with the data from the updated Excel file. All you have to do is click to Print, and submit the report to your manager. A 30 minute report just turned into a 1 minute printout!

Can you think of any other cool uses for this data-integration technique using VBA? Share some of your own ideas and thoughts in the comments section below.

Shutterstock

Not only is Notepad++ free under the GPL licence but it is also possible to extend its functionality with plugins. Today I’ll be taking a look at the Notepad++ plugins repository which contains a few extra bells and whistles to take your text editor to the next level.

Notepad++ & Plugins

Notepad++ has already seen a few mentions here at MakeUseOf and has earned its place on our Best Of Windows Software list. We’ve also previously included it in our Windows text editor roundup, used it to find and replace words in multiple files and shown you how to switch out your default HTML source editor in favour of Notepad++. If you’ve not yet got it, head on over to the project homepage and download for free.

Luckily there is a healthy collection of third-party plugins, some of which have made their way into the latest Notepad++ release after proving their worth. The program has its very own plugin manager (which is ironically a plugin itself) from which to janitor your add-ons and updates.

Choosing the right plugins depends entirely on what you use Notepad++ for, and there are a good number to trawl through. Installing plugins used to involve downloading archives and extracting to the ‘plugins’ directory, and while you can still do this it’s much easier to choose Plugins from the main taskbar then Plugin Manager to bring up the repository.

Once the list has refreshed you will be presented with an array of available downloads. For a better idea of what each plugin does simply click and read the description. Installing the add-ons is easy – check the box next to the plugin and click Install. Multiple plugins can be installed this way which is great because Notepad++ requires a restart before they show up.

If you do want to use the traditional download-and-extract method you’ll need to find the plugins first. Luckily there are a good number located at the npp-plugins SourceForge project page.

Recommended Plugins

Once again there’s no one-size-fits-all here, and each of you will find your own preferred plugins based on primary usage. Saying that, the following plugins do have somewhat of a broad appeal:

Explorer – A simple file explorer that sits on the left-hand side of your screen. Double click and files will open, just like that.

Compare – A surprisingly useful plugin for comparing two files, side-by-side.

AutoSave - Always forgetting to save on time? Let AutoSave save for you! Can be configured to use a timer or when Notepad++ loses focus/is minimized.

Location Navigate – Quickly jump backwards and forwards to parts of the document that you have modified, rather than trawling through all the stuff in between.

Lorem Ipsum – One for the web designers, a simple Lorem Ipsum script for instant Latin copy text.

MultiClipboard – Provides access to the last 10 copied items. Ctrl+V pastes the last copied text whereas Ctrl+Shift+V lets you choose from a list of 10 memorised copies.

XBrackets Lite – Forgetting just one bracket can ruin your whole afternoon – never again with XBrackets Lite!

Falling Bricks – Who said plugins have to be useful? Here’s a very simple Tetris clone to distract you when the time is right.

Using The Plugins

Once you’ve selected the plugins you’ll want, hit Install and let them download. You will be notified that a restart is required, agree and Notepad++ will appear once again with your bounty of add-ons enabled.

To use the plugins, visit the Plugins menu in the main taskbar and select from there. Some will have multiple functions and options and others will be very basic “enable or disable” affairs. To remove plugins (or check for updates) launch the Plugin Manager again, choose the Installed tab, select a plugin and click Remove.

Conclusion

Hopefully you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for in this excellent plugins respository. It’s a fantastic way of turbo-charging Notepad++ to be even more useful, and the right add-ons can really help tailor the application to your needs.

If you have any personal favourites, plugins you can’t live without or if you prefer a different text editor entirely then let us know in the comments below this article.

Change Default Folder (Option 1)

In Windows 7, the default location when opening Windows Explorer is the Libraries folder. Here is a simple trick to set a custom location:

1. Right-click on your desktop and select > New > Shortcut.
2. Under Type the location of the item enter: explorer.exe /root,path
3. Then click Next, enter a name for your shortcut, and click Finish.

