Every software product has shortcut keys for the most common actions. If you’re like me, then these shortcuts will be the LAST thing you learn rather than the first. We all know that Ctrl+S will perform a save action in anything from MS Word to Firefox, and that Ctrl+P will print something or other. PageFour follows these conventions where possible - or more to the point, where I had previous knowledge of what they were.

I use a very popular text editor called Textpad for viewing large, text based, data files. It’s a great program, and its popularity amongst techies is well earned. But every time I use it I fall foul of their unconventional shortcuts. For reasons known only to them, Ctrl+F will NOT open the find dialog - you have to press the F5 key. I use this program every day, and every day I stumble. It’s frustrating and it’s annoying. It’s so annoying I’ve just mentioned it in a blog post that was supposed to be about PageFour.

Rather than discuss all of PageFour’s shortcuts in detail, I’m going to highlight just four of the most powerful. Knowing these few simple key combinations will make navigating between Pages, Folders, and Notebooks a quick and easy process.

The Jump Command (Ctrl+J): The main PageFour window consists of 3 panes - the list of Notebooks, the Folders and Pages of the currently open Notebook, and the word processor. The Jump command can be found on the right click menus of each of these 3 panes, and each time it has the same function and the same shortcut (Ctrl+J). As the name suggests, it ‘Jumps‘ the focus from the current pane to the next.

Jumping from the word processor will immediately shift focus to the current Page’s location in the open Notebook, allowing you easy access to its sister Pages and Folders. Jumping from the current Notebook will move focus to the Notebooks list, giving you the opportunity to open another Notebook. And jumping from the Notebooks list will shift focus back to the word processor.

The Jump mechanism means you can access almost every function and every location in PageFour without ever needing to use the mouse. It’s a quick method of adding a new Page next to the current one: Ctrl+J followed by Ctrl+N (New Page), as well as a simple way of seeing where the current Page fits in relation to the Pages and Folders around it.

Tab Navigation: It’s very common to have a number of Pages open in different tabs at the same time, many of them related to each other. You might have a number of different chapters open, or Pages of character and plot notes.

Moving up and down the list of open tabs is simply a case of using the Ctrl+Shift+Left Ctrl+Alt+Left or Right arrow keys. Once you remember this shortcut, moving between Pages is a much faster process.

Left and right arrows - how hard could it be?.

The next release of PageFour will contain a new ‘Open in Tabs‘ feature, which will allow you to open all the Pages in a folder simultaneously into different tabs, making this shortcut even more powerful. A beta containing this feature will be available shortly.

Screen Size: PageFour does not yet have a full screen capability, but there is a simple method of switching the Notebook section off - the F11 shortcut key - thereby increasing the screen size for the word processor. Switching it back on again is a case of using either F9 for the Notebooks list, or F10 for the Snapshots list.

Closing Pages: As you open more and more Pages, things may start to look a little cluttered. There are 2 simple methods for closing Pages quickly. The Ctrl+W key combination will close the current Page, whereas the far more powerful Ctrl+Q shortcut will close EVERY Page apart from the current one. This is very useful when you finish a large piece of work and wish to move on to something else.

Remembering these few shortcut key combinations will allow you to get a lot more out of PageFour. Full details on all of PageFour’s shortcuts can be found in the Help section.

The PageFour website will be down tomorrow morning, 4th April, for about half an hour. These past few days I’ve been working on a new site design that is just a little easier on the eye. It all seems to be working in the test folder, so hopefully there won’t be any issues when it goes live.

The look was getting a bit old, with all that greenery, chunky buttons, and hard-to-read text.

I would ask a favour though - if any of you find a spelling mistake, PLEASE tell me. I’m a notoriously poor speller. It took me 14 months to notice I’d spelt ‘guarantee‘ wrong on the Buy page - how embarrassing is that?

The beta version of PageFour containing the new Search feature is now available for download from the PageFour web-site. Please be aware that it is a beta, so it may contain a bug or two.

