End-user products are those used by most users of desktop computing.
In some cases (Indexer is a great example) they can be used straight out of the box. Some applications are stripped-down but functional proof-of-concept models.
Below you will find a list of functional end-user applications that you can obtain from this web site.
Actor
Automatic transfer of data from Outlook emails to Act6! And beyond.
The application invoked from Outlook is rules-based; that means you or your client’s end-user can customize the operation of the application without leaning on you or the program developer. The application interrogates Outlook to determine whether a single message is open in the active window, or whether a mailbox is visible. A single message is analyzed according to the rules, and the record is transferred as a new data record to an Act6! Database. If a mailbox is visible, we process each selected message, or every message in that mailbox (your choice!) according to the rules.
Archy
Archiving means to us “Shedding a large volume of material from one drive to another drive, replacing the original files with shortcut links to the copies”.
We automate two processes for the user that Windows does not automate: We analyze the hard drive and allow the user quickly to identify a set of files that represent a large mass of archivable data and We quickly move the files off the hard drive and place shortcut links to the files in their new location.
We want to accelerate the identification of a large mass of data that can be archived. The user may have one or more overall criteria in defining candidates for archiving: Age of file Size of file Nature of file Name of file Location (folder) of files. We allow the user to nominate criteria for selection of a set of files from the hard drive. We allow the user to nominate criteria for portrayal of the selection of files from the hard drive. We allow the user to refine the criteria for selection and portrayal of files repeatedly until the user feels confident that the selection is worthy of archiving. We can then begin copying the selected files to one or more alternate drives, maintaining a log of our actions, and running under criteria specified by the user.
AutoSaver
Auto Saver is the code that everyone expected Auto Recover to do.
Please read the article “How can I make Word save or back up my document automatically?” at http://word.mvps.org/faqs/general/AutomaticSave.htm.
Auto Saver interrogates the Save Interval option, which you know as “Tools, Options, Save, Save AutoRecover info every ?? minutes”. If the value is set to 1 or higher, then Auto Saver will save your document(s) every so many minutes.
If the option to leave an audit trail is selected, every time an attempt is made to save a file – either through Auto Saver or through a File save command – we will make copy of the file bearing the current date and time in your AutoRecover folder.
BaseS
You need to know more about the styles in your document, in particular, which styles are based on which.
This template contains a small style dependency analyzer. Styles are defined as being “based on” other styles; we often form a tree of styles. This application will help you to document your tree of styles.
BillT
Billing system uses Notepad files (.LOG) to report on project costs. Data entry via a single icon on the quick launch bar.
FREE Download, Install it, click (once!) on the running-man icon to create an Index, and say “Wow!”.
Boxes
- A building is a series of floors.
- A floor is a series of rooms
- A room is a series of walls followed by a tab
- A wall is a space followed by none or more WinDoors
- A space is a length with an optional height
- A windoor is a length with an optional height, a length with an optional height.
A tab is 0.60 of a space height.
The macro TESTProcessRoomArray will translate the file of coordinate pairs into the elevation shown above, with a gluing tab at one end.
Break
Section and page properties include the following settings:
- Page Orientation
- Margins
- Columns
- Line Numbering
- Vertical Alignment
- Headers & Footers
- Page Numbering
- Paper Size
- Paper Source
We propose a scheme whereby section characteristics will be mapped to a table, one row per section break, with the characteristics held in columns.
If we are in the business of deleting headers, then we can do so by deleting section breaks, provided that we detect no change in characteristics other than headers.
A change in characteristics other than headers must be treated by recreating that section with the changed characteristics.
Of course, in the case of headers, we might achieve the same goal by mapping each header to be ‘same as previous section”, but we need a generalized solution for columns, orientation, and every other characteristic.
Calendar
Trumps Microsoft’s Wizard; optimizes space usage; start the week on any day; any number of days per week (e.g. 6, or 10); supports day name abbreviations; four languages; uses styles.
Camera
This cheap piece of software, cobbled together from many excellent sources, has as its sole purpose to upload images from my digital camera to my images folder.
While the process runs, you will see a series of image identifiers displayed in the status bar. The display runs quickly until new images are found, at which point the process slows while images are being uploaded from the camera to the hard drive.
Once you confirm, Windows Explorer will be launched pointing to in the most recent upload folder.
