The premise behind the text replacement software is simple – you type something and Texter expands it into something larger or more difficult to remember. How about typing addr and hitting the tab key to type out your mailing address? How about a few characters to spit out awesome quotes that you would never remember? If you are a coder you can use this for repetitive code-like functions you use over and over again – do you see where I am going with this?

Let’s take a look at how to install and use Texter. You can grab the installer from here. The download link is halfway down the page – you can’t miss it!

Run the installer and you will be prompted for an install directory like so:

Then you can click finish to launch the application or uncheck the box if you don’t want to start it.

Once Texter is done installing it will take a few minutes on first launch while it configures things in the background. You will see the following screen:

Once the app is finished initializing you will see the graphical user interface below:

Hit the plus sign below and enter your first “hotstring” – don’t be put off by the terminology – that is where you type your codewords. Then choose what will be its trigger. If it is a common few letters you will not want to use instant or you might be shooting yourself in the foot If you use a common word and use instant it would turn your common phrase into your replacement text right away. So for those instances use tab or space.

I love using instant! As you can see below I used the hotstring klg and it instantly turns into my name. Pretty nifty eh? This saves me a ton of time and typing during the day.

You can see below I created my work email, memo or document signature with Texter and when I type Thank and hit tab – blamo!  Instant signature. That shaves 10 minutes off my day.

You can include as much text as you want, see below for my preamble to the United States Constitution. I type preamb and hit tab and automagically the preamble appears. Really I can’t get enough of this!

Do you have another method for text replacement? Let us know about it in the comments. I would love to take it for a test run as improvements are always welcomed! Thanks Adam.

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So it was with me when I had to convert a delimited text data file to Excel and format it within the columns and rows. That’s a rough challenge for a guy who has a chronic fear of anything that resembles figures. The raw file that I had in my hand consisted of higgledy-piggledy blocks of text and numbers. My simple task was to make sense out of this jumble by importing it into Excel and sorting the data into columns and rows.

Thankfully, many web tutorials came to the rescue of my dead brain cells.

Delimited files are a simple way to store data and import or export it between various applications. Delimited in essence means, data that’s separated by specific delimiter characters. Common delimiters are tab, comma and semicolon.

Think of delimited files as the most basic file format that’s almost uniformly accepted by most spreadsheet and database programs. For those of us who don’t go down that road, a common example is the CSV (Comma Separated Value) files or Tab-separated files we come across in the Import Export wizards of email programs like Outlook and Gmail.

A delimited file is of no actual use unless it is converted into some form suitable for analysis and study. Microsoft makes it easy to convert a delimited file to a spreadsheet in three easy steps.

Let’s start with a text file with some data separated by commas.

To bring the data into Excel –

1. Open Excel and copy-paste the text contents into a spreadsheet. The contents take up one column and several rows.



2. Click on the column header to select the entire column. Click on the Data tab in the ribbon and then Text to Columns in the Data Tools group.



3. Clicking on the above command opens the Convert Text to Columns Wizard.
4. Alternatively – You can directly import a text file into Excel. Excel handles file types – Text, Comma Separated Values and Printer Text File. Make sure to dropdown to All Files or Text Files in the File Open dialog while selecting the file to import. If Excel recognizes it to be a delimited file, it opens the Text Import Wizard which is similar to the Convert Text to Columns Wizard.



In the Wizard, choose Delimited and click on Next.

5. In the second step, choose the Delimiter for you particular file (comma, in our case). For some other character, check Other and enter the character in the little field. The Data Preview window gives you an idea how the contents get separated into columnar data. Click on Next.



6. In the final window, you get to set the data type for each column by selecting it in the preview. The default data format is General. Date and numeric values can also be handled here.



7. Click on Finish to exit the wizard and get your neatly arranged spreadsheet.

It’s just three easy steps courtesy of a wizard. This simple utility gives us the ability to import delimited text files into Excel and apply its number crunching tools on it.

Liked this? We have other Excel tutorials to make an analyst out of you.

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We have covered a lot of MS Word 2007 tips and tricks and how-to’s over the months and we have seen how the Office application can be used to create interesting documents. With decreasing attention spans and more hurried reading, designing documents for easy readability has become very important. People don’t read — they glance through. If it’s not your grandmother bequeathing you all her worldly possessions, I guess you too would prefer a rapid scan through a document instead of going at it by line.

Bullets are an essential tool for creating concise documents. You can capture the essential gist of a document in a bulleted list (or a numbered list for that matter).

When I was starting out with MS Word, I knew of only those that I got from the toolbar, with a click on Bullets and Numbering. As MS Word graduated to MS Word 2007, one colorful option came in. A few more days spent spraying bullets all over a document and I learned that there’s an entire gallery of bullets that can be used for improving the décor of one’s document. Not only that, I can use symbols and my own custom pictures too to create my own bullets.

So let’s take a look at the different ways in which we can create bullets. Of course, these are common across all MS Office applications.

Define your own bullet with symbols

MS Word makes it real easy to customize our own bullets if we don’t like the default ones.

• On the Home tab of the Ribbon, go to the Paragraph group where the Bullets command is located. Click the little drop down arrow to access the default bullets in the Bullets Library. Click on Define New Bullets.

  

• Next, click on Symbol and select any character you like to get a new bullet. You can select Wingdings, Wingdings 2 and Webdings from the Fonts dropdown to access a rich variety of typefaces as bullets. You can see a small preview too. Click on OK to set your new choice of bullet.

  

• Just like a font, you can change the color and size of a bullet.

  

Define your own bullets with pictures

• Alternatively, you can click on Picture in the Define New Bullet box to select any from the large gallery. You can also put a check on Include Content from Office Online.

  

• Click on Import to browse to an external file and include it in the collection.
• A lot of the picture bullets can be found under – (In Windows XP) C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Media\Office12\Bullets.
• In the above location, you will see that the GIF files have average dimensions of 15 pixels. You can make your own customized picture bullets using the same dimensions in any graphic application.

  

Shortcut bullets with AutoCorrect

• The AutoCorrect feature of Word allows you to create fast bullets with some special characters. To see whether AutoCorrect is set for automatically creating bulleted lists, go to: Office – Word Options – Proofing – Click on AutoCorrect Options.