Note that you need to give the full path to the desired folder. If you wish to point to Computer, paste the following location: explorer.exe /root,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}

Once you have a working shortcut, you can pin it to your taskbar, move it to the QuickLaunch bar or use it from your desktop.

Change Default Folder (Option 2)

To simply change the default Windows Explorer startup folder anywhere, do this:

1. Right-click a folder or the Windows Explorer icon in the taskbar to bring up the jump-list.
2. In the jump-list, right-click on Windows Explorer and select Properties.
3. In the Shortcut tab change the Target to the desired location, as per the list below.

Alternatively, you can also change the properties of any other shortcut you are using to open Windows Explorer.

Potential locations:

• Documents folder: %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /n,::{450D8FBA-AD25-11D0-98A8-0800361B1103}
• Computer: %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /E,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}
• Recycle Bin: %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /E,::{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}
• Default (Libraries): %windir%\explorer.exe

For information on how to find out the GUID (Globally Unique Identifiers) for your desired location, check out the following article on How-To Geek: Enable the Secret “How-To Geek” Mode in Windows 7

Navigate Windows Explorer With Keyboard Shortcuts

Nothing is more easy and geeky than nifty little keyboard shortcuts. Here are some relevant key combinations to navigate through the Windows Explorer folder structure:

• [Windows] + [E] = launch Windows Explorer
• [ALT] + [RIGHT] = go forward
• [ALT] + [LEFT] = go back
• [ENTER] = open selected folder
• [ALT] + [UP] = move to parent directory
• [ALT] + [TAB] or [F6] = move between focus areas
• [ALT] + [D] = focus on address bar and select current path
• [F4] = open address bar drop-down menu
• [F3] = focus on search bar and drop down search filter options
• [ALT] + [P] = open preview pane
• [ALT] + [ENTER] = view properties of selected file
• [F2] = change file name of selected file
• [F10] = jump to file menu
• [F11] = switch to full screen mode and back
• [CTRL] + mousewheel = change icon size (works almost everywhere, useful in browser)

Gently Terminate & Restart Windows Explorer

When an application hangs and won’t let you close it, or when Windows Explorer crashes, or to see the effects of editing a current user registry entry, what do you typically do? You either log off and back in or you reboot? However, closing and restarting Windows Explorer has the same effect and is much faster.

Here is a safe way to terminate and then restart Windows Explorer in Windows Vista and Windows 7:

1. Go to Start.
2. Click [CTRL] + [SHIFT] while you right-click an empty space of the Start menu.
3. Select Exit Explorer from the menu that appears.

This procedure will gently terminate Windows Explorer, meaning all your folders will close, your desktop will be empty, and the taskbar will be gone. Your system, however, is still running.

To bring Windows Explorer back, do the following:

1. Use the keyboard combination [CTRL] + [SHIFT] + [ESC] to launch the Task Manager.
2. Go to > File > New Task (Run…)
3. Type explorer.exe in the Create New Task text field and click OK.

Et voilà, Windows Explorer is back and fresh as rebooted.

Do you know of any other tips and tricks everyone should know about? Please share with us in the comments!

In the past, I’ve used email a whole lot in my batch jobs and other automated scripts, just like I’ve described in past articles here on using tools like Sendmail or Blat to issue emails straight from the command line, or from within a command line script.

These are great for those times when you have a script that’s monitoring the health of a computer or the status of a specific process, but what if you want to automate sending emails from within Office products like Word or Excel?

There are a lot of reasons why you might want to do so. Maybe you have staff that update documents or spreadsheets on a weekly basis, and you’d like to receive an email notification of when those updates take place, and even a report of the data from within those sheets. There are a few techniques you can use to program automated emails from within Excel, but my favorite remains CDO.

Sending Emails From Within Excel

You’re probably thinking that scripting outgoing email into an Excel VBA script is going to be painfully complicated. Well, that’s not the case at all.

CDO is a messaging component used in Windows for a few generations of the OS. It used to be called CDONTS, and then with the advent of Windows 2000 and XP, it was replaced with “CDO for Windows 2000″. This component is already included in your VBA installation within Word or Excel and it’s ready for use.

