The powerful search is in the icon title bar. Just enter some letters and press the Return key – immediately you are at the position where the text is (Key F4).

The reminder for scheduling dates can be accessed with this icon from the icon title bar or with the key F8. You can create dates and set alarms with the reminder.

The icon title bar with many useful icons, can be switched on or off with key F2.

On the right side are categories. Each of them has multiple pages.

At the bottom, below the notes, is a tab bar where you can select different pages on the selected category.

With the small arrow below the categories you can access the next column of categories, with another 20 categories. There 3 columns with 20 categories each. (Professional Edition only!).

02. Basics (categories + pages + columns)

Important basic features

Settings: You can open the options with the key F10

Reminder: You can open the scheduler with the key F8

Freeform: Use the key F5 to start the Freeform Mode where you can set the size and position of the notes fields (Pro Edition only)

Backup: Key F9 creates a backup at once

Kalender: Key F7 opens a small calendar

Help: To open the help, press key F1

03. Change the field layout

To change the arrangement of the text fields, you can:

· Change the whole category layout

· Change the page layout

· Use the Freeform mode (next chapter!)

To change the category layout, right click on a category and there will open a menu. Choose "Design"

To change the page layout, right click on a page name in the tab bar below. Select "Page Design"

These are the arrangements for page layout of the Pro Edition:

04. Free field arrangement

Text fields can be arranged completely free in the Professional Edition. Click on this icon (or key F5) to start the „Freeform mode”.

You will have new icons in this mode:

Here is how the icons and the Freeform mode operate:

Add a new field to the page (also with the "Insert" key). Be sure there is space for a new field.

Split a selected field in two text fields (key „End“).

Delete a selected field (key "Del")

Toggle the description line of a selected text field (key „Pos 1“).

To change the arrangement of the fields use your mouse and drag & drop the text fields with it.

To resize text fields, click at a boarder, hold the mouse button and move the mouse around.

You can leave the Freeform mode with the buttons "Ok" or "Cancel" – you can alternatively use the keys Return or ESC.

Keyboard support

Use the keyboard in the Freeform mode: E.g. key sequence F5 - Insert - Return comes in handy to add a new field very fast.

05. Category design

If you click on a category button with the right mouse button, you can choose some useful actions from the menu. You can rename it, change the color, go to a print preview, delete it and more:

Move a category

You can move the selected category up or down.

Category design

You can choose the design oft he whole category. All pages will change its layout then.

06. Save

Notesbrowser saves automatic, if:

· you exit Notesbrowser (also at shutdown of Windows)

· you change the category

· save for yourself (e.g. CTRL + S)

· you minimize Notesbrowser

· you open the settings

You can watch Notesbrowser save: Every time the "Save"-Button on the right side is vanishing, this has happened.

To save for yourself, click on this "Save"- Button or on this icon in the title bar:

If you want, you can leave Notesbrowser with the menu entry "Exit! No! Save” to skip all changes at the actual category since the last save. The menu entry can be found in the main menu:

07. Search

The search is a main feature, because it is very fast and direct: Enter some letters, often the first three letters are enough, and start the search.

The search box is located at the top of Notesbrowser. It can be accessed with the Key F4. With Return or key F3 you can search subsequently! To stop a running search press ESC or click on the small icon next to the search progress bar.

At the end of the search the page will be opened where the search was started. If the search was not successful, the text in the search box is red.

08. Reminder and calendar

Reminder

The scheduler (or reminder) is a central feature which you can access from every page with the key F8. Another way to the scheduler: You can click on left icon of the date preview bar.

Date Preview bar

The date preview shows the next date. It should read "Make Backup!" now. If a date needs your attention it blinks. A click on the left icon opens the corresponding date.

You can turn this preview off in the configurations (key F10) and you can also move it to a different location with the mouse.

Enter new dates

You can enter dates with the button "New date" from the reminder or from the right click menu. If the calendar and the scheduler are both open, you can double-click on a date in the calendar and you can then set up a new date for this day.

If you have entered a new date press Ok to confirm. You will see the new date appear in the reminder.

Change dates

Open the reminder with F8.

You can double-click on a date or select it and choose “Change” from the right click menu to change a date.

Attention! Please note that the scheduler does not allow you to enter a date or time in the past. If you try to do so the scheduler will automatically correct it. At the beginning, this is a bit confusing, but remember that you can always leave the change date dialog with Cancel and the date will not be corrected.

Set alarms

You can let Notesbrowser remind you to dates. Notesbrowser needs to run to do so. But it can run minimized (with the small symbol next to the clock showing) and will remind you.

Move and resize the reminder

You can resize the scheduler window and date preview by dragging it at its borders. Calendar, scheduler, date dialog and preview bar can be moved with the mouse held down.