  

• In the AutoFormat as You Type tab, check Automatic Bulleted Lists.

  

• AutoCorrect recognizes any of these characters…
  *
  o
  — (em dash)
  –
  ––
  >
  –>
  =>
  …and changes them to bullets on the run when you press Enter. Type in any of these characters, press Spacebar, or a tab to enter the text for that line. Hit Enter to go to the next line as the bulleted list gets created with each press of an Enter.
• Creating bulleted lists with AutoCorrect works with all kinds of bullets like symbols and pictures.

Steal bullets from open documents

• If you get a document with a bullet you like, you can easily copy it into your collection. Bullets in an open document get added to the bullets collection under the group – Document Bullets. Select the bullet in that group, right click and Add to Library. Now, it’s yours’ to own and use.

  

• You can remove them by selecting them in the Library group and right clicking on Remove.

Composing bulleted lists is often harped upon these days. Don’t you think that attractive bulleted lists will help with more eye-catching points?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Amongst all those experiences, few managed to really blow my socks off. This one did.

To be quite honest, this application doesn’t fit in under freeware, nor any of the open source categories – but we’ll get back on that later on in the article.

Sublime Text

For those of you who have come into contact with Notepad++, this application should look mighty familar. Rightly so, because Sublime Text is – in the first place – a text editor for code and other programming wizardry.

Nevertheless, if you want a calm, undistracting place to jot down your words, data and prose alike, you won’t find anything more Zen than this text editor. A spell checker is integrated, but for more extensive, picture embedding and style embracing papers I still advise you to use Open Office or Microsoft Office.

By the way, have I mentioned that it looks absolutely breathtaking?

Most programmers will find anything they need to be bundled into the application. There’s standard syntax highlighting for nearly all popular languages, including C, C++, C#, CSS, D, Erlang, HTML, Groovy, Haskell, HTML, Java, JavaScript, LaTeX, Lisp, Lua, Markdown, Matlab, OCaml, Perl, PHP, Python, R, Ruby, SQL, TCL, Textile and XML. Plan to be writing in plain text? There are several color schemes available that are easy on the eye.

This is all pretty standard stuff, and (apart from the slick looks) can also be seen in other code editors like the previously mentioned Notepad++. It is the additional features that turns Sublime Text into a must have application.

For a complete functionality overview, check the Sublime Text feature page. Below are a few of the features I liked best.

MiniMap

If you’re often working with extremely large documents (and we all know both programmers and writers do), you should know how big a pain it can be to navigate. The numbering of lines can be a help, but you’re often still messing around with that excruciatingly tiny scrollbar.

Located in a side panel, utterly left on the screen, Sublime Text offers a MiniMap. The concept is very simple – it’s like having Google Maps embedded in your text editor, your entire document from a birds eye view with the fluorescent square indicating the visible portion of text. To navigate, just grab the square and pull it to wherever you want. When working with even larger documents, your birds eye document view will scroll underneath the square as well, keeping it accessible towards infinity. Nifty.

Multiple Documents

Incredibly useful, both for programming and writing with references, are Sublime Text’s split screen modes. I purchased a second monitor to get this functionality, Sublime Text spares you the trouble.

You can easily open multiple documents in the text editor, not only in different tabs, but side by side. There are a total of five alternative screen layouts, allowing you to stack up to four documents next, or below, each other.

Freeware, Trialware – Whatware?

I mentioned it already at the top of this article – this application doesn’t fit in under freeware, or open source – so under what license does it operate? Technically, Sublime Text is trialware. The free version is to get a feel and get you warmed up for the big purchase of 59 USD.

However, there doesn’t seem to be a time restriction on the trial. In other words, you can use the trial as long as you like, without any inconvenience or even stripped functionality. You could consider it as a very peculiar kind of freeware.

That aside, I must admit that the developers of Sublime Text did one hell of a job. If you can spare the money, and thereby support the people that made this possible, I urge you to do so. Licenses can be used on as many machines as you want, and you’ll automatically receive licenses to all future upgrades.

What text editor do you currently use? Don’t be shy, tell us in the comments below!

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You want to show someone a letter composed in MS Word, but want to keep some of the content private; or it’s an official letter with some part of it having critical data. As important as these two are, the most common use could involve a normal printing job. Many a time we have to print different versions of a document, one copy for one set of eyes and others for other sets.

Rather than creating multiple copies and therefore multiple printing jobs, what if we could just do it from the same document? That too, without the hassle of repeated cut and paste.

We can, with a simple feature in MS Word – it’s just called Hidden and let me show you how to use it to hide text in Microsoft Word 2007. It’s a simple single click process.

1. Open the document which you want to work upon. The screenshot below shows the before state, i.e. before we activate the Hidden feature.



2. Select the text you want to hide from prying eyes. Right click and choose the Font option from the context menu.



3. Under Effects, put a checkmark against Hidden. Click OK.

The text has done a Houdini act.

But with the important part invisible to the eye, how do we get it back? Houdini usually made dramatic reappearances, MS Word’s Hidden feature doesn’t quite match up but it’s dead easy.

1. Select the entire document with a Select All (Ctrl-A or Toolbar – Editing – Select – Select All). Right click and go back to the Font option again from the context menu.
2. The Hidden setting is solid and active. Click on it once to display the checkmark. Click again to remove the checkmark and unhide all the content. Click OK to exit and reveal the content.



3. Note: There is another way to reveal hidden content. Click on the Office Button – Word Options – Display. Click on the Hidden text formatting marker under Always show these formatting marks on the screen. Any hidden text in the document is revealed underlined with the marker.

Thus, with a simple toggle of a setting you can selectively hide blocks of text, print the documents and then unhide the text again. That’s great, but what if you need to send the document over to someone with hidden content? Then we need to fall back on the Protect Document feature of MS Word for more ironclad security.

Protect Document is a security feature that prevents modification of a text document unless allowed by the author. To start protection, click on the Review tab and go to the Protect group and follow these steps.

