Automate Your Business

Archive for November, 2008

I’m just creating a user manual for a new product, and wanted some way to show the directory structure (folders and files) that should be present once the user unzips the product’s ZIP file.

Could I find some software to do this? No. At least, not free ones, and I don’t want to pay $30 for something that I’m only going to use once or twice.

So I wrote my own. And you can download it free of charge here.

Just unzip it and run the .exe file, and it’ll help you create images like this:

It’s free, so basically unsupported. Just go to the menu and do Directory > Scan. You’ll be asked to pick a directory to scan, and also for the “top-level” folder name (eg, “Root”, “Installation Folder”, “Unzip Location”). That’s the name that will be inserted in the place where I’ve got “Root” in the image above.

Hints:

• You can resize the main window by dragging the corners or sides of the window
• You’ll still need to crop the image in your window editor to remove the unnecessary parts around the outside. Sorry about that. I tried to get the image to only capture the “directory tree” section, but I couldn’t get it working.

That’s it really. Any questions, ask them in the comments below.

Totally off-topic here, but I’m hoping it might help someone.

I’ve had a problem for a while now, where every time I run Excel 2003 (on Office XP), I get a message saying “Please wait while Office Configures Office Professional”. Excel then waits for a while, without prompting me for the Office installation disks (which it does for some people with the same problem). It then does the same thing again. And finally I can get into Excel. That takes maybe 3-4 minutes each time, which is very annoying, as I use Excel alot.

I’ve searched …
… and searched …
… and searched …
… for a solution, to no avail.

Till today.

Basically, if you have this error:

• go to your Event Log (go to Start > Run, enter eventvwr.exe, press return)
• Right-click the Applications option on the left, and clear the events
• Run excel, wait for it to finish the installation
• Refresh the event viewer list (F5 key)
• There, you’ll probably find a few entries. Double click the first one, then use the Up/Down arrows to get to the one that has a code of 1004 against it). That’s the important one.
• If you find reference to a missing component, that points to the registry, then it might help to simply create a REG_SZ key in the place it indicates with the appropriate name. In my case, it was in the Shell Extensions/Approved part of the Current windows section. I forget the exact place.

And if none of that makes sense, find someone who knows how to hack the XP registry, make sure they back it up first, and point them to this URL.

Hope that helps.

Well, long time no speak!

I’m getting into the groove of product creation again, and have got a new WordPress plugin coming out shortly. Whilst tracking the ideas for this plugin, I’ve been using Evernote, which is now my tool of choice for recording ideas, hints, tips, etc.

But, one of the annoying things about it is that I use font colour to track whether a piece of functionality is not yet done, whether it’s written, whether it’s tested and faulty, or whether it’s tested and OK.

And the font color-changing facility in Evernote sucks. There’s no nice toolbar button for it, bizarrely.

So I wrote myself a little application using AutoHotkey, to make it easier.

– You can download it here (Windows only).

– Set it to auto-run

– Then when you’re in Evernote, select the font you want to change color, and use the following keys:

CTRL + ALT + g = change to green
CTRL + ALT + r = change to red
CTRL + ALT + b = change to black.

PLEASE NOTE: This is unsupported. I wrote it for myself, and offer it freely here. If it doesn’t work, I can’t help. Sorry.