Before installing, existing PageFour users should take a backup of their current Notebooks. This is the first beta and does not contain all the features or changes that will form part of the next release. My intention is to release a series of betas as the changes are carried out, before the final release version which is still some time away.

The accompanying help file does not yet carry descriptions of the changes, but a full description of the new Search options can be found in the post below. Having said that, how to use the new features should be self-evident.

Any suggestions or comments, please or leave a comment. I’m interested in hearing opinions on which aspects of the new Search you feel work well, which you’re unhappy with, anything I may have left out or missed, and of course, any bugs that may be found.

The current version of PageFour implements a standard Search feature common to all word processors. Searching for text across folders and Notebooks however is not possible, making it necessary to perform either a Page by Page search within PageFour, or to use the awkward Windows Search.

The new Search feature gives you the option of selecting where to look for text, pages or folders. You choose from the currently open Page (the default), the current Notebook, or all Notebooks and Pages. Results from the more extensive searches are then displayed in a list, making it a simple process to find the exact Page you are looking for. Double clicking any item in the list immediately opens the Page and highlights the first occurrence of the specified text. It is then simply a case of using the Find Next (F3) option to jump to each successive occurrence on the Page.

As the new Search may lead to a long list of results, the old Search dialog has been abandoned in favour of incorporating the Search directly into PageFour’s main Window. The interface initially appears similar to the Find feature in the Firefox browser, popping up at the bottom of the window when Find or Ctrl+F is selected.

The results list appears below the search options as the detailed search is being carried out. If all you are doing is searching within the current page, no list is displayed and only a small amount of screen space used.

When you begin an extensive search across Notebooks, you may be asked to enter your password. This will only occur if a password protected Page lies within the scope of the search. Choosing not to enter your password will not cancel the search, it simply means that any protected Pages will be bypassed during the search.

The old ‘Find Folder or Pages‘ option has been changed to work in a similar way to text searching across Notebooks. Where the old version uses icons in the Notebooks list to highlight Notebooks that contain the specified Page or folder, the new version displays a list and allows you to immediately double click on the Page or folder you are searching for. Double clicking on a Page opens the Page, whereas double clicking on a folder opens the relevant Notebook and selects the folder in the display.

Use of shortcut keys make the new Search simple and easy to use. The Search menu remains, with Find (Ctrl+F), Find Folder or Page (Ctrl+G), and Replace (Ctrl+H) each opening a different window in the Search bar. The Find Next (F3) option now only works for text searches in the currently open Page, as the list make it unnecessary when searching for Pages or folders. The Close Search option closes the search bar, as does the Escape shortcut key.

Opening a page from the list is simply a case of double clicking or pressing the Enter key on a selected item. The list itself can be enlarged - making it easier to browse a long set of results - by dragging the splitter above the search bar upwards.

Results of extensive searches are NOT lost when the search bar is closed or if you do another search in a single Page. They are only overwritten when another extensive Notebook search is performed. This makes it possible to do a search and carry out work on the resulting Pages without ever needing to rerun the initial search.

While working on these new features, there was a temptation to add an almost identical feature for the Replace All option, which would carry out a global replace of text across all Notebooks. Though not difficult to implement, I decided that this feature would simply be too dangerous. Performing an obvious replace such as “Gandalf” to “Dumbledore” across all pages may be very useful, but allowing this would also mean allowing someone to change “the” to “for“, or “a” to “e“, which would destroy or seriously damage every Page in every Notebook. At the moment, the Replace All works only within the currently open Page. I’d be interested in feedback on this particular issue.

Suggestions and comments on the new Search are very welcome. Either leave a comment, or drop me an .

It’s been some time now since the last major update of PageFour, but work IS ongoing on the next version. Though a final release is still some time away, a series of betas will be available over the coming weeks as features are completed. This should allow plenty of time for feedback and any changes or corrections that may become necessary.

The first beta will be released later on today or early tomorrow, and will contain the new Search feature. The inability to search for text across folders and Notebooks has been one of the weakest areas of PageFour since day one. Implementing this feature has also allowed me to integrate the search and replace more fully with the main PageFour window, eliminating the floating search dialog in the process.