Choose
Choose is a little application that lets you choose a template on which to base a new document. Selection is based on your response to a few simple yes/no questions.
You or your administrator will use a table to devise a set of rules that are linked to documents or templates. Once the table has been loaded into the application, you are set to go.
You don’t need me to change the way your version of Choose works; you merely edit the table. You are not limited to starting Microsoft Word documents. You can start any kind of spreadsheet, database, text document and so on. You Choose. Choose maintains a close watch on what’s available and what’s not, and informs you whenever a base template or document sheet disappears. As if table-driven wasn’t enough, you can drive Choose from any one of a number of tables in your document. And as if multi-tables wasn’t enough, you can drive Choose from any Microsoft Word document that can store a table, or two or more!
Cliché
This application detects cliches in your documents.
The cliché detector uses a database of cliches. Don’t worry, you can customize this database in many ways.
A cliché is a phrase (a set of words) that is over-used. Clichés can be from one to twenty words long, but typically are around three to seven words in length. If we were to examine a set of documents and harvest every phrase between three and seven words in length, and then rank them in frequency, the most frequent phrases might be clichés.
We can harvest potential clichés from a set of documents (from a folder tree) by obtaining all phrases between three and seven words in length that occur above a specific frequency. The specified frequency might be a fixed number (“3”) or it might be a value based on the number of documents examined (“occurs in more than 2% of the documents” or “occurs in total more than 10% the count of documents”).
Once we have a raw database of potential clichés, and with each cliché a path to the parent folder, we could set about using that database to identify clichés in existing or new documents.
Codet
CodeText is a technique for encoding chunks of document text into a reference document. In this manner common chunks of text can be applied throughout a set of related documents and large documents can be collapsed into easily-recognizable form.
CodeTextSelection grabs the selected text and links it to the reference file.
CodeTextParagraph grabs the current paragraph and links it to the reference file.
CodeTextActiveDocument is a little weird, to say the least. It takes whatever document is active and completely inverts it, paragraph by paragraph. Each paragraph is bundled up into the CodeText table document. The entire document is reduced to as many links as there are paragraphs.
Color
(Word and PPT) Color characters, words, paragraphs, frames, slides etc with a user-defined custom palette. Serial or random, you choose.
Compare
Compr solicits two workbook files from the user, and then performs a sheet-by-sheet, cell-by-cell comparison of the workbooks. It stops at the first difference in content or formatting and reports the difference in a small pop-up message box.
The two workbooks are compared at increasingly deeper levels.
Matching Sheet Names, Matching Sheet Contents, Matching Cells, Numeric Values Of Cells, Character Values Of Cells
Corre
Assemble groups of related documents. Documents are related if they are correlated. Correlation is a quantitative measure, based on Interesting Words (IW). For each document, obtain its set of Unique Interesting Words. (UIW)
Similar: A document docA is said to be similar to a document docB if 80% of the UIW(docA) belong to the UIW(docB) Likewise docB is similar to docA if 80% of UIW(docB) belong to UIW(docA) Correlated: Two documents are correlated if they are similar to each other.
Covers
eBook and Software Covers .
One can purchase a package that will produce images of covers, rotated to an angle, with your images and text in place
Before purchasing such a package, I contemplated rolling-my-own to produce a limited set of images, one for each of the four categories in my store.
CPRG
The Client Proposal Report Generator is a Word template that obtains data from an Access database and produces a Word document containing component parts, descriptions and prices for a proposed manufactured article.
Typical use is assembling a proposal for software, where software modules are identified by name, and in a calling hierarchy.
Custm
You develop user manuals or training-manuals. You have amassed a vast amount of text – perhaps your manual runs to 200 pages – and now you want to issue a subset of the data for a specialized course, or a unique user.
You collect your one or more Word documents, optionally placing bookmarks to identify specific chunks of each document. The Customizer starts a new document and pops up a dialogue box which identifies all the components of your text. You select those documents or bookmarked chunks you require, and Customizer assembles the set of texts, dynamically linked or not, as you prefer.
Detac
Detach (Strip) attachments from a Thunderbird mailbox file
DisAb
This little application effectively disables the F1 and F2 function keys.
It is a proof-of-concept model showing that specific keys on the keyboard can be disabled from within Microsoft Word
DoCle
This is a rules-based cleanser, developed out of a conversion project at Connaught Drug Laboratories many years ago.
