Yearly Archives: 2009

2 Simple Tools To Manage Microsoft Office 2007 Add-ins

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One great thing about Microsoft Office 2007 is that it supports add-ins. Whether it be Word, Excel, Outlook, Access, or PowerPoint, you can install add-ins instantly. The add-ins can be enabled/disabled in each one of these programs, but what if you want to manage all add-ins from one simple tool?

I have collected two tools that will help you in managing the add-ins across all Office apps.

OfficeIns

OfficeIns is a free portable tool that allows you to manage all add-ins from one simple window. It is developed by the great folks at Nirsoft, who apps I have previously reviewed here, here, here, and here. All you have to do is run the app and it will automatically list the detected add-ins.

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Find The Number of Emails Arriving Per Hour, Week, Or Day

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You wake up every day and find your inbox cluttered, how would you know at which time most emails are arriving? Ofcourse, a time is written next to each email. But wouldn’t it be great if we could generate a report that can give us a more clear picture, telling us at which exact time most emails arrive?

If you use Outlook, then there is an add-in for it called Outlook Performance Reports Generator. It does exactly what the name says, you can generate a report by Message amount, Message bandwidth, Sender, and Recipient. To create a new report, first select a folder(you can select multiple folders), choose a report type, select the time(hour, day, or week), and finally click Generate Report.

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Tweak Every Aspect Of Windows 7/Vista/XP With TweakNow PowerPack 2009

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There are tons of options and features that you can tweak in Windows operating system, such tweaking requires some serious modifications to the registry and other settings. Apart from tweaking, some features are build deep inside Windows and are difficult to access on daily basis.

Back in January we reviewed an app to tweak Windows Vista, but what if you want to tweak Windows XP and Windows 7 too. There are many tweaking tools available, here is one that has grabbed my attention recently.

TweakNow Powerpack 2009 is a free Windows tweaker that works on both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems. It is a powerful tool that is build to tweak every aspect of the operating system and web browser. By default you are shown the Windows Secret module which includes tweaking of Applications,  Control  Panel, Desktop, etc.

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Organize And Manage Your Downloaded Videos

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When you download videos, most of them are in flash(.flv) format. How would you manage hundreds or thousands of such videos? Downloading videos from YouTube, Vimeo, etc is now a piece-of-cake, I have made a folder specifically for downloaded videos. But showing a video to a friend or co-worker is sometimes frustrating because it is buried deep inside hundreds of other videos.

Videophile II is a free video organizer for Windows that lets you manage all downloaded videos. It will auto-create a video library and also create thumbnails for all added videos. What makes organizing fun is that you can tag the videos and later browse them with ease. All tags are listed on the left sidebar, clicking them will show similar tagged videos.

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Build An Installer With Complete Installation Wizard Using Inno Setup

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Do you want to distribute your newly created app to the masses? But to distribute it, you will need to create a simple installer first. Many commercial installer builders are available, but before you pay for them, here is a quick tip for you, “Do NOT pay for something that is available for FREE”.

Note: Here at AddictiveTips, we are high advocates of using free software. Our computers are filled with 95% freeware apps and we are loving them.

Inno Setup is free installer builder for Windows that can quickly create a setup file. According to the developer, it rivals and even surpasses many commercial installers in feature set and stability. It can create a single EXE file, for easier distribution over the Internet. Apart from it’s basic functionalities, it supports disk spanning, can create Start Menu icons, INI entries, and registry entries, integrates file compression, and much more.

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Prevent Others From Viewing Your Screen And Getting Sensitive Data [Privacy]

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If you work in an office environment sitting close to your co-workers, how will you protect your privacy? In cases where you have to read and reply to important or personal emails, how will you prevent others from viewing your screen? One of the most common way is to move the monitor a little further from your co-worker, which can be rather awkward and embarrassing sometimes. CE Desktop is a free portable data protection tool for Windows that covers most area of your computer screen. Simply move the box to the area where you are working and don’t worry about prying eyes anymore. Read More

How To Disable Error Reporting In Windows 7

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If you are one of those people who are annoyed every time an Error Reporting dialog pops up after an application crash, then this tip is for you.
Note: Microsoft calms that by Disabling Windows Error Reporting, solution information will not be available in the Action Center control panel.
In my opinion, no solution to fix the application is ever posted in the Action Center, the only way to fix the application is to contact the developer. The only solution that are posted in the Action Center is to fix the system errors. To disable Error Reporting,  open Local Group Policy Editor by typing gpedit.msc in the Start Search and hit Enter. Read More

View Information Of All Installed Hardware/Software And Microsoft Updates On Your Computer

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Belarc Advisor is a free tool for Windows that analyzes installed Software and Hardware on your computer, missing and installed Windows HotFixes, Anti-Virus Status, and CIS(Centre for Internet Security) Benchmarks and then displays them all in your web browser. It gives a detailed information of each and every Hardware component and also displays the version of every software installed.