1. Click on Protect Document – Restrict Formatting and Editing.



2. Drill down and click on Limit formatting to a selection of styles – Settings under Formatting Restrictions.



3. In the Formatting Restrictions box, select None to disallow formatting for styles.



4. Click OK and then put a check against Allow only this type of editing in the document and keep it set on No Changes (Read Only) in the dropdown.



5. To make the protection active click on Start Enforcement and provide a password to secure the document. Now, you can forward this document to others with the text hidden and protected from changes.

Hidden text as a formatting control is usually more useful for quick print jobs rather than as a secretive cloaking device.

Though, the latter too can be used creatively. Think of school quizzes with the answers hidden. I personally use it to hide and unhide sections while writing. Sometimes, it helps me understand the flow and length (word count) without having to delete any section.

Do you use this feature to hide text? How…or has it stayed hidden and unused?

Image Credit: CarbonNYC

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How do you convert that PDF to text? You could print it and try and scan it back into your machine using a free OCR software or you could grab this awesome little application called PDF Text Extractor.

We have covered several applications for retrieving data from the confines of a PDF document but this application concentrates on the text. If that is what you need – your text and nothing but the text – then this is the program for you.

Let’s take a look at it and how it can convert a PDF to text.

I started by downloading and installing the program. It was a quick process and the MSI installer file was about 1.13 megabytes. When I ran the application this is what I saw:

This is a really easy layout and graphical user interface – simply select the PDF you would like to convert to plain text. Then you select the folder you want the converted plain text file written to. You can type in a full path for each or hit the button next to the blank field to browse.

When you are ready your window will look something like this:

Now our PDF document that contained our text – the text that we need to reformat and put into a manual is in a file. That file looks like this before we begin:

7 full pages of text, text and more text. That would be a lot of typing for poor Betty our departments secretary. So I went Googling and found our little application. I fired it up and hit that magic convert button. Literally it took 2 seconds and then a window popped up that said it was complete:

I went looking in my d:\ drive for the file. I actually realized I had no idea what it was called or what the extension would be. I sorted the files by date created and found what i was looking for:

I opened the text file up and as you can see above the files name seems to always be TextFile.txt. The contents of the text file were just that….all of the text that I needed! Yeah!

This is what I saw:

My formatting was not 100% there but all of the glorious text was and now it is a just a matter of copying, pasting and formatting. Nowhere near as big of a job as it was before! And we do not need Adobe Acrobat Reader, Writer or any other nonsense on our machine. Just this little application and a PDF file. You can open the text file in Word, Notepad++, Wordpad or whatever your favorite editor is.

How do you extract text from a PDF? We would love to hear about it in the comments!

Download: Text Extractor

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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If you are quick with your copying and pasting and you do it with large amounts of text then I am sure you are careful about massive blobs of formatted text that spreads itself all over your Word document.

Ugh, plain text is so dull! Where’s the color…where’s the stylized font…where’s the pizzazz?

Yeah, it’s ho-hum for sure. But being able to strip formatting from text and pasting it in the original format has its uses and its moments. But for times, when we need to apply our own formatting or make it take on the formatting of a paragraph, ‘paste as unformatted text’ is the way to go. Matching the text format of what we are copying to what we want at the destination is always the job.

The feature as we all know is right there in MS Word. A click on Paste – Paste Special – Paste as Unformatted Text/ Paste as Unformatted Unicode Text, and we get it the way we want it. There’s also the Paste Options smart tag but it still involves moving the hands and selecting an option. It’s irksome if one had to do it repeatedly. As far as timesavers go, there’s nothing similar to the keyboard shortcut of Ctrl-V for unformatted text.

Oh wait, there are! Hold on to your mouse.

Over the course of time, I have evolved from the default way gradually to the three methods to strip formatting from text that are mentioned here. I will put down the three ways to always paste without formatting and I invite you to contribute your own. Some of us may be old dogs but it’s never too late to learn new tricks, even for an ordinary task as pasting unformatted text.

Hey…it’s right there in MS Word!

Sure it is. The feature is more targeted – Match Destination Formatting. It’s a simple matter of changing a setting and all text loses its source formatting to take on what’s there in the open document file. Here’s how it is –

1. From the Office button – click on Word Options at the bottom to open the panel.



2. Come down to the Advanced feature on the left. Within it, the second section is for Cut, copy and paste which lists the four options – Pasting within the same document, Pasting between documents, Pasting between documents when style definitions conflict and Pasting from other programs.
3. Change the default of Keep Source Formatting to Match Destination Formatting. Alternatively to paste text without any formatting, you can also choose Keep Text Only. Click OK and that’s it.

Get back that cleanliness with PureText

Plugging all Windows deficiencies has spawned a software industry of its own. Thanks to a neat little freeware called PureText we can strip the format from any copied block of source text. PureText gives us a new shortcut key using Windows Key +V which is the default hotkey for the app. Here’s how it is –

1. PureText does not need an installation. Run it and it operates from the system tray.



2. The formatting of any copied text on the clipboard can be changed by just clicking on the system tray icon. The clipboard text loses its rich formatting but retains carriage returns, tabs, or other white-space.



3. The clipboard text though remains available to be pasted normally (i.e. using a Ctrl+V) with all formatting intact if we so wish.

The little clipboard software is great because it’s just 13K, is portable and can be run on all Windows programs across all editions (Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista).

Let’s record a Macro

Macro programs are little snippets of code that turn a complex multi-step task into a single click function. In brief, they are productivity tools for power users and this ability is built into MS Office. A simple Macro program lets us paste text into a Word document without the original source formatting. Here’s how it is –

1. Go to the View tab on the Ribbon. Click on the Macros group button.



2. In the Macros box which opens, give a descriptive name (without space) for the macro you are about to setup. Press Enter.



3. In the Visual Basic editor, delete the default text and paste the following snip of code:Sub PasteSpecial()
   Selection.PasteSpecial DataType:=wdPasteText
   End Sub



4. Click on File – Save Normal or on the Save Normal toolbar icon.
5. To assign a shortcut key to the Macro, click on Office button – Word Options.
6. Click on Customize on the left column. On the right panel, from the Choose commands from dropdown select Macros. Choose the PasteSpecial Macro.