Using the component makes sending emails from within Windows products with VBA extremely easy. In this example, I’m going to use the CDO component in Excel to send out an email that will deliver the results from a specific Excel cell.

The first step is to go to the “Developer” menu tab, click on “Insert” in the Controls box, and then select a command button. Draw it into the sheet and then create a new macro for it.

When Excel opens up the VBA editor, you’re going to need to add the reference to the CDO library. You can access this in the Tools menu, and then scroll down the list until you find “Microsoft CDO for Windows 2000 Library“. Select the checkbox and click OK.

Now you’re ready to use CDO to issue emails from inside Excel. To do this, you first need ot create the mail objects and set up all of the fields that will be required for sending the email. Keep in mind that while many of the fields are optional, the From and To fields are required.

Dim CDO_Mail As Object
Dim CDO_Config As Object
Dim SMTP_Config As Variant
Dim strSubject as String
Dim strFrom as String
Dim strTo as String
Dim strCc as String
Dim strBcc as String
Dim strBody As String
 
strSubject = "Results from Excel Spreadsheet"
strFrom = "ryxxxxxx@xxxxxcast.net"
strTo = "rdxxxxxx@gmail.com"
strCc = ""
strBcc = ""
strBody = "The total results for this quarter are: " & Str(Sheet1.Cells(2, 1))

The cool thing about this is that you an build up any string you want to customize a full email message and assign it to the strBody variable. Piece together components of the message by using the “&” string to insert data from any of the Excel sheets right into the email message, just like I’ve shown above.

The next section of code is where you will configure CDO to use any external SMTP server that you want to use. In this case I don’t need to use SSL because my SMTP server doesn’t require it. CDO is capable of SSL, but that’s outside the scope of this article. If you need to use SSL, I highly recommend Paul Sadowski’s awesome writeup on using CDO.

Set CDO_Mail = CreateObject("CDO.Message")
On Error GoTo Error_Handling
 
Set CDO_Config = CreateObject("CDO.Configuration")
CDO_Config.Load -1
 
Set SMTP_Config = CDO_Config.Fields
 
With SMTP_Config
    .Item("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusing") = 2
    .Item("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserver") = "smtp.metrocast.net"
    .Item("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserverport") = 25
    .Update
End With
 
With CDO_Mail
    Set .Configuration = CDO_Config
End With

Now that you’ve configured the connection to the SMTP server for sending the email, all you have to do is fill in the appropriate fields for the CDO_Mail object, and issue the Send command. This is how you do that.

CDO_Mail.Subject = strSubject
CDO_Mail.From = strFrom
CDO_Mail.To = strTo
CDO_Mail.TextBody = strBody
CDO_Mail.CC = strCc
CDO_Mail.BCC = strBcc
CDO_Mail.Send
 
Error_Handling:
If Err.Description <> "" Then MsgBox Err.Description

So there you have it. There won’t be any pop-up boxes or security alert messages, which can happen when you resort to using the Outlook mail object. CDO simply puts together the email and utilizes your SMTP server connection details to fire off the message. It’s probably the easiest way I know to incorporate email into Word or Excel VBA scripts.

Here’s what the message looked like that I received in my inbox.

No hassle – just the data straight from within the Excel sheet delivered right to my email account. If you’re creative with how you put together the body string variable with all sorts of data from your Excel sheet, you can just imagine the cool automated email reports that you could put together. And if you don’t want to use a command button, just have the script run on the sheet or application close event.

Can you think up any cool uses for CDO in your own Excel, Access, or Word projects? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below.

Shutterstock

In this article I will list the most common programs, what type of notifications they put out, and how you can disable them.

Windows System Tray / Notification Area

Generally, you can individually turn off desktop notifications for any programs or services represented in the Windows system tray. Right-click the task-bar and select Properties. Under Notification area click the Customize… button. This will open the respective Control Panel window with a list of icons for any program or service that was ever registered in the notification area.

To turn off the notifications for a specific item, find it in the list, and select Hide icon and notifications from the drop-down menu to its right.