Insert dates in Fields

With ALT + D or you can enter the date that is selected in the calendar into a text field. Text that you enter this way into the fields is only text and not part of the scheduler.

Adjust the scheduler

The table with the dates can be adjusted: You can change the width of columns in the headline by moving the separators. A column can be hidden by choosing it from the right-click menu.

Settings

In the configurations (key F10) you can select some useful options, for example the start day of the week.

Repetition dates

You can enter date series. Only the next date oft the series is visible in the reminder, but if you reach the date, it will be repeated at the next date and you will see a message.

Birthdays and anniversaries

You can set yearly repetitions. You can also set the birthday flag and enter a birthday oft the person or anniversary and see in the preview the age added to the preview text.

The calendar

F7 opens the calendar

With a double click on a date you can enter a new date in the reminder (if it is open) or if it is closed, you will insert the date as text in the last active text field.

Right click on the calendar for more options.

09. The settings

With a click on the settings icon (key F10) you enter the settings of Notesbrowser:

You can adjust Notesbrowser to your needs, e.g. choose a different look (Skin) or configure Plugins.

On the left side you can choose the detail pages of the settings:

Settings: Info

On the info page you can see the Notesbrowser Version, the installation path and the database path.

Settings: Skins

You can select a "Skin" (the look of Notesbrowser) here.

You can download new skins from our homepage. Skins have to be un-packed and every skin needs to be in a single folder below the Notesbrowser\Skins path.

Settings: Backup

You can backup and also recover your database here!

Backup

Select a backup path and click this button. Your database will be copied to the backup path location.

Recover

If you have lost your database, you choose the backup path to where the backup is and click the recover bottom. The database will be copied from the backup to the database folder.

Usually, you will not need to recover if you have accidentally deleted some text. With CTRL + Z (undo) you can undo many actions.

You often also don’t want to recover the whole database. If you want to recover only single categories, please read in our Forum how to do this!

Also look at chapter 15 for more information.

Settings: Font

You can select the global font. It is always possible to have more than one font in the text fields, but the global font can be used to reset text with CTRL + N or CTRL + Shift + V and also will be used in empty text fields.

Font size

If you select “Automatic”, the font size will be calculated for every screen resolution and “Zoom” level different. Adjust this if a particular font is too small or too big for you.

Settings: Controls

Internet Browser

You can choose your default Browser to start links from Notesbrowser. Usually the Standard Browser setting is correct. It is important that you have selected your Browser as Standard Browser in Windows.

Show window on top

Choose this to have Notesbrowser float in the foreground above other programs.

Settings: Layout

Word wrap

The word wrap wraps text lines in all text fields.

Zoom

Set the window size of Notesbrowser. The percentage is the relation to your screen resolution. The window size can also be adjusted with a right click at the lower borders of the Notesbrowser main window.

Settings: Plugins

Plugins are Links to other programs and more, that can be launched very fast from Notesbrowser with a right mouse click on the boarder or the icon next to the system clock:

There are 10 slots for Plugins in Notesbrowser. Some are used automatically, for example fort he MP3 Pizza Timer, some are free.

You can define Plugins in every slot. Use SET and then enter the path to the Plugin by hand or put a file per Drag & Drop on the window.

What you can use as a Plugin:

· Every startable program

· Every file and every folder

· Every webpage

· Every Script file

· Email adresses

Some Plugins can interact with Notesbrowser, for example the MP3 Timer.

To get more Plugins, visit the Notesbrowser homepage.

Settings: Reminder

Settings are self descriptive.

Settings: Register

Enter your registration data here if you have bought Notesbrowser. If you use the Freeware Version, you can try the Professional Version here for some days. After that time you can use the Freeware again.

10. The right click menus

If you click in a text field with the right mouse button, you have some menu actions you can select from:

There are more right click menu with many action in different areas of Notesbrowser. There is also an important right click menu is you click in the Notesbrowser icon next to the system clock:

Here is an overview over all right click menus

Right click on:	Menu actions:

Top left symbol	Help, configuration, print, zoom...
Border (everywhere)	Start Plugins, configure skins...
In text fields	Formatting, print field...
On a page tab button	Rename, Freeform, page layout…
Category button	Delete, print, change color...
Calendar	New date, change year...
Reminder or date preview	Hide columns, print dates...
Lower corners (left or right)	Adjust windows size
Icon next to the clock	Start plugins, Exit...

In some context menus the actions are slightly different, e.g. there are four different ways to print: From the text field you can print a single text field, from the page menu a single page and from the category menu all pages – from the reminder you can print only dates.

11. Print

With the print preview icon from the title bar you can see a print preview oft he selected category. The text you can ser is generated and can be changed if you don‘t want to print everything: Just delete what you don’t need from the print preview and then print.