7. To assign a shortcut key to the Macro, click on the Customize button for keyboard shortcuts.
8. In the Customize keyboard window, dropdown to the entry for Macros under Categories on the left. Select the PasteSpecial macro on the right. Enter a shortcut key combination like Ctrl+Shift+V in the Press new shortcut key area by typing the keys combo on the keyboard. Click on Assign and Close to set your Macro.

Give it a rip by copying and pasting some text.

The three ways give a simple makeover to a very basic document operation. In their own way they illustrate that productivity can be had in the tiniest of details.

How relieving are these quick ways to paste unformatted text? Or do you think that the default way stands up to the task adequately? Paste some of your comments below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Would you know how to type these on a standard English QWERTY keyboard? There are several ways to deal with language special characters.

First of all you can use the numeric keypad and enter ASCII codes that will create the characters. You will find a thorough list of ASCII codes here.

Pick your code, click the [ALT] key and hold it while you enter the three numbers on the numeric key pad. Finally, release the [ALT] key and your character should appear.

That’s one way. However, if you are used to touch typing in a different language, you can simply install the respective keyboard layout under Windows. To change or add keyboard language in Windows, you have to take the following steps:

• Go to > START > Control Panel and open > Regional and Language Options.
• A window will open, switch to the > Languages tab.

• In the > Text services and input languages section click > Details…

• An additional window will open.

• As you see there are two language services installed here already.  To increase the selection, click > Add… and yet another window will open.
• Here finally you can select a language from > Input Locale.
• Select > Keyboard layout/IME according to the keyboard you will be using.
• Click > OK and you’ll return to text services and input languages.

I added Kyrgyz, a language that applies Cyrillic writing.

• From the list of > Installed Services select the language you want to use per default, then click > Apply.
• In order to be able to quickly switch between keyboard layouts, click the > Language Bar button and a window will open.
• Check > Show additional Language bar icons in the taskbar. You can use this taskbar icon to switch between keyboard layouts.
• Finally > OK all open windows and you should be able to switch between keyboard layouts now.

You will find a list of the standard international keyboard layouts supported by Windows here. The layout will load in a small window.

Now if you can’t switch your keyboard, but still want to use the different layouts on your English language keyboard, you may not know which keys are where.

If using different keyboard layouts is not an option because you cannot switch keyboards or you don’t know the keys by heart, you can turn to software, for example AllChars. With this nifty tool you can use simple character combinations and they will create the desired special character.

For example the keys ["] and [A] combined will make [Ä]. AllChars only translates these key combinations into special characters after you hit (click and release!) an initiation key, such as [CTRL] or [SHIFT]. You can select a starter key of your choice. If the [1] in the taskbar symbol turns red you will know the key works. The previous examples didn’t work for me, I had to select > Win Left from the configuration. Unfortunately, to run AllChars you need Administrator rights.

Language special characters are fun and useful even if you don’t really need them, for example they provide material for unique emoticons. :Þ

Image credits: ilco

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Ah, modern technology is wonderful; take a scanned image (or take a snap using a mobile camera/Digicam) and presto – OCR software extracts all the information from the image into easily editable text format.

Optical character recognition (OCR) is a system of converting scanned printed/handwritten image files into its machine readable text format. OCR software works by analyzing a document and comparing it with fonts stored in its database and/or by noting features typical to characters. Some OCR software also puts it through a spell checker to “guess” unrecognized words. 100% accuracy is difficult to achieve, but close approximation is what most software strive for.

Maybe you have already come across our previous How to Extract Text from Images (OCR) post and used JOCR, a a free OCR software tool. Or you might have set your preference for a few online OCR tools. Then again, if you have thought up ways to exploit OCR software for productivity shortcuts, then let us give you a few more tools to play with.

We will be looking at 5 free pieces of OCR software and to start off let’s see the overlooked two that are already installed on our systems.

OCR Using Microsoft OneNote 2007

For the occasional basic OCR stuff, MS OneNote’s optical character recognition feature is a timesaver. You might have missed it…it’s called Copy Text from Picture.

• Drag a scan or a saved picture into OneNote. You can also use OneNote to clip part of the screen or an image into OneNote.
• Right click on the inserted picture and select Copy Text from Picture. The copied optically recognized text goes into the clipboard and you can now paste it into any program like Word or Notepad.

OneNote is simplicity personified. But it’s not too great for handwritten characters or even fuzzy ones. But for a quick job, I am all for OneNote’s clip and paste.

OCR Using Microsoft Office Document Imaging

Another little used tool within the Microsoft family. It’s right there under Menu – Microsoft Office – Microsoft Office Tools – Microsoft Office Document Imaging.

Doing OCR using the document imaging tool is a bit limiting because it accepts only TIFF (or MDI) formats. But that’s not too much of a bother as any graphic application can be used to convert an image to TIFF. In the screenshot below, I have used MS Paint to convert a JPEG to a TIFF.

• Open the file in Microsoft Office Document Imaging – File – Open.
• Click the little eye icon – Recognize Text Using OCR.
• Click on MS Word Icon – Send Text to Word.
• A MS Word File opens with the editable converted text.
• Alternatively, you can also use MS Paint to select a specific area and copy it to the clipboard. Open MS Office Document Imaging – select Page – Paste Page to copy the selection for OCR.

Again, MODI handled printed text ably, but my handwritten text was met with an ‘OCR performed but could not recognize text prompt’. Of course, do try out with your own handwriting.

So, now let’s leave the Microsoft family behind and look at three free tools which call themselves OCR Software…

SimpleOCR

The difficulty I was having with handwriting recognition using MS tools, could have found a solution in SimpleOCR. But the software offers handwriting recognition only as a 14 day free trial. Machine print recognition though does not have any restrictions.

• The software can be set up to read directly from a scanner or by adding a page (jpg, tiff, bmp formats).
• SimpleOCR offers some control over the conversion through text selection, image selection and text ignore features.
• Conversion to text takes the process into a validation stage; a user can correct discrepancies in the converted text using an in-built spell-checker.
• The converted file can be saved to a doc or txt format.

SimpleOCR was fine with normal text, but its handling of multi-column layouts was a comedown. In my opinion, the conversion accuracy of the Microsoft tools was considerably better than SimpleOCR.

SimpleOCR (v3.1) is a 9MB download and is compatible with Windows.