It can be used as a stand-alone processor (process as part of the file-save event) to ensure that new documents attain the corporate standard, or can be used in batch mode to brand existing documents retrospectively.
The Document Cleanser works on a single document at a time; you can run it in tandem with our Files Processor to clean many thousands of documents in one session, completely unattended.
The Document Cleanser follows a set of rules which you define. The initial run of the Document Cleanser will create a word document holding a simple set of rules. You will find this document called RulesTable01.doc in your startup folder.
DoCnv
A packaged solution to the entire business of Document Collection, Conversion, And Cleansing.
Document Collection.
Document Conversion: Baulk Recovery, Manual Recovery, Cost, Cleanup
Document Cleansing: General Cleansing, Specific Cleansing, Special Macros, Client Macros, Processing Status
Drive
Given a generic area such as “The North-east industrial quadrant of highways 410 and 401”, we return a database table of every valid business in that area, with address, company name, phone, email, title and name of operator and so on.
It’s faster and more accurate than driving up and down each street making notes!
Dupes
Blindingly fast search for duplicate files.
Measured at 45 times faster than Windows Explorer
Envelopes
Spits out different sized envelopes for each occasion.
Solves the awkward problems of addressing mass-mail envelopes for different-sized greeting cards.
FaxMx
Get used to the idea of keeping your fax address list elsewhere.
This suite of macros treats the QuickLink II files as working files with transient contents.
The real data is stored in a simple and well-defined Microsoft Word tables, or, if you prefer, in comma-delimited files suitable for migration to a flat-file system.
FFInf
Uses smart text-analysis logic to locate contact details from a mass of documents.
First implementation processed 13,000 documents and obtained 8,000 rows from which I harvested 3,143 unique email addresses
Files
Generic files processor.
Counts Files, Copies files, Sets attribute bits, Storing A File Set In An Array For Re-Use
Ideally suited for batch conversion of Word processing documents, since this suite has the ability to trap untrappable errors (errors thrown up by third-party software).
FirstL
This is my FirstLine utility that provides a first-line-of-paragraph précis for the User.
You can obtain the first line of the entire document or a selected chunk of text.
You can view the results in a pop-up message box, or have it pasted to the clipboard.
As with all my applications, smart select is in place. If a macro deals with paragraphs (as these macros do), you don’t need to select the entire paragraphs. Your selection can run from partway through the first paragraph to partway through the last paragraph, and SmartSelect will understand that we are to analyze entire paragraphs.
FootN
Provides a means of issuing nested footnotes, that is, footnotes within footnotes within footnotes.
Frames
You have inherited text with frames, in one of at least three ways: (1) You inherited text that has been floating around since Office 97 (2) You have pasted text from a web page (3) You have pasted text from another source, such as Word perfect documents.
“Frames” technology was used until Office 2000 to allow users to embrace a chunk of text or other material in a container. Office 2000 help would lead you to believe that removing a frame is easy:
Sadly, there is no clue as to how to find the frame in the first place. Of course, if you have stumbled across a problem with the frame, you’ll know where that frame is. But are there any other frames in the document waiting to bruise your big toe?
Now you can CountFrames, DeleteAllFrames, FrameGoBackward, FrameGoForward, FrameGoToFirst and FrameGoToLast
Glean
Gleaner is an autonomous task working in the background. .
It polls the Clipboard every strcTimeDelay seconds, and analyses whatever text it finds therein, clearing the clipboard in the process
Gluer
A means of gluing togeher chunks of text based on Interesting Words, Topic Strings and Source Chunks.
Range results are sprayed to different chapters of a repository (“book”).
Gndoc
This application template facilitates creation of documents from boiler-plate text, with text substitution during the generation process.
The application was designed to cater for legal firms where the partners use a printed form to hand-write entries into a table using short phrases to define the document to be produced, and what changes are to appear in the text.
The operator or typist keys the hand-written data from the form into a table within a document, then stores that table data in a hidden module within the document. A draft document can be generated from the data in the hidden module and submitted for inspection and correction. Corrections need only be made to the table in the hidden module (Load, Update) after which a fresh corrected draft can be produced (Generate).