I welcome all feedback on the new features, especially while they are still in beta, as this is the point at which changes can most easily be made.

A full description of the new Search capability, along with a download link will be posted shortly.

I’m interested in hearing from anyone running PageFour - whether the Free Edition or the licensed version - under Windows Vista. There are a couple of known bugs when running with Vista, but most users should not encounter them as they only manifest under unusual circumstances.

The issues all relate to changing the Location of Notebook Pages to a folder where you do not have full write access - one of the areas that Vista has ‘improved‘ on XP.

I never thought I’d be looking back on XP as a model Operating System, but there you go. Halcyon days, and all that.

So, if you are experiencing any issues running PageFour under Vista, or even if it’s running perfectly well for you, I’d appreciate an . I’m trying to get a picture of the proportion of Vista users who are having issues, and if they are for the same reasons.

A common question from PageFour users is how to go about moving PageFour and all their Notebooks and Pages to another PC. It’s a relatively straight forward process, though there are a few steps that need to be followed.

1. Download and install the latest version of PageFour to your new PC.
2. If you are running a licensed version, open the License dialog from the Help menu and enter the product key you were given when you purchased. This will have been sent to you via email, but if it has been lost or misplaced, contact us with the name you used when making the purchase, and we’ll track it down for you.
3. Did you set a PageFour password on your old PC? If the answer is yes, open the Password dialog on your new PC by selecting the ‘Tools | Change Password’ menu, and set the password so that it corresponds to the one on your old PC.
4. On your new PC, open the Options dialog from the ‘Tools | Options’ menu, click on the Miscellaneous button, and make sure the Location of Notebook Pages value is the same as your old PC. (This step is not critical, but it will make the moving process less prone to human error)
5. Close PageFour.
6. Locate your PageFour files folder on your old PC. An earlier blog post outlines how to go about finding this folder, which may or may not be named ‘PageFour’.
7. Copy this folder in its entirety from your old machine to the same location on your new machine. When prompted by Windows, simply agree to overwrite any existing files or folders with the same name.
8. Reopen PageFour on your new PC. All your old Notebooks and Pages will appear, and all customised dictionaries and archives will be in place.
9. Two default Notebooks, ‘First Novel’ and ‘My Notebook’ will have been created when PageFour was installed on your new PC. These can be deleted at any time.

If you still cannot see your PageFour Notebooks, the problem will almost certainly lie in the Location of Notebook Pages. This should be checked again to ensure that you copied the PageFour folder to the correct location, as it is very easy to inadvertently drop or copy into the wrong folder.

The above image demonstrates the correct structure of your PageFour folder.

The most frequently asked question by PageFour users is “Where are my files?” And the usual reason for asking is that they want to back up their data to CD or thumb drive. Though PageFour does archive your files automatically, this does not help you in the event of a hard drive failure, or your house burning down.

When you run PageFour for the first time, all your Notebooks and Pages, archives, and customised dictionaries are written to your own user-specific Windows Application Data folder. This location can be changed by you at any time. To identify the exact location of your files, open the Options dialog from the Tools menu, and click on the Miscellaneous button. The value stored under Location of Notebook Pages is where all your files are stored.

In the above example, my files are stored in the “C:\Documents and Settings\Darren\Application Data\IMBT\PageFour” folder.

On machines running Windows Vista or Windows 7, the default location will be “C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\IMBT\PageFour\”

If there are many user accounts on your PC - say one for yourself, another for your husband, and children etc. - and each of you runs PageFour, there will be multiple PageFour folders, all in each user’s Application Data folder.

Depending on your Windows file settings, this folder may not always be visible when browsing. If this is the case, open Windows Explorer, go to the Tools menu, select Folder Options, open the View tab, and make sure the Hidden Files and Folders setting is set to “Show hidden Files and Folders“.