TopOCR

Just what I was talking about in the beginning!  TopOCR,  in a breakaway from typical OCR software, is designed more for digital cameras (at least 3MP) and mobile phones along with scanners. Like SimpleOCR, it has a two window interface – The source Image window and the Text window.

The image sourced from a camera or a scanner in the left window gets converted to the text format in the text editor on the right. The text editor functions like WordPad and can use Microsoft’s Text to Speech engine.

• The software supports JPEG, TIFF, GIF and BMP formats.
• Image settings like brightness, color, contrast, despeckle, sharpen etc. can be used to improve readability of the image.
• Camera filter settings can also be configured for enhancing the image.
• The converted file can be saved in a variety of formats – PDF, RTF, HTML and TXT.
• TopOCR functions well with straight oriented text but the usual failing of OCR with columned text remains.
• The software though, parses a mixed page (text plus graphics) well and processes the text only.
• The software works with 11 languages.

For best results with your camera read there How to Get the Best Results with TopOCR page.

TopOCR (v3.1) is an 8MB download and is compatible with Windows (not tested on Vista).

FreeOCR

This free OCR software uses the Tesseract OCR engine. Tesseract OCR code was developed at HP Labs between 1985 and 1995 and is currently with Google. It is thought of as one of the most accurate open source OCR engines available.

FreeOCR is a simple Windows interface for that underlying code.

• It supports most image files and multi-page TIFF files.
• It can handle PDF formats and is also compatible with TWAIN devices like scanners.
• FreeOCR also has the familiar double window interface with easy to understand settings.
• Before starting the one click conversion process, you can adjust the image contrast for better readability.

FreeOCR (v.2.03) requires Microsoft Net 2.0 framework. The Windows XP/Vista compatible 4.38MB software can also be downloaded from this alternate site.

Free OCR tools come with their own limitations. And scanning a page has to do a lot with resolutions, contrasts and clarity of fonts. From an average user’s standpoint, 100% OCR accuracy remains a pipedream.

Though the free tools were adequate with printed text, they failed with normal cursive handwritten text. My personal preference for offhand OCR use leans towards the two Microsoft products I mentioned in the beginning.

Your own say matters. Which is your tool of choice? Do the free OCR software recognize what you through at it? And more importantly, do you recognize what they throw back at you? Let us know…

Image Credit: kalleboo

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Few of us have the skills to create our own fonts. Fortunately, there are tons of free text fonts available on sites like DaFont, FFonts, 1001 Free Fonts or Fontex. Once you have downloaded your favorites, you’ll need to figure out how to install those fonts. Here’s a basic guide on how to install fonts on Windows, Linux and Mac.

Please uncompress / unzip all fonts before trying to install them, preferably into a separate folder. If you select a manual installation process, you can unzip files right into the respective font folder. Make sure you delete eventually included text files, which don’t belong into this folder.

Windows

Supported fonts:

• TrueType
• OpenType
• PostScript type 1 (requires Adobe Type Manager (ATM) or ATM Deluxe; comes with Windows XP and up)
• Windows bit mapped FON

Installation process under XP:

• Close all applications.
• Select font files and copy them into C:\Windows\Fonts folder.

Alternative installation process under XP:

• Close all applications.
• Go to > Start Menu > Control Panel (> Appearance and Themes) > Fonts.
• From the > Fonts folder menu open > File > Install a new font…
• Browse for your fonts and click > OK to install.

Installation process under Vista and 7:

• Close all applications.
• Right-click font files to be installed.
• A menu will pop up, select > Install.

Alternative installation process under Vista and 7:

• Close all applications.
• Go to > Start Menu > Control Panel (> Appearance and Personalization) > Fonts.
• Right-click into the list of fonts and select > Install a new font… from the menu.
• Browse for your fonts and click > OK to install.

Ubuntu Linux

Supported fonts:

• TrueType
• OpenType

Installation process to install for single user:

• Close all applications.
• Open > /home folder.
• In the menu open > View and > Show Hidden Files.
• You will now see the > .fonts folder. If not, create that folder.
• Copy font files into the > .fonts folder.

Installation process to install for all users:

• Close all applications.
• Save fonts in a separate folder on > Desktop, e.g. > newfonts.
• Open > terminal and start command > sudo cp -R ~/Desktop/newfonts /usr/share/fonts
• Optional: rebuild font cache with command > sudo fc-cache -f -v

Damian has written a thorough post on How To Install Microsoft Text Fonts in Ubuntu Linux.

Mac OS X

Supported fonts:

• Multiple Master (OS 10.2+)
• TrueType
• data fork TrueType (DFont; OS X+)
• OpenType
• PostScript type 1 (requires ATM or ATM Deluxe; comes with OS X)

Installation process under Mac OS X:

• Close all applications.
• Open folder that contains fonts to install.
• Select fonts to be installed.
• Drag and drop the selected font files into the > Library’s Font folder.

Installation process under Mac OS 10.3+ using FontBook:

• Close all applications.
• Open folder that contains fonts to install.
• Double-click icon of font to be installed.
• FontBook opens and you can preview the font.
• To install only for you, click > Install Font button.
• To install for all users, select > Preferences and change > Default Install Location from > User to > Computer, then click > Install Font button.

Troubleshooting

I hope the above guide was thorough enough, but you may still run into problems. Just in case, here are possible solutions to some of the most common issues.

Fonts don’t show in program.

• Make sure you installed a supported font format.
• Exit all programs before installing new fonts.
• Restart programs after installing new fonts.
• If restarting the program fails, reboot operating system.
• Were the fonts installed into the correct folders?

Issues with displaying or printing text.

• Mac: To properly view and print PostScritp type 1 fonts, ATM is required.
• PostScript type 1 fonts consist of two files: PFB (printer font binary) and PFM (printer font metrics). Both need to be installed in order for these fonts to display correctly both on screen and in print.

Fonts not available to applications running in Classic mode (Mac).

• Install fonts in Macintosh TrueType or Macintosh PostScript into the fonts folder inside classic system folder.

Font only available to user who installed it (Mac, Linux).