Grabr
Auto copies from clipboard direct to Word doc (NoteTab Pro does this ~ not sure if Word does). Benefit ~ saves time > no need to switch programs to cut and paste. .
It scans content clipped from multiple sources and/or loads multiple docs, looking for unique (interesting?) text.
Then it rearranges (moves) all common paragraphs into common topics either in the same doc or with option to auto-save topics as files.
Then add unique/interesting word hyperlinks to quickly jump to relevant paragraphs that may not be under a particular topic.
Saves chunks into database with keywords.
Hrvst
We are provided with a collection of documents in a folder. Each document is a completed form.
We assume that each document is consistent – contains the same fields in the same sequence.
We assume that the fields are of two types – free-form text responses to questions, and numeric responses to questions.
We will examine each document in the collection and extract the data into a tab-delimited text file, suitable for insertion into a Word document, and Excel spreadsheet, or an Access database.
Hyper
Builds hyper linked tree of all documents in a folder tree; useful in adopting orphaned projects.
Image
Manages a database of images (digital photos or scanned images)
Assists in the preparation of photo-essays, using the database of images.
Indxr
I grew tired of spending three hours to create an index at the foot of a 40-page manual or training guide, so wrote the 1-click Indexer which (rules based again!) creates an index in 30 seconds or less.
FREE Download, Install it, click (once!) on the running-man icon to create an Index, and say “Wow!”.
At the heart of the Indexer is the Interesting Words engine, which is capable of identifying Interesting Words in any chunk of text, leading to the development of a rules-based précis generator, a masker to protect sensitive documents, a keyword generator for new web pages (or to steal keywords from existing web pages) and a device to generate heading paragraphs seemingly out of thin air.
Infor
Information provider.
Provides statistics on Content and readability, looks up web-based definitions of words and phrases, generates unique randomized passwords.
Converts RGB values to Hexadecimal, and a myriad of other useful and informative tasks.
KeMRU
Another of my most-recently-used applications.
This time for Shortcut keys!
LineDraw
This template holds a conversion routine to convert WordPerfect 5.1 line draw tables to regular tables in MSWord.
The code is designed to be reasonably tolerant of minor errors in the source tables; my experience in converting WP tables is that the tables are sometimes a tad corrupt, occasional characters missing from the lines and boundaries.
You can nominate the set or sets of characters used for line drawing
Not all the set need be present in order to recognize a table cell.
Lines can be terminated by either hard returns (ASCII 013) or by soft returns (ASCII 011).
MailKill
Uses the Mozilla Thunderbird address book to kill of delete incoming email messages.
A customizable home-grown spam killer.
MakingContact
Given a slab of contact information such as “For further information: Craig Armitage, Equicom, Tel: (416) 815-0700” Locate each human name.
The Contacts database will be augmented with potential new contacts.
I can phone them and ask straight-up – can we meet for coffee? If they say flat-out “No!”, then they are shunted to the end of the database as a do-not-contact-again item; Follow-Up=+10 years; Modified = +10 years; News=”DoNot”.
Any other response means that they range anywhere from “call me in a couple of weeks” through ‘send me an email” or even “Sure! When?”, and in any case they are now a person with whom I should establish contact.
Masks
String Masking
Hide sensitive words in a document. Masker is a simple generic device to cloak documents in secrecy.
Typical use: You want to email a document to a contractor, but want to hide the identity of firms, personal names, sites etc.
The option to COLOUR text can be undone with a global “Edit, Select all” followed by Ctrl-Space.
The option to ENCODE text cannot be reversed. It replaces your shopped words with a time-based random string.
McGhie
This template does not replace John McGhie’s work.
It can serve as a starting point for automatic definition of styles in a manner directly related to that suggested by John McGhie.
Use the template macros to create a standard set of styles.
Use the macros InheritFromStyleAbove, InheritFromStyleBelow, SetStylesArialBookAntiqua, SetStylesBookAntiquaArial to speed up your styles development.
MRUse
Replaces Microsoft’s cruddy File menu list with a list based on days of activity, any extent, sorted by path, name, extent, size, date used etc. Automatically updates the documents path, MyPlaces menu; automatically jumps to the selection in force at the last save/close without using bookmarks!
FREE Download, Install it, click (once!) on the running-man icon to create an Index, and say “Wow!”.
Music
This application automates the laborious process of re-arranging your music collection – or collections of any other sorts of files. .
