Frequently Asked Questions
Here are the answers to some frequently asked questions about:
Book Writer — word processing for creative writing
Finders Keepers — text and file searches
Book Writer™ FAQ
- My writings are in various files—how can I organize them?
- How will Book Writer™ help once my files are organized?
- Does Book Writer™ have the features in Word®, WordPerfect™, etc.?
- Can I use the files from MS Word® that I already have?
- Will editors, agents, professors, and other be able to read Book Writer™ files?
With Book Writer projects, you can organize and manage your writings.
A project can be a book, class papers, research notes, or any collection of writings that you want to organize and manage centrally.
Use the Project Manager or the Project Wizard to create a new project.
The Project Wizard has simple step-by-step instructions.
Access the wizard by selecting Main Menu | Project | Create Project with Wizard.
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Once you have your files in a project, you can open any or all at once for editing, copy or move the files, zip them, search them, replace text in all of them, make a table of contents, and so on.
See the help file in Book Writer™ for complete information. To get the help file, press the F1 key anywhere in the program.
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Book Writer™ has all the word processing features that a creative writer needs without the
additional features that businesses use. By omitting business features, for example, mail merge,
Book Writer™ provides a writing environment specifically for creative writing.
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You can import Microsoft Word DOC files or WordPerfect WPD files that you want in your project.
If you have a compatible version of MS Word, you can import the files automatically by selecting Main Menu | Project | Import Word Files.
If that does not work on your computer, you can import existing files manually by following the simple instructions in the help file under 'Manual Imports.'
When DOC or WPD files are imported, copies are saved as RTF files.
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Book Writer uses rich text format (RTF) files.
RTF is universally readable; that is, any mainstream word processor can read RTF.
Word®, WordPerfect™, and any other word processor your reader is likely to have can read RTF files.
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Finders Keepers™ FAQ
- What search do I use if I am not very technical?
- Can I find a name in a file if I don't know the spelling?
- How can I look at all files containing "John Doe"?
- Why would I want to keep the results of a search?
- How can I narrow my searches easily?
- Is there a way to skip files with gobbledygook characters?
Three of the four file searches in Finders Keepers™
are "non-technical": Plain-text, Sound-alike, and
Approximate. In the first two of these, you don't have to set
anything; in the Approximate search, all you set is how many errors, or
discrepancies, you want to allow in the spelling--usually 1 or 2.
Besides direct file searches, you can use indexed text retrievals:
that may sound technical, but it simply means you can look for a word in
an index of your files instead of searching the files themselves.
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Yes. Use the Sound-alike search, which will find names that
sound like whatever guess you make at the spelling. Or use the
Approximate search, which will allow for errors in spelling. Of course,
if you are technical at all, you know that Regular Expression searches can find variations in
spelling.
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First, type in "John Doe" and click the Find button.
Then, in the Results window, double-click on any file name or any found
line: the file will open in the default viewer you picked in
Options | Set Options | Results | Viewers. A second method is to
click on the navigator buttons atop the Results window, which can take
you forward or backward through all your findings. A third method
is to right-click in the Results window for a local menu with several
choices for opening a file.
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Since we don't know what your occupation is, we'll give you broad
answers to give you an idea:
1) Keep search results so you don't have to search for the same
thing again the next time you forget where it was. For instance,
find all the files that have your key word "payroll" in them;
save the results as "Payroll Files I Keep Looking For" or any
name you choose. The next time you forget, open this file and
double-click on any line in the Results window to open the respective
file.
2) Keep search results in order to study or work on all the
found files later, overseeing and launching them from a central
place. (Central places in computer swamp are good things.)
3) Keep search results because later you are going to use File
| Copy Selected Files... to take your found files to class, court, or
meeting on a disk, or to send your found files to your portable
computer.
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After a search, click the main menu selection:
Edit | File List | Take from Results
This causes the program to take the found files in Results as the
file list for the next search. Suppose you searched for
"animal" and found 100 files. Now you want to find
"small." To find it only in files found with
"animals," select Edit | File List | Take from
Results.
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Yes. If you have no reason to search binary files, which
provide the gobbledygook, select "Auto-detect and skip binary"
under Options | Set Options | Find | Reading Files. The program
will then skip all files it detects to be binary. (If you are not
an IT professional, programmer, or daredevil, you probably do not
need to search binary files, which have file extensions such as
".exe" and ".dll".) To skip all files of
particular file extensions, go to Set Options | Exclude | Always Skip
Extensions. There, you can select or name the extensions to skip
during Find and Replace operations. Press F1 there for help.
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