From the text field right click menu you can print a single text field, from the page menu a single page and from the category menu all pages – from the reminder you can print only dates.

12. Notesbrowser window and resizing

You can move the Notesbrowser window if you drag & drop it in the top boarder – right like every other window. But you can also drag & drop it if you move at the borders left, right or below.

Resize Notesbrowser with the zoom right click menu from the left or right lower borders.

13. Internet- und program links (+ internal links)

Internet bookmarks can be managed inside Notesbrowser. Just copy the link in Notesbrowser, write some comments and you can click it to launch the link in your browser. You can make different bookmark categories easily.

You can also click on email addresses.

There is a way to make internal links. If you write: (1/6) in a text field and double click on it, Notesbrowser jumps to category 1 to the sixth page.

14. Tables

Tables can be copied into Notesbrowser, e.g. from Excel or Word. Notesbrowser does not support creation of tables and supports them only basically.

You can press Return in a Tables last row to add a new row.

To change the columns, you need to copy the table to a different program e.g. Word or Excel and the changed table back. We will improve this in the future.

15. Backup and recover

Backup

If your Notesbrowser database grows, you will face the problem that you don't want to lose all your information with a crash of you hard drive or Windows. For this reason, Notesbrowser offers three features:

· Notesbrowser auto saves your notes

· Every Category will be stored in a single file

· NB has an inbuilt backup and recover facility

The backup is already inbuilt so you don't have to use another tool! You can go to the backup page in the configurations or read the help (F1) if you need additional information on how the backup works. But in short:

To make a full backup of all your notes all you have to do is press F9 or click on the backup icon.

We recommend you should change the backup path to another hard drive, if you have two. This is because you can lose a whole hard drive in the worst case. But rarely will you lose two hard drives at the same time. The Notesbrowser database is very small so that you can back it up to a floppy disk or better an USB stick - we recommend this on a weekly basis.

For additional security you should backup the whole Notesbrowser folder on a CD-ROM (together with your other Windows application data) and store this CD-ROM in a safe location.

Attention: Backups are seriously important!

Tip: Use the scheduler to remind you to make a backup!

Recover

Use the recover feature if you have lost your database and need to recover you data from a previously made backup.

Note: We recommend looking into the Notesbrowser Forum for some very detailed explanation how to restore a database if you have lost parts of the database or are not sure what is happening. Please look in the F.A.Q. section of the forum. The information there is updated often to answer all common questions, and we get a lot of questions about database, backup and restore. You should know what you are doing, or you may destroy your database and backups if you make a mistake:

www.notesbrowser.com/forum/

If you have lost you whole database:

1) Go to the configurations (F10)

2) Go to the backup page.

3) Click on "Select path" to choose the path where you backup is located

4) Click on the "Restore" button

5) If you confirm, the database from the selected path is copied to the Notesbrowser path

6) Notesbrowser will be restarted and load with the restored database

16. Tips und Tricks

Where saves Notesbrowser my data?

To find out, where the file is located, move the mouse over a category button, for example Tutorial and a blue box will appear:

In the box you can see for example that the category Tutorial is saved in:

C:\Program Files\Notesbrowser\01-03-Category.nbw

Every category has its own file. They are all in the same folder. All other data like dates and configurations are stored in the same folder in XML files.

In the Professional Edition the columns 2 and 3 are saved in the files 02-01-Category.nbw to 03-20-Category.nbw

You can also see where the database is in the configurations on the Info page.

Notesbrowser on a USB stick

Notesbrowser can be used and started everywhere from an USB stick.

1. You can install it directly on the stick

2. You move your installation to the USB stick

If you do so, please make shortcuts to the Notesbrowser start file (filename is nb.exe) yourself.

Command line parameter

You can run Notesbrowser with the parameter “-m”. If you do this, Notesbrowser will start minimized. This makes sense if you use this for a link in the Autostart folder. The link properties will have an entry like this in the target field:

C:\Program Files\Notesbrowser\nb.exe -m

The Notesbrowser setup normally creates this link. If you don't want Notesbrowser to start on every system boot, all you will have to do is delete the link from the Autostart folder:

Windows-> Programs -> Startup

17. Differences Freeware / Professional Edition

The Professional Edition offers some new features:

· Completely free field arrangement with the Freeform Mode (easy to use)

· More category layouts:

· More layouts for pages:

· Category buttons can have 9 colors:

· More space: 3 columns instead of one column - 60 categories

· Much more space: Up to 50 pages per category instead of 6

· 16 different background colors for fields

· free Email Premium support

· new, exclusive Skins

· free updates, e.g. updates from Notesbrowser Version 1.8 to Notesbrowser Version 2.X will be free

This is service: If a customer has purchased our first version in 2001 (Notesbrowser 1.0) he can now use the latest Notesbrowser in the year 2008 for free!