Skype

As far as I’m concerned, Skype is one of the biggest offenders when it comes to annoying notifications. Whenever someone comes online or goes offline, a little message pops up to share the event with you. Haven’t we all seen this obtrusive little notification jump on top of full screen videos or public presentations?

To manage your Skype notifications, click through to > Tools > Options… and switch to the Notifications side tab. Under Notification settings you will find a list of Windows tray notifications which you can check or uncheck.

While you are at it, you can also jump to the Alerts & messages section and turn off the unwelcome Help and Skype tips as well as Promotions.

Thunderbird

Thunderbird is a great desktop email client, but when it comes to notifications, there is room for improvement. It has been a long time since I started from scratch with it, but as far as I remember, the default setting is to show a system tray alert and play a sound.

To stop this impertinence, go to > Tools > Options… In the General tab under When new message arrives you can uncheck the boxes to Show an alert and Play a sound. If you were a fan of incoming email notifications, you could also customize them to include the subject and sender or play a favorite sound. But seriously, who wants that?

Google Talk

When I recently re-installed my computer, I suddenly received all these new email messages and had no idea where they came from, especially since they were turned off in Thunderbird. Finally it dawned on me, that the source was Google Talk.

As with the previous programs, you can easily turn these notifications off if you know where to find them. Click Settings in the top right of Google Talk, then navigate to the Notifications tab and uncheck Show notification for New email.

Windows Balloon Tips

Windows is set up to deal with DAUs (dumbest assumable users). Consequently, it likes to pop up messages about things the average user either doesn’t care about or already knows. These unhelpful notifications are called balloon tips.

To disable balloon tips, go to the Start menu and search for Group Policy. Open the result Edit group policy, then navigate to > User Configuration > Administrative Tasks > Start Menu and Taskbar. In the list find the entry Turn off all balloon notifications and double-click it.

“If you enable this settings, no notification balloons will be shown to the user.” Hence, to disable the balloon notifications, you have to select Enabled for this setting. To enable the balloon tips, select Disabled or set it to Not Configured.

You can also disable or enable balloon tips with a registry hack. A registry fix for either enabling or disabling the tips, which will save you messing around with the registry itself, is available from SevenForums.

Do you frequently have to write essays or do you enjoy undisturbed creative writing? Check out OmmWriter, which I have reviewed here – Meet Your Writing Deadlines In A Distraction-Free Writing Environment With OmmWriter.

What do you find most distracting when you work on your computer and are there any notifications you have struggled to get rid of?

Image credits: Kitch Bain

Despite this, I have heard about Launchpad. Launchpad is a Mac OSX feature which makes launching applications easier and (of course) more stylish. I know it’s pretty darn easy to launch applications on my iPad, and I’ve been searching for something similar for my Windows machine.

If you’re also looking to tweak your Windows’ look and feel and make it somewhat more Mac-ish, you’re going to love WinLaunch.

Getting Started With WinLaunch

WinLaunch is an application launcher for Windows XP, Vista and 7, which aims to look like Apple’s Launchpad. To start, download WinLaunch, open the zip file and extract the suitable folder for your operating system (x86 or x64). When you’re done, launch WinLaunch.exe.

As you will see, nothing much happens. The first time you run it, you’ll get a “heads up” window telling you about known issues with WinLaunch, which is still in beta. After that, there’s nothing. To start WinLaunch for the first time, hit Shift+Tab.

The screen will blur and this message will appear. WinLaunch doesn’t crawl your system for your applications; you need to add those manually. Hit ‘F’ and start dragging in applications.

As basics go, this is pretty much it. You can drag as many applications as you want, and when the screen is full, WinLaunch will create more pages. You can flip through these pages by left clicking your mouse and sliding it on the screen, much like you would with a touch screen.

Now let’s see how what else you can do with WinLaunch.

Creating Folders And Renaming

WinLaunch allows you to create folders in a way that’s very similar to what you get on Apple’s machines. After dragging in your applications, click on an app with your mouse and drag it over another application. This will create a folder, which you can continue to add to.