• Mac: Make sure fonts were installed into the system library font folder, instead of /Users/username/Library/Fonts.
• Linux: Make sure fonts were installed into system folder. See instructions for details, eventually repeat the process.

Now that you know how to install new fonts, are you asking yourself where to find them? Mark has written a post about 5 Excellent Sources To Download Free Text Fonts. If you’re creative you can even create your own fonts. Saikat has a post about How To Create Your Own Fonts & Characters on Windows and Kabir wrote about 2 Free Tools To Make Your Own Text Fonts, which will also work for Linux and Mac.

What’s your favorite font or typeface?

Image credits: nookiez

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Then, why do you keep repeating the same words over and over again?

Well, lets put an end to that! Maybe we can help you improve your writing skills or at the very least show you a great new tool. A new website called www.VocabGrabber.com is a great tool to help you see the errors of your ways in writing. This fresh, new service allows you to enter a block of text into a box and hit a button that says Grab Vocabulary.

VocabGrabber analyzes your text and spits back a word cloud of terms used. From there, you can click on words and see synonyms as well as how many times you used a certain word.

You can click on words to see their relationship to other words. It is a great tool for any writer – even if you are a seasoned paid writer!

Check out the interface and we will walk you through how it can help you.

I grabbed the latest post from my personal website and pasted it into the box.

I hit the big green button and VocabGrabber instantly analyzed my text. It instantly (or at least it felt instant) spat back this word cloud.

The words that appear the most frequent have the largest font. From here, I changed the view into a list. This is easier for me to use. Below, you can see the button I clicked to show the list view – It is circled obnoxiously in red.

Ah now, I can see that the word backup was used 36 whopping times in that article. Maybe I should find another word to replace it with? VocabGrabber doesn’t tell you that but it will help you if that is what you decide. On the right hand side of the screen, you will see a chart with your word and other similar words around it. You will see a few definitions for your word as well as have the ability to click on a word and have it open in a seperate mini-java Visual Theasaurus. This is not a free product but they do let you try it out.

In this instance, the only relevant synonym is Computer Backup and well, that just doesn’t sound so much better. Let’s try another word. I decided to pick “label” as you can see below:

So in this case, it suggested several words that can replace the word “label” – mark, tag or description. This is very handy and I would have killed for this in high school! Do you have some type of free writing tool that you would like to share with us? Then do so in the comments!

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If you choose not to, you risk exposing some intimate aspects to a malicious person, sniffing the internet traffic at a local hub or router. The same thing happens if you use a weak password or security question for your email account.

If that information was encrypted to start with, the sniffer would receive a bunch of seemingly random bits – and even if the person knew that it was encrypted, he still wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. And the guy who guessed your password still won’t have the private/public key combination to decrypt the actual message. Personally, I would sleep better at night knowing that I took this precautions for my own safety.

Now that we did some explaining for writing the article, lets delve into the world of encryption. Using the steps below, you will be able to encrypt any text message, including plain text email. Unfortunately, this tutorial will only cover the steps necessary for a Windows system using GnuPG. So, I invite my colleagues to teach you about encryption for Mac and Linux.

Instead of covering different plugins that interface GnuPG to clients like Thunderbird, I’ll show you how to do it the old fashion way which doesn’t require installing anything else than GnuPG, and is universally compatible.

• Download GnuPG for Windows from this page. Choose the current stable version of the program. The beta runtime is significantly larger, requires a restart, and it may contain bugs.
• From the start menu, choose to open WinPT. WinPT is a program that manages all the encryption/decryption keys you use.

• Generate your private key/public key set by clicking on ‘Generate a GnuPG key pair’. Learn about how this encryption scheme works by reading this article in Wikipedia.
• Select a name for your key pair and an email address that the key pair will be associated to. You will then have to enter a password that will unlock this very long encryption key pair. Remember that the encryption is as strong as the password you choose right now. Entering ‘123456’ is a very very bad idea if you really want to protect data.

• Success! Your initial key will be shown in the WinPT window.



• Open Wordpad.
• Send the receiving party your PGP public key by right-clicking on the key icon in the taskbar and selecting Current Window>Sign.
• Send the text that appears to the person which you wish to communicate with. They will need to send you their public key if they want to reply in encrypted format.
• Save the received PGP key as a .txt document and import it in WinPT by clicking Key>Import.
• Encrypt the message by either copying the text to the clipboard or by selecting Current Window>Encrypt in the taskbar. Paste the encrypted text to a new email and click send.

You can even encrypt files via File Manager>File>Encrypt into ZIP. In the window that appears, select the receiver’s public key. To decrypt, the receiver simply has to drag and drop the file into the File Manager.

And to answer proactively to a question I see coming – yes, I think it is possible that all our current encryption techniques can be broken by an organization such as the NRO or NSA. Come to think about it, during our history as humans, we invented a lot of encryption methods that turned out to be flawed, one of the most notorious being the Enigma machine.

You should also check out how to encrypt Gmail messages with FirePG written by Jorge Sierra and and this how-to on Truecrypt by Mark O’Neil.

What’s your take on encryption? Do you use it? Do you think you’ll ever need it? Have you say in the comments.

Image Credits: Flickr – Ngoc Ha

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A pretty straight forward and no fuss application. It does one thing and does it well. Download the application and install. Fire it up and you will be greeted by the main interface.

JOCR essentially allows you to take screenshots and then detect the text within the image, excellent for situations where you are copying from an image but you don’t want to type the text.

You can capture a region, a window or the entire desktop and then perform character recognition. Once you have captured the image just hit recognize and JOCR will attempt to give you the text from within the image.

It is pretty fast and the actual recognition time will depend upon the type of image you are trying to perform OCR on. The recognized text is placed on the clipboard and JOCR will open up a notepad file where you can paste the text and see how well JOCR fared. As you can see it did fairly well (just messing up Windows to IWindows in line 3)

Although JOCR is officially limited to reading screen grabs, however there is nothing stopping you from scanning a document, save it, open it up at 100 % and summon JOCR. It actually did a pretty good job when I opened this image and then took a screenshot of the window to read it.

JOCR requires that you have Microsoft Document Imaging installed on your system. If you have Office 2003 or higher, chances are that you have it installed. In case it is not, you can do so from within “Add and Remove Programs” and then choosing to install “Document Imaging”.