18. How to purchase the Professional Notesbrowser

Registered customers can unlock the Professional Edition with al the new fine features.

Please go to our web shop to purchase Notesbrowser:

www.notesbrowser.com/order/order.html

How is my order processed?

1. You can order different ways. Choose the way you prefer.

2. After registration we send you an email with your personal un-look registration data. The registration data can be entered immediately in Notesbrowser:

Click on the registration icon in the tile bar or open the Configurations -> Register) and enter the code to unlock the new features.

3. If you order the CD we send you the unlock key beforehand!

19. Known bugs

Notesbrowser is very stable. We spend years to make it reliable.

But there is no program that is completely free of bugs.

So, as always with computers, use the backup feature and also update to new Notesbrowser versions if they are released.

You can also report bugs in our Notesbrowser forum. If you do so, please always report the version, windows version and exact steps to reproduce the bug.

www.notesbrowser.com/forum/

You can also suggest new features there. But be aware, we already have a very long list with suggestions.

20. Appendix A: Keyboard controls

General

ESC	Exit or minimize Notesbrowser (adjustable)
F1	Opens the help
F2	Toggles the icon bar
F3	Repeats a started search (you can stop a it with ESC)
F4	Starts the search (activates the search box)
F5	Freeform Mode - - free arrangement of fields (Pro Version only)
F6 or. CTRL + P	Print preview
F7	Opens the calendar
F8	Opens the reminder
F9	Immediately makes a Backup of the Notesbrowser database
F10	Opens the Configuration
F11 (adjustable)	Notesbrowser appears in the foreground (Hotkey function)
F12	Minimize window very useful together with F11)
CTRL + S	Saves the actual Category
CTRL + T	Toggles “Stay on top” on/off You can also right mouse click on the Notesbrowser logo to turn this mode on. It will be indicated with a changed upper left menu icon and the Notesbrowser window will always remain in the foreground)
ALT + Enter	Turn "Full Screen Mode" on/off

Keys in text fields

CTRL + C	Copy text
CTRL + X	Cut text
CTRL + V	Insert text
CTRL + SHIFT + V	Insert “text only” (without formatting)
CTRL + Z	Undo
CTRL + A	Select all text
CTRL + F	Bold
CTRL + K	Italic
CTRL + U	Underline
CTRL + D	Strikeout
CTRL + N	Clears all formatting of selected text (very useful!)
CTRL + +	Makes font bigger
CTRL + -	Makes font smaller
CTRL + TAB	Indent selected text
CTRL + SHIFT + TAB	Un-Indent selected text
CTRL + SHIFT + L	Add bullets to line, press more than once to switch to numbers
CTRL + R	Colors text red
CTRL + G	Colors text gray
CTRL + SHIFT + R	Background color is changed to light red
CTRL + SHIFT + G	Background color is changed to gray
ALT + D	Insert date that is selected in the calendar
CTRL + ALT + Arrow up/down	Move category up/down
CTRL + ALT + Arrow left/right	Move page left/right

Navigation

CTRL + Arrow up	Switch to category above
CTRL + Arrow down	Switch to category below
ALT + Arrow left	Switch to page left of selected
ALT + Arrow right	Switch to page right of selected
Enter	Switch from the description line to the field below it or repeats a running search
SHIFT + Enter	Switch from the text field to the description line
TAB	In a field description line: Switch to next description line
SHIFT + TAB	In a field description line: Switch back to previous description lines
All Arrow keys	You can move between text fields and description lines

Keys in the Professional Edition

F5	Freeform Mode (free arrangement of fields)
CTRL + 1	Switch to column 1
CTRL + 2	Switch to column 2
CTRL + 3	Switch to column 3
2x CTRL + 1	Switch to the first column to the first page in the first category
2x CTRL + 2	Switch to the 2nd column to the first page in the first category
2x CTRL + 3	Switch to the 3rd column to the first page in the first category
CTRL + Space	Maximizes a small text field for easier editing, or minimizes it back
Insert	in the Freeform-Mode: Insert a new field
End	in the Freeform-Mode: Split a selected field
Delete(Del)	in the Freeform-Mode: Delete a selected field
Pos 1/ Home	in the Freeform-Mode: Toggle headline of a selected field on/off

Useful key combinations: Move content of a text field

With three key combinations you can easily move all text between two text fields:

1. Press CTRL + A to select a field

2. Press CTRL + X to cut it

3. Press CTRL + V to insert the text into another field!

Key combination: clear text formatting:

With CTRL + N you can delete most of the formatting of text you have selected. But some formatting can not be deleted if they have to do with paragraph formatting. Here is a trick to get rid of these formatting:

1. Select some text with formatting

2. Cut the text with CTRL + X

3. Insert it again with CTRL + SHIFT + V

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