Your Notebook Pages should NEVER be stored in the “Program Files” folder of your PC. This location is normally used by software as it installs itself, and often contains files that are needed to run the software. PageFour will by default install into this folder, and many of the files it writes here are used when setting up new PageFour users, so this folder should be left untouched and does NOT need to be backed up.

So which folders and files should I back up?

That depends on how often you back up. There are four separate folders, along with many sub-folders within your PageFour folder - Archive, Data, Dictionaries, and Temp.

The “Archive” folder contains ALL your existing archives, in some cases going back as far as a year. If you back up frequently, or to a location without much memory (a thumb drive for example), you may decide not to back up this folder. The Archive folder does not contain your most current work.

The “Data” folder MUST be backed up. This folder contains all your current Notebooks and Pages. In the example above, there are seven Notebooks - Blog, Business Blog, Journal, etc. The best way to back up these Notebooks is simply to copy the entire Data folder.

The “Dictionaries” folder is quite small, and only contains your own customised dictionaries, along with any auto-correct dictionaries you may have updated. This is not a critical folder, and you may choose to back this up only rarely.

The final folder, which may or may not exist depending on which PageFour features you have been using, is called “Temp”. You do NOT need to back this folder up, as its contents are temporary and of no great importance.

Do remember to close PageFour before performing a backup.

Is there a quicker way to back up?

Yes, there is. If all you wish to do is take a copy of your existing Notebooks, the quickest method is to go to the Tools menu and select Export Notebooks. This will copy all your current Notebooks and Pages to a location of your choosing for easy backup. In the case of a thumb drive, it will perform the entire backup for you, whereas if you are backing up to CD, exporting to a recognised backup folder on your local machine may help speed up the process.

Backing up your PageFour Data folder IS important, as hard drive failures and corruption can occur at any time. How often you decide to backup, is of course, up to you.

I always love receiving emails from PageFour users. Usually, these emails begin with a small compliment, quickly followed by a suggestion for improvement or a question about a particular feature. Occasionally (from those with a more troll-like disposition), the email takes the form of a rant about how PageFour is just like Product X, which is free, but if I added ALL the features of MS Word, they might consider buying it.

The suggestions for new features and enhancements I immediately add to my list, being careful to increment the common ones that pop up over and over again; the questions about existing features I answer by explaining the feature in question, and drawing attention to similar features that may also be incorrectly understood; the troll-like comments I do my best to answer politely, without letting my more sarcastic side come to the fore.

I’m planning on utilising this blog more fully over the coming months, and have decided to begin by talking about some of the features in PageFour that users often question. I’ve come to the conclusion that many existing users are not fully aware of all the features within PageFour, and that their use of the product could be improved by describing them, and the reasons they were implemented, in more detail. Commonly asked support questions will also be addressed in detail.

In terms of feedback, I always welcome comments about the product. Every time someone points me to the lack of a particular feature, or suggests a method of improvement, I add them to the future releases spreadsheet, and it is from this list that upcoming work is decided upon.

Recent suggestions and queries that caught my interest come from Tammy, who suggests expanding on the word count feature to encompass entire Notebooks rather than just individual pages, one of my new French users who suggests configuration files to allow the menus to appear in different languages, and from Mike, who brings up one of the most commonly asked questions - Where exactly are the PageFour files on my hard drive?

I’ll be starting with this question.

Over the past year, there have been a number of enquiries about the possibility of a Mac version of PageFour. My response has always been that the probability of releasing a version for the Mac is very low. I’m a Windows developer, and have been for many years. Despite having a lot of respect for the Mac software community, I have never been tempted to join. My training and working life have been focused primarily on Big Business software - an area that tends to impinge little on Mac users.

Every time someone queries me on the Mac, I point them to Scrivener, a neat piece of software, written - like PageFour - for creative writers. For many months, Scrivener was available as a free beta, as the product was still undergoing development, but version 1.01 of the completed version has just been released.

Definitely worth checking out if you’re a Mac user, as it does share some features with PageFour (the use of Snapshots being the most obvious). You can download it here, or check out the authors blog here.