JOCR can recognize text in a number of languages ranging from Dutch to Hungarian to German to Russian. You would have to choose the language manually depending upon the type of characters you are going to be recognizing.

Although the application has not seen updates since some 2 years, it does a pretty good job on both black and white as well as colored images and could be a time saver with your scanned documents or images.

Have you ever used an OCR application? Which ones do you know about?

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I use Yahoo’s Babel Fish almost daily translating languages or web pages. But if I don’t know what language it is to begin with I am out of luck. Plain and simple. I have tried may things to identify language of text over the years. I have Googled individual words or tried looking them up in multi-language dictionaries but this is hands down as simple as it can get.

If I was Yahoo I would look into buying this technology ASAP!

Alrighty then, let’s check out how it works. The software is called PolyGlot 3000. A very nifty name I might add – meaning multiple languages.

This language identifier application is only a 2.2MB in size and runs on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP or 2003.

Simply fire it up when it finishes downloading and you will see this:

It looks pretty straight forward… You type in or paste your text that you want to recognize and hit that magic “Recognize Language” button or the F9 hot key and bingo bango your language is recognized:

It came back with an answer super quick and the answer was correct. 62% accuracy. Not bad with a few little sentences.  Let’s try another language. Do you know what it is?

I hit F9 and Polyglot not only knows that it is Russian, it is 100% sure of it and even specifies a more specific dialect as being Pre-Reform.

This is pretty damn impressive. There is only one real preference or option you can modify. That is the amount of languages it is using to compare your text or document. Let’s take a look at it:

By selecting less languages you can speed things up a bit. Even though in all my tests I did not have to wait more than 30 seconds.

But I guess if you have wild foreigners yelling at you, time is probably of the essence

According to their website over 400 languages are supported:

The current version of Polyglot 3000 distinguishes 474 languages and dialects. This is  biggest number of recognized languages for a language identification software to date.

Among the more than 400 supported languages only about 110 languages can be called popular. The others are very rare or even already extinct.

One of the most rare and, unfortunately, dying out languages is Pipil. In 1970 there were about 40 persons who spoke on it. Now only about 20 persons remain.

Another rare language is Yukaghir which about 170 persons speak. The Yukaghir live in the northeast of Russia, in the Republic of Yakutia, above the arctic circle. One of developers of the Polyglot 3000 lived near that region for a while.

In this list you can see all supported languages. Some languages have several possible names which differ in spelling, but coincide in pronunciation. In the given list all variants of the name are listed wherever possible.

Do you use something similar? How do you get your translating or language distinguishing on? Let us know in the comments kiddies!

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Ubuntu, by default, does not include the commonly used Microsoft core fonts in its installation. The set of fonts that it uses is not supported in Windows or Mac. This means that if you create a document and send to your partner for editing, he/she will not be able to view it in the way that it was originally formatted. Vice versa, you won’t be able to view the document that your friend sends you in the way that it was formatted, unless he/she is using the same fonts as you.

Luckily, installing the Microsoft core fonts package (and any other new fonts) in Ubuntu is easy. Here’s how you can do it on your own:

Installing Microsoft Core Fonts in Ubuntu Linux

The Microsoft core fonts package consists of the following fonts:

* Andale Mono
* Arial Black
* Arial (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
* Comic Sans MS (Bold)
* Courier New (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
* Georgia (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
* Impact
* Times New Roman (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
* Trebuchet (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
* Verdana (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
* Webdings

To install them, open up your Synaptic Package Manager (System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager). Scroll down till you find msttcorefonts. Check the box beside it and select Mark for Installation. Click Apply at the menubar to install the fonts package.

Alternatively, if you prefer the terminal way, simply type the following command in your terminal.

sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts

Installing new fonts

Installing the Microsoft core fonts package is only the beginning. There will be many occasions where you need to install a new set of fonts for a specific project. Here is how you can do it :

If you are installing the new fonts for personal use and do not want others to have access to them, simply create a .fonts folder in your Home directory and paste all the fonts into it. Here’s the steps:

• 1. Download the fonts (it should be in zipped format)
• 2. Extract the fonts.
• 3. Open nautilus (Places -> Home). Press Ctrl + H to reveal all the hidden files and folders.
• 4. Check if the .fonts folder exist. If not, create the folder and name it .fonts.
• 5. Copy and paste the new font(s) into the .fonts folder.
• 6. Restart your application. The fonts should be available for your use now.

If you want to install system-wide and allow others to use it:

• 1. Create a new folder in your Desktop. Name it newfonts
• 2. Download the new font(s) and extract to the newfonts folder
• 3. Open a terminal
• 4. Key in the command: sudo cp -R ~/Desktop/newfonts /usr/share/fonts. This will copy your new font(s) to the system font folder.
• 5. Restart your application. The new fonts are now available for system-wide use.

If you are using KDE, there is a font installer application that allows you to install new fonts easily.The Font Installer application is found under System Settings.

Better Font Rendering

Now that you have installed your favorite fonts in your system, here’s a simple trick to improve the font rendering and make it look nicer.

Open up your Appearance configuration page (System -> Preferences -> Appearance)

Click on the Fonts tab. Under the Rendering section, check on the subpixel smoothing button.

You should notice the differences immediately.

If you are using Ubuntu 8.04 or an earlier version, this is what you need to do:

Type in the following command in the terminal

sudo ln -sf /etc/fonts/conf.avail/10-autohint.conf /etc/fonts/conf.d/

Logout and login again. You should see a noticeable difference in the font rendering.

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Even though I have learnt my lesson from that day, I still love fonts and I am always trying out new ones. Art and graphic design were my best subjects at school and calligraphy has always been a big interest of mine as well. So I am always collecting new free online sources for fonts.

Here are the five best ones in my opinion :

What The Font?!

Do you really like a particular poster design or a particular style of font and you would like to duplicate it?   “What The Font” allows you to upload a scanned image of a piece of writing or a font and it will identify the name of the font for you. Or instead of uploading, you can point it to a URL.