Typically you realize that in your vast collection of music files there are some duplicates.
The trouble is that the other “Find Duplicates” programs look for identical names, or identical file sizes, and that just doesn’t work. As well, you discover that there are far too many folders with only one or two files, and those folders clutter your view of your collection.
At the same time you are reluctant to risk losing a priceless recording, or image, through a robotic automated move or deletion program
I know how you feel. That’s why I wrote Music!
Names
Extract contact details (name, Address, Phone etc) from a chunk of text.
1. Data can arrive either in a Document (Selection.range) or in the clipboard (GetClipboard) or as a string parameter to a function. Make a distinction between the logical syntax of an address and the implementation of that logic. Requirement to isolate in either the forward or backward mode. Rank the syntax, the order of use to detect the lexical atoms. Some syntax rules ought to be more commonly useful. Score (weight) the application of rules. Lexical, syntactical rules held in DOC tables, MDB tables or Arrays. Should be good for any lexical constructs. Define lexical atoms in caret style e.g. telephone is ^#^#^#-^#^#^#-^#^#^#^# or (^#^#^#)^#^#^#-^#^#^#^
Numbr
Maintain and increment version numbers for documents.
Uses one of four methods – you choose!
INI file, Registry, Document Variable or Text File.
Obtain
This little utility obtains summary text from a set of documents open on the desktop.
You can obtain a set of open documents in many ways: (1) By using File, Open repeatedly (2) By using Under The Hood; look for Files, XFiles, OpenAllDocumentsInBrowsedFolder.
The little macro “test” searches each open document for paragraphs styled in “Heading 1” and “Heading 2”, and loads them to an array. The array is then dumped in table form to a new document which holds your summary.
Pages
This application copies Word documents, one page at a time, to PowerPoint slides.
Over a dozen options to customize the transition
PanZm
Utility to allow the user to pan and zoom in/out of Excel charts.
PhoneSpell
Determine which telephone numbers make valid words.
Preci
Rules-based précis generator; uses Interesting Words technology to perform analysis on paragraphs, sentences, 1st sentences to determine the most likely précis of a document.
QuantW
This application will report and fix characteristics in a set of documents.
We produce a simple column chart for each characteristic of a document – tables, shapes, paragraphs, bookmarks, fields, revisions, sections, more …
QuantX
Describe and quantify orphaned Excel workbooks
For each wordbook: Full name, D/t last saved, File length (bytes), List of worksheets, List of styles
For each worksheet in a workbook: Name, Maximum used area in rows, columns, cells, % empty cells, % data cells, % formula cells
For each module in a workbook: Name of module, Lines of code, Lines of comment, Lines empty, % of code, % of comment, % empty
ReFab
Heuristic application that refabricates resumes paragraph-by-paragraph
Includes the ability to learn as it analyzes ANY type of field in text, but especially impressive as it extracts name, address, phone, email etc.
SimInd
A document is similar to another document if its Similarity Index (SI) is within a given bound.
SI: A weighted sum of one or more quantifiers.
Q 1: IW frequency array, Q 2: IW occurrence array, Q 3: Length in paragraphs, Q 4: Length in Words, Q 5: Sum of parallel strings, Q 6: Sum of non-parallel strings,
Skeys
Produces a list of all shortcut keys in use in MSW
Slide
This is a Word application that builds a PowerPoint presentation from snapshots of the screen.
Snaps
The Snapshot generator is a tool that automates the laborious process of creating a precis of a Microsoft Word documents.
The simple GUI form allows you to select a directory. You nominate (1) minimum number of words per paragraph and (2) minimum number of paragraphs.
Why use it? Suppose you have a collection of 50 essays in a directory, and want to get a good idea of what each of them is. Snapshot will yield you the opening three paragraphs of each document.
Snare
Captures personal identity text from text.
Written originally to build a contact data base from Canada News Wire press releases.
Capable of dropping the found data directy into your Access database tables.
Speech
You want to know how your text sounds when read out?
The Speech macros let you do just that, with a single click of your mouse!
Spell
This application automates the laborious process of telling the Microsoft Word spell-checker what you want done with spelling errors.
Typically I am part-way through development of a document and spell-check, choosing to NoProof a word. I continue development and on the next spell-check have to repeat the NoProof option for the new occurrence of that word. A similar argument applies to ChangeAll – the initial request must be repeated the next time I start spell-check.