If you want to rename the folder (“New Folder” is not very informative), or if you want to rename an app, click on the plus sign on the bottom left corner, and then click the “Rename” button at the bottom of the screen, and then click on the icon you want to rename.

This way, you can easily rename folders to more descriptive titles, and also change any name if you don’t like the one its been given by WinLaunch.

You can open a folder by clicking on it, and then launch any application in the folder by clicking on the icon.

Playing With The Settings

WinLaunch is rather configurable, and you tweak many things to suit your needs and desires. To access the settings, click on the “Settings” button at the bottom of the screen.

In the settings, you can enable and disable hotkeys and HotCorners. With these you can decide how WinLaunch will be activated. What you set here will be the only way to activate the program, so remember these settings. I found the a hot corner worked very well for me, and you can use it to both enable and disable the app. If you choose the “Show desktop when activated” option, WinLaunch will not be maximized; otherwise, it will be launched on the entire screen.

Among other things, you can also change the icons’ size and text size, and all the colors. It’s a bit hard to understand which color is which at first, but playing around with it makes everything clearer. There are some ready-made themes to choose from, and you can even upload photos for the launcher’s background if you wish.

There are more things you can tweak, such as adjusting WinLaunch for multiple monitors (choosing which one it will appear on). Playing with the colors is the best part, though, and as you can see from the above screenshots, you can create lots of different styles and backgrounds. It can look like this:

And even like this (or better, if you actually have talent).

The options are pretty much endless. One downside of WinLaunch is that it’s a bit heavy on the RAM. On my computer, it was using up to 50MB of RAM, just when lying in the background. That’s a bit steep, but the developer does intend to fix this issue. Other than that, WinLaunch runs very smoothly, especially considering it’s still in beta, and toggling it on and off to launch applications quickly becomes a second nature. So if you’re on the hunt for better ways to launch your Windows apps, give it a try!

Know of more Launchpad emulators, or other original ways to launch apps in Windows 7? Share in the comments!

However, the developers of all those browsers haven’t been very active (or successful) in one type of improvement that could potentially bring some massive results: going from 32-bit to 64-bit.

Why 64-bit?

Why is going from 32-bit to 64-bit an important step? Virtually all computers that you can find today are capable of running 64-bit operating systems. 64-bit operating systems enable you to use more than 3.25 GB of RAM, and increase the performance of your system in certain cases.

Memory management is also improved in 64-bit systems. In order to make use of this 64-bit capability, not only does the operating system need to be compiled for 64-bit machines, but the individual applications need to be as well. While 64-bit operating systems are capable of running 32-bit software (this is mainly the case for Windows; on other operating systems such as Mac OS X and Linux, it’s also possible but highly frowned upon), you won’t get the benefits that 64-bit software would provide.

The Windows 64-bit Situation

On Windows, there are no official 64-bit builds of any browser except Internet Explorer. Even then, IE is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors in order to be more compatible with plugins, which back then were primarily 32-bit only. However, the major plugins are now available in the 64-bit flavor, so browsers now have some motivation to crank out some 64-bit builds of their own. This seems to be taking a while though with a number of hurdles to overcome.

Firefox has finally come out with a 64-bit nightly, but it’s nowhere near ready to be called stable. Instead, the developers of the Waterfox project have been working hard to get an unofficial build of 64-bit Firefox out and making it fast. While Waterfox began as an unofficial project, Mozilla is now supporting it and may start incorporating it sometime in the future to release official, stable builds of 64-bit Firefox.

As you can see in the screenshot above, Waterfox beats Chrome in the SunSpider benchmark, whereas Chrome usually beats regular Firefox.

Downloading and Installing

Getting and installing Waterfox is just as easy as with Firefox. Simply head over to their website’s download page, and scroll a little down to get the latest version. The page also states that you need to have the Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x64) installed, but this is not an issue for Windows 7 64-bit users, but rather for those on previous Windows 64-bit versions. Additionally, the page lists links to the 64-bit version of the most common plugins so that you can have a smooth Web experience with your new 64-bit browser.