It seems to be very accurate and fast. I uploaded a scan of the title of a book I have called “To The Lighthouse” by Virginia Woolf. ”What The Font” identified the font seconds later as “Baskerville Old Face”:

DDFont

Some nice fonts here. Not too many to choose from but the ones that ARE available are quite nice. Just click on the one you want, enter the activation code, and it will download to your computer.

Fonts 500

Claims to be the top 500 free fonts on the web.   Not sure if that is true but nevertheless the fonts on this site are REALLY good.    Each one is in a ZIP file so just click on the ones you want and they will immediately download to your computer.   Then just unzip them.   Some notable ones include Harry Potter, Yahoo, Scrabble letters, Star Wars, Godfather, Terminator, Bon Jovi and Pizza Hut.

TypeNow

Here, they have some movie and TV themed fonts. If you have a favourite movie or TV programme, check here to see if the font is available. TV show-wise, they have things like “Lost” and “Prison Break”, movie-wise, they have ones like Casino Royale and Kill Bill. In other ones, they have the Google font and Estee Lauder, among others. Worth checking out.

Search Free Fonts

This excellent site allows you to search through 13,000 free fonts, broken down into various categories.  When you click on a particular font, it then gives you a close up view of that font so you can see what it looks like. You can type in your own text, specify a size up to 72 and preview it in that font so you can decide which font will suit you best before downloading it :

To finish off, here’s a College Humor video on a “Font Conference” which I have always found very funny.

Where do you find your fonts?  What are your favourite sites for free fonts?

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This was a little tedious to say the least. I was so happy with not having to manually change all the files that this did not hit me until I had opened my 1,000th file. Don’t get me wrong I got pretty good at it but this was not how I wanted to waste my time.

Enter BK ReplaceEm (if the link doesn’t work, get it from here), a free program from around the late 1990’s. It is no longer in development, the author’s website is down and the app is no longer supported BUT it still works AWESOME!

When you launch it you will see a screen that looks like this :

Don’t be intimidated. There are loads of options and this baby is super powerful. If I would have used this for my previous task, I would have saved thousands of clicks. Let’s take a look at an actual ‘find and replace’ operation. Highlight the ‘Sample Replace’ Group. Right click and choose ‘Add Files’. You will get the following window:

Here is where you select what files, folders and extensions to process. The other tabs show where you want the changed files written to and where and how you want the backup files created/stored.

I choose to leave my modified files in their original location and to create a backup of each with the .backup extension. This way I can move all of them out when I am sure I didn’t screw something up royally.

Now we are ready to hit the magic replace button on the upper left toolbar. It looks like this:

Then it will take off doing your dirty work for you and you will see a progress window like so:

If you use this program or something similar shout us out in the comments!

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But what about writers? What options do they have? Mac’s word processors are always identical to the low profile TextEdit or the heavy duty MS Word or Open Office. There’s also previously mentioned Lyx, but neither of these are built specifically for writers.

As a self-proclaimed writer myself, I constantly looking for the ultimate ‘creative writing’ tool. These four are the best free options that I’ve found so far. And with NaNoWriMo closing in, you definitely could need some help in the writing department.

Babbling With Bean

Along comes the Bean (not the British comedy movie) – a simple yet comfortable writing environment. Bean is a little bit more powerful than TextEdit while a lot more uncluttered than those ‘powerhouse’ word processors.

At the beginning, Bean was built to accommodate the creative writing hobby of the app creator. But it is not limited only to that. Just like TextEdit, Bean also could be used for general text editing purposes from quick jot of phone number and to do list to creating web page and writing programming code.

To taste the Bean, just download the latest version of this app. It’s free.

Everything that you need to write a standard document is here, and more. To make your writing life easier, open the Inspector window. Bean also supports a full screen writing environment and alternative background and font colors.

Beside the default RTF (Rich Text Format), you can save the file as RTFD, TXT, DOC, XML, and also Webarchive. There’s another option of exporting the document as HTML, PDF, RTF and DOC.

The Jer is in the Hut

There’s Jabba and there’s pizza, but this time the Hut belongs to Jer. If you’re into writing more than other common word processor users, maybe you should take a look at Jer’s Novel Writer. This ‘free for personal use’ application – with a little ‘donating reminder’ every now and then – will help any creative writer organize their disorganized ideas.

The app will give you a two-pane display – the main writing area and a small area on the left where you could put some tiny notes related to your writing. There’s also a collapsible right sidebar drawer with three tabs to make your writing life even easier: Outline, Database, and Notes.

The how-tos of Jer’s Novel Writer can be a little confusing for first time users, but there’s a quick tutorial to help you which will start the first time this application is opened. Be sure to check it out.

CopyWrite your Copies

The third candidate is CopyWrite. This one is the first creative writing application I stumbled upon and – to me – the easiest to use. This one could be used and downloaded for free but with limitations: five documents per project maximum, and without an exporting capability.

The two-pane mail-style display will give any Mac users a familiar environment to work with. The upper pane will show you the documents of your project (this could be chapters, character data, description of the settings, plots, anything) and below is the content of your selected document.

Just like Jer’s Novel Writer, CopyWrite also has a collapsible right sidebar Notes drawer with two tabs: Document and Project. Any note you write in the ‘Document’ tab will only relate specifically to one document, hence it will only open while that particular document is selected; while any note you write in the ‘Project’ tab can be opened no matter what document is being selected.

Scribbling with Scrivener

Finally, writers with a big writing project – academic writing included – could freely try Scrivener for 30 days. Tiny-project writers (doing one page reports, really short stories, that kind of things), please step back slow and easy. I’m not saying that this app could not be used to write shorties, but looking at the features Scrivener has, it’s like killing an ant with a bazooka.

There’s too much to describe about Scrivener’s features in the writing space I have here, but for a quick introduction, you might as well watch the introduction video. One feature that I like the most is the Corkboard where you could put every bit of your writing and (re)arrange them as needed.

I’ve barely scratched the surface here. To find out the details about each app, please try them out yourself. If you want to have a longer list of writing tools available to find out which one suits you best – because every writer has their own unique working style – “Literature and Latte” has already made a list available here. Or search on Make Use Of in our Mac section, our writing section, or use our search engine.

Now, the only thing left to do is start writing those best sellers. Good luck!

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