Stain
Have you inherited a workbook with terrible structure? No range names being used? Hard to tell what is data and what is not?
STAIN will remove those unsightly stains.
No Kidding!
Here are a collection of macros and a set of notes to guide you through the process of reducing an inherited legacy Excel workbook to a clear and unambiguous functional sheet.
Steal
A method to extract frequency words from clipboard text in both straight and unique modes.
Style
The Styles Cross Referencer is a tool that automates the near-impossible process of determining what styles are in use in a set of documents.
Typically the process of determining styles in use involves opening each document, inspecting the styles list (Format, Styles), and wondering whether the styles are actually in the document, or whether they were once in use and Word just hasn’t bothered to remove their description.
Styles Cross Referencer takes away that inaccuracy drudgery and provides you with an automated means of producing a table of styles in use. For each style is listed its name, documents where it can be found, and a description of the definition.
This template contains a small style dependency analyzer which will help you to document your tree of styles.
Sudoko
Solve a legal Sudoko problem in Microsoft Word
Thing
The Thing application examines a document file looking for a table of contents or for table of contents entries, and posing a series of decision questions to the user.
The response to each question is saved in the INI file, and the user has an option for each question to disable further presentation of that question (“Do not ask me this again”).
Think
A rules-based processor that builds a structure out of unstructured text.
A special feature is that each rule can be weighted.
Rules-verbs include Lines, Chars, Words, Sentences, Containschar, Only, Startschar, Endschar, Phrase, Grammar, Spelling, Neighbour, Formatting, Style, Interesting, Indentation, Columns, and Rows
Trail
Trail Blazer blazes a hyperlink trail through a document containing esoteric terminology. Can be harnessed to Indxr to blaze trails for all Interesting Words within a document.
Trans
The Translator assists in cataloguing source data.
Its versatility in identifying and tagging fields of data makes it a superb tool for assigning geographic tags, such as Postal Codes, to data within a source document.
The translator acts as a simple cleanser, standardizing date, time and other formatted fields.
The translator can paraphrase text according to a randomized scheme. Use it to modify boilerplate text from memos, documents, or web site templates.
UnderW
Under-the-hood – 600 macros that let you do the things Microsoft Word forgot to implement.
UnderX
Under-the-hood – macros that let you do the things Microsoft Excel forgot to implement.
URLer
Given a set or URLs culled form a variety of continually updated sources, we can interrogate the URL to see whether it is up, or down; if the URL is up, we can trace all its local hyperlinks to see if any are missing.
A report can be prepared for dissemination to my client’s clients, offering to fix or re-monitor their network.
Wallp
A system to randomize desktop wallpaper (and splash screens and anything else).
I wrote it as an experiment in handling images onto GUI forms. Any utility in its purpose is an accident.
The system has several disconnected but harmonious segments. I will try to describe each one in isolation, so that you can get it working before going on to the next step.
At boot-time I use DOS commands to set the date and time in environment variables; I use these values to select a bitmap image and copy it to a specific file. Windows uses that specific file to assign wallpaper.
Wvain
Weather-Vain is somewhat like a weather-vane on a church steeple – it let’s you know which way the wind is blowing.
Most typically we use it to monitor the on-line business news, but Weather-Vain can be employed to search any viable online source of information.
Xfiles
You want to perform feats of stellar daring with your documents, be they open or closed? The Files macros let you do just that, with a single click of your mouse!
Includes macros such as Procedure name, Close No Save, File Open From Clipboard, File Revert To Saved, File Template Detach, Flush Edit Undo, Jump To Document Folder, Load All Hyperlinks In Document, Load Title From Selection, Open DOCs, Open DOTs, Open Recent, Open TXTs, Print All Hyperlinks In Document, Save All Hyperlinked Documents, Save As RTF, Save As Selection and Save As Selection Title Case,
Xpert
The original “Animal” game – expert systems – translated into Word VBA
Xword
Prototype for a crossword-puzzle generator
ZoomP
Optimizes zoom factor in an Excel spreadsheet to maximize information and minimize paper; eliminates the annoying “orphaned column” and “orphaned row” that embarrasses us at the printer station. Portrait or Landscape or Both.