Easy Transition

Waterfox is also very helpful when transitioning from regular Firefox because it uses the same Firefox profile as the 32-bit flavor. Therefore, any passwords, history, preferences, and add-ons that have been installed in regular Firefox will be instantly available upon first launch of Waterfox. As that implies, all add-ons made for regular Firefox also work 100% in Waterfox. The amount of work necessary to switch to the 64-bit Firefox browser is pretty minimal. To review, all you need to do is the following:

• Install Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x64) if necessary
• Install 64-bit version of plugins if not already done
• Install Waterfox

Conclusion

Waterfox really is a great browser, making the Firefox we all know (and some of us love) a little faster and happier in its 64-bit environment. Mac OS X and Linux users don’t need to be too jealous that Waterfox is a Windows-only project, as those two operating systems have had official 64-bit builds of all major browsers for a relatively long amount of time.

What do you think about this project? Is there something you’d like to add about 64-bit systems? Let us know in the comments!

However, these free or bundled tools usually only offer the bare bones. If you’re looking for an all-in-one PDF reader, creator and editor, the latest release of Nitro PDF should provide you with all of the features that you need without breaking your budget on a product from Adobe.

With Nitro Pro 7 you can create a PDF from one or more different file types, convert PDFs to other file types, extract key data from documents, edit documents and apply secure access requirements PDFs. In the next two week, we’re giving away 50 free copies of Nitro Pro 7 worth a whopping $6000 in total!

User Interface

The first launch of Nitro Pro 7 will display a “Getting Started” screen which highlights some of the application’s features. You can easily disable this via the Do not show at startup checkbox but it is worth spending a moment looking at the various tasks on offer.

Everything is organized using the familiar ribbon menu that you might find in Windows Explorer or the different Microsoft Office applications and as such the features on offer are sensibly presented. For instance if you wish to convert a PDF to another format you will find the buttons on the Home tab; editing a PDF is possible via the Edit tab and adding passwords and redactions is via the controls available in the Protect menu.

Meanwhile via the Forms tab you can create forms on your document that comprise of text fields, radio buttons and checkboxes, as well as export and import data to and from a form on a PDF.

Protecting Your PDF

As the PDF format has become more and more widely used so the requirements for protecting and validating the contents of such documents has become increasing paramount.

Accordingly, Nitro Pro 7 features effective password, certification and redaction tools that are suitable for use in all levels of business. Found on the Protect tab, the redaction tool can be used to highlight text that should be blocked out from unauthorized viewing, and removed completely using the Apply all Redactions option.

Meanwhile Digital IDs and Signatures can be applied to a document, useful for establishing trust between yourself and the recipient of a PDF document that you have created.

Elsewhere, the Password Security setting allows you to set various passwords and profiles for the document, each with different privileges; for instance you can set a PDF document as being read-only for a specific password and even block printing altogether.

Combining PDF Documents

It so happens that I have a pretty important PDF-related task which I need to resolve. I have three documents, all in PDF format but each with a different page format that I need to combine into a single document.

Can Nitro Pro 7 help me out?

As it happens, yes it can. Using the Combine button on the Create section of the Home menu, I was easily able to merge the three documents – plus a cover – into one.

The process is simple, requiring you to first browse for the PDF files (or indeed any other file type) and add them.

Following that, all you need to do is save the combined document – with a meaningful file name, of course!

The preview view above shows two of the combined files – you can see the differences in artwork between the strips. Note that you’re not restricted to PDF documents here as you can also combine other document types into a PDF. For instance, you might wish to combine a Word document with an Excel spreadsheet.

Editing a PDF

If you’ve ever found yourself having to recreate a PDF document from scratch because the source file was lost then you will know that this is often a long and drawn out process that pretty much requires you to type the document into a word processor and save or convert it to a PDF.