Once you have installed this tool, make sure you have updated it to the latest version. It will then begin to analyze your computer and create a profile.

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How To Convert Zip, Rar, And Other Archives To Various Formats

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If you downloaded a file that came in the unknown archive format, the best way is to first convert it into a known archive format and then extract the contents. Many archive tools such as WinRar and 7Zip support conversions into other archive formats, but they lack support of many other popular formats.

ArcConvert is a free portable tool for Windows that allows you to convert many different types of archives to known formats. It can convert the following archives,

7-ZIP, LZH, CAB, ZIP, ARJ, ACE, RAR, TAR, TGZ, GZ, Z, BZ2, YZ1, YZ2, GCA, BEL, RPM, DEB, BH, Noa32, HKI, PAQAR, SQX, HA, ZOO, UHARC, LFB, ZLIB, UCL, IMP, RS, SPL, APK, Arc, DZ, MSI, ALZ, PMA, PAQ7, CHM, UDA, PAQ8, Cryptonite, ISO, LZOP, BMA, ZIP AES (128/192/256), Nanozip Alpha, XZ

into the following ones,

ZIP, 7-ZIP, CAB, LHA, TAR, TGZ, BZ2, YZ1, BGA, RAR, ACE, NOA32, HKI, PAQAR, UHARC, YZ2, DZ, HA, XZ.

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ClicksAndWhistles Is A Free Light-Weight Compact IRC Chat Client

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With the advent of latest technologies, people are moving to newer forms of communication. But when it comes to group or private discussions, seeking help, or just being part of the community, nothing beats IRC. IRC, which stands for, Internet Relay Chat is a popular form of real-time text communication. One of the most important IRC chat client is mIRC, but it is not free.

ClicksAndWhistles is a free light-weight and compact IRC chat client for Windows that supports various forms of customizations and is clutter-free as a whole. It supports multiple identities and server connections. You can customize the background(by adding custom .jpg images), change themes and fonts easily. Once you are connected to the server, you can select the channel that you would like to join.

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Monitor And Sync Any Music Folder With iTunes

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In February, we reviewed an app called iExporter that could export iTunes playlist instantly.  The developer notified me a few days back about his new software called iWatchSyncer. It let’s you sync any music folder with iTunes.

Suppose you have added music to your iTunes and later added more songs in your folder, what will you do now? The only way would be to manually add these new songs to your iTunes playlist. iWatchSyncer solves this problem. It monitors your folder for any change, when you add a new song to the folder, it will automatically add it to your iTunes playlist. It can also monitor sub-folders inside the main folder.

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Dim All Windows Except The Active One With Ghoster

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If you are looking to increase productivity while spending less time on computer, give Ghoster a try. How many times have you got distracted because of other windows that were open? To fight this distraction I have to maximize every window where I am working, but Ghoster has made it much much easier.

It dims all windows except the active window, which helps in minimizing the distraction. It is a portable tool for Windows and sits silently in the system tray while running.

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Resize Or Make A Quick Thumbnail Of Your Photos Online

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I have reviewed various different ways to resize an image in Windows, from using Windows XP Powertoy and RightThumb, to using Fast Image Resizer and Office Picture Manager. But what if you are not using your computer and want to resize and upload an image online? Or what if you need to resize an image that is already online? In such situations we will be needing an online tool.

Quick Thumbnail is a free online tool that lets you resize and create thumbnail of images instantly. You can either upload an image from your computer or enter the image URL(if it is already hosed online). Only JPG, JPEG, GIF, and PNG formats are allowed, the maximum file size limit for each image is 2Mb.

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Quick Review: bDule Is An Awesome Twitter Desktop Client

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If you are on Twitter, you must have given various twitter desktop clients a try. bDule is a new player in this field, but takes a very different and fresh approach. It has a clean user-friendly interface and lets you choose the template. Unlike other clients, Twitter Search is build right inside this app and works quite fast.

After you have installed this app, select any one template out of 16 shown.

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