PDF editing tools have been available in the past but they can prove to be difficult to use and expensive. Fortunately Nitro Pro 7 features an easy-to-use editing tool which delivers good results. Available via the Edit tab, you can begin editing text by selecting the Edit button which opens the Text Tools Format view. Using this you can select sentences, append or amend, add and remove images and even watermark the document. If you have problems editing an OCR tool is provided to convert the text so that it can be edited.

As pictured above, right-clicking a block of text and selecting Edit Text will also allow you to edit the document’s contents.

Note also that pages can be deleted and inserted or even rotated – useful if you have a page-sized image that would look better oriented in a different way.

Document Conversion

While PDF is a popular format, it isn’t the only one suitable for e-books. Sadly it isn’t possible to accurately convert a PDF document to all current e-book formats, but fortunately Nitro Pro 7 features the ability to convert PDFs into a format that is more flexible in this respect: Microsoft Word’s DOCX format. In fact, documents can be converted and exported into plain text and rich text formats, as well as images.

The results of a conversion to DOCX – performed via the Convert section of the Home tab – can be seen above. When in this state, the document can be reformatted and then converted into a variety of formats depending on your requirements.

Conclusion

Nitro 7 Pro is certainly as good an option as any of the Adobe PDF creation applications and certainly among the best of this type of software. As you can see from the screenshots above the results of my own PDF editing project were extremely favourable; this software has enabled me to perform a task that has for a long-time proved difficult and time-consuming.

Additional features that allow text editing and password protecting documents is similarly accomplished, resulting in a PDF solution that is every bit as good – if not better – than anything Adobe has ever released. Download a fully-functional trial now and take it for a spin.

As a special treat to MakeUseOf readers, we’re giving away 50 copies of Nitro Pro 7 worth $6000 in total over the next two weeks. Here’s how you can score a copy for yourself.

How do I win a copy?

It’s simple, just follow the instructions.

Step 1: Fill in the giveaway form

Please fill in the form with your real name and email address so that we can get in touch if you are chosen as a winner. Click here if you can’t view the form.

Step 2: Share!

You’re almost done. Now, all that’s left to do is to share the post. There are 2 options to choose from or you can do both!

This giveaway begins now and ends Friday, February 17th. The winners will be selected at random and informed via email.

Spread the word to your friends and have fun!

Interested in sponsoring a giveaway? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via the form at the bottom of this page.

I’m not even going to pretend. I was 5 or 6 years old back in 1995 so this is well before my time, too. In the age of social networking and Internet 2.0, web-based chat rooms are practically dead. They’re all but done with; on the endangered list. Still, IRC is the most popular server/client chat protocol in the world. Maybe the rooms aren’t as active as they were 10+ years ago, but we’ve still got a pulse!

Some boredom and curiosity mixed well together and I’ve rediscovered IRC just recently. Now, I’d like to show you how to use my favorite IRC client, HydraIRC. There are a lot of multi-IM clients (like Trillian) that support the IRC protocol, but nothing really beats the efficiency and oldschool feel of a standalone chat client. You’ve probably heard of mIRC, the most popular IRC client, but here’s a few reasons why I love Hydra:

• It is portable. Download the ZIP and extract it to wherever you like. Put it in your Dropbox or on a flash drive. Portable applications beat out self-installing packages every day of the week.
• It is lightweight. mIRC is a little bulky for me.
• It is free. Everyone loves things that are free.
• It supports everything that you need in an IRC client: multiple servers, DCC, event logs, channel monitoring, an extremely flexible GUI, and more.

You can check out some more, official screenshots at the official HydraIRC website.

Anyway, rusty IRC legend or complete newbie, let’s get you started. Get HydraIRC downloaded. Next step is to figure out where you want to chat and what about, right? You want to go into the File menu, then New Server. Hydra comes preloaded with loads of the most popular IRC servers.

Now it’s on you to pick the network (and associated server) that you want. You can either query up Google and learn a bit about each, or experience can guide you. FreeNode has tons of channels for coding, tech support, general hacking, networking, and things of that nature. EFNet is your oldschool “general” server. QuakeNet and GameSurge are for gamers, and so on.
For this example, let’s go ahead and go on GameSurge. Double click GameSurge, click the IRC server that expands beneath it, and then click OK to connect.

Every server consists of many channels (or rooms). Upon connecting, the Channel List window will pop up. If it doesn’t, you can click into the Channel menu and then Channel List. Click Populate List and after a second, you’ll have a list of every channel on the server. Click the Users header once and you’ll have sorted the channels by the most users. Scroll through, see if there are any you may be interested in, and then click Join.

This is how you join an IRC server and a channel (the easy way). There are hundreds and hundreds of servers out there and thousands of channels. There’s probably an active channel for just about any subject that comes to mind. It’s good to have it sitting in your taskbar for idle moments in between tasks.

If you need any help or want to dive deeper into the subject, let’s chat in the comments. If you really like IRC chatting, consider setting up your own IRC channel and read our post on that.

Naturally there is some resistance to swapping the traditional desktop with this new user interface. After all, things just work as they are with the point and click of a mouse. Yet Microsoft is trying something different and attempting to pioneer a new direction for desktop operating systems. For that at least they should be applauded.

Ignoring questions about exactly how anyone without a touchscreen monitor is going to get the most out of Metro, there are ways in which the interface can be sampled without installing Windows 8 on your computer.

View Internet Explorer With MetroIE

One of the main uses for any computer is to browse the web and Windows 8 features a new version of Internet Explorer. While this isn’t yet available for Windows 7 you can sample its likely user interface by visiting this link and downloading the astonishingly small 64KB file.

After unzipping and running MetroIE.exe you will find that the file is a very convincing overlay for the Internet Explorer browser, which means that it behaves just as any browser should. Note however that it takes a little time to open webpages.

MetroTwit

Like Windows Phone, Windows 8 features an integrated Twitter app. While MetroTwit doesn’t deliver quite the same feel, it is still worth trying if you’re interested in seeing how the Metro UI stands up to repeated or consistent use. After all, it’s all very well looking good, but would you want to look at the Segoe font all day long? This is the way to find out.

You can download MetroTwit from here. Installation requires an Internet connection, but be aware that this app isn’t suitable for accessing multiple Twitter accounts.

Zune

Less experimental and a whole lot easier to use is the Zune media player and sync client, available from this link. This is essentially the Microsoft version of iTunes, used for buying MP3s, syncing with a Windows Phone and managing updates, but it is also an excellent media player, far better than the surely-end-of-life Windows Media Player.

If you already have Zune on your PC you have already sampled the beauty and versatility of Metro.

Transform Your Full Desktop

The tile-based interface is arguably the least imaginative use for Metro when it comes to powerful desktop and laptop computers. It is very similar to the design seen on a Windows Phone (where it is of course more appropriate) and far less striking than on Xbox 360 or even in the Zune media player.

To try it out for yourself you can download the beta version from Microsoft and install it to your hard drive or into a virtual machine.

Alternatively you can try the Windows 8 Transformation Pack, a 58MB download from this page. After downloading, simply unzip and run the Windows 8 Transformation Pack 2.0.exe file, set the options that you want and install it. You’ll then need to apply it as a theme (right-click desktop > Personalize) before rebooting, whereupon you will find that your current version of Windows has suddenly turned square, elegant and colourful.

Windows Phone Metro Demo

If you’re using an Android or iPhone device you might also like to get an idea of how Windows Phone works or at least sample Metro in mobile form. This can be done by visiting this page on your phone’s browser, where you will find a virtualised mobile phone version of the Metro UI as found on various devices from Samsung, LG, HTC and Nokia.

All you need to do to interact is tap the tiles with your thumb or fingers, swiping left and right to explore what’s on offer.

Conclusion

As we move ever closer to the launch of Metro as a desktop user interface, more and more tools and apps are being made available for users to get an idea of how easy it is to use.

People want to know that they can use an operating system long-term, rather than just for a few moments at a time as with a mobile phone. As such, before spending money on Windows 8 or even downloading the developer preview or beta, try a few of these apps and see what you think. Meanwhile if you have any of your own suggestions, let us know.