WhereIsIt? shareware edition, version 3.62 Copyright (c) 1997-2004 Robert Galle All Rights Reserved Last updated: August 16th 2004 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) ================================ 1. Registration and purchase 2. Installation 3. Using the program 4. Troubleshooting 1. Registration and purchase ---------------------------- Q: Why should I register? A: WhereIsIt? is not a free software, a lot of time and effort has been invested in making of this program. WhereIsIt? is released as shareware, allowing you to test it for a limited period of time (14 days). If you plan to continue using the program after that period, you are required to register. Evaluation version also has some limitations that are removed when the program is registered and unlocked. Q: How can I register WhereIsIt? A: The fastest way to register WhereIsIt is to use the online registration form and pay with your credit card. Orders are handled by DigiBuy, using a secure connection. You can expect to receive your registration details by e-mail within the next 24 hours. Regular mail delivery is also available. More details and link to online ordering form can be found on WhereIsIt's home page: http://www.whereisit-soft.com, in the help file, or in the Order.txt file, included in WhereIsIt package. Q: I don't have a credit card, or don't want to use it. Can I still register? A: Yes, some other ways are available, too. Most often used are sending a personal check (cheque, in some countries), or cash, by regular mail directly to the author's address. Both e-commerce vendors collecting orders for WhereIsIt, ShareIt! and DigiBuy, can accept either credit card orders (online and offline), as well as some other payment types, such as checks, bank/wire transfers, purchase and money orders etc. You can find more details in the Order.txt file, or you can consult the "How to Order" wizard in the Help menu, describing in detail all available options for registering WhereIsIt. Q: Do I need to re-register new versions of WhereIsIt? A: No, you don't have to, your license is valid for all future versions of WhereIsIt as well. If I am in any way forced to change this policy, it will not be done without discussing it with currently registered users first. Please note that you may need updated registration details such as key files in order to be able to unlock a major new release of WhereIsIt. Q: I'm a registered user of previous major WhereIsIt release, how can I unlock the current version. A: Each major WhereIsIt version uses its own registration system and a different set of license keys. When a new major version is released, all registered users are e-mailed a new registration package, which includes the appropriate license for the new version as well. If you need to receive a copy of your current registration details, there is a form available on program's web site where you can place a request. Q: I'm working for a company and we would all like to use WhereIsIt. Are there site licenses available? A: Yes, site licenses are available for WhereIsIt. When placing an order, just include the appropriate number of licenses in your purchase, and select that you would like to have them issues as a single site license for specified number of users. Discounts are available for purchases of 5 or more licenses at once. You can find more details about placing orders and pricing in the Order.txt file. 2. Installation --------------- Q: Should I uninstall previous version of WhereIsIt? before installing a new one? A: This is not necessary if you will install new version in the same folder. Just run the setup program, and program will upgrade itself. If you would like to install program to different location, then uninstalling is recommended. Please note that your catalogs will not be deleted while uninstalling, but you will have to configure the program again since old settings will be removed. Q: How can I uninstall WhereIsIt? A: Just open the Control Panel, select "Add/Remove programs" option, and double-click WhereIsIt's entry on the list. If you have created program group for WhereIsIt when installing, you can achieve the same by clicking the "Uninstall WhereIsIt" icon in WhereIsIt's group. Q: Can I be notified about new versions? A: Yes, you can, if you have a working e-mail address. A free mailing list is available for all WhereIsIt users - notifications about new versions and current development news are posted there. You can add or remove yourself from WhereIsIt Mailing List at any time from WhereIsIt's home page, located at: http://www.whereisit-soft.com . 3. Using the program -------------------- Q: Does WhereIsIt run on Windows 3.1, or Windows NT 3.5x? A: No, sorry, WhereIsIt? relies on technology not yet provided with these operating systems. You will need at least Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0 to run WhereIsIt. Q: Is there a size limit on catalogs, or how much data can WhereIsIt handle? Is there a slow down when working with large catalogs? A: The only limit are your system capabilities and some common sense practical usage. The theoretical limit per single catalog file is 2 GB in size, which is the equivalent of about 70 million files and folders with moderate use of descriptions, or about 120 million, if using catalog compression in version 3 (not recommended). Practical limits are lower than that though, operations like searching or saving on such large files are likely to take too long to be still comfortable to use. The usual size of catalog files would be up to a couple hundred MB or so, however that's your call. There are a few customers who have their catalogs over 1.5 GB in size (a disk image of corporate network server), and are still satisfied with performance. That's a bit extreme though, a wouldn't recommend pushing it that far. In any case, no one says that you must have just one catalog - in fact you don't usually work with such large collections. WhereIsIt can have opened multiple catalogs at once and use them as one, for example when searching for something. If a single catalog becomes to large for comfortable usage, you can always break it apart into more catalogs. This also gives you the ability to open only those catalog files in your collection that you actually need at the time, and allows you to better organize your collection from the grounds up. As far as speed against quantity is concerned, it's pretty much linear - twice as much data will take twice as long to search. Largest catalogs also take longer to save changes to and require more free space on the hard disk (at least as much as the size of catalog). Other operations are hardly affected with large catalogs, the program only loads parts of catalogs actually needed at the time and there isn't much difference if the catalog is 1 MB or 1 GB in size. The only thing you would have to look out for when working with large catalogs is not forcing the program to load too much data at once. In real life usage this only happens with too liberal search expressions; for example, items that are listed on one of the lists have to be loaded in memory, therefore doing a *.* search on 1 GB catalog may not be a very good idea. If working with very large catalogs, it is recommended to always have a limit set on allowed number of search hits to prevent too heavy memory load. Q: How can change the order of disks, displayed in left tree pane? A: The same way as you would change order of files or folders - by sorting them in the right pane. Select the parent catalog entry in the tree view, so your disks are displayed on the right side, and sort them by clicking the appropriate column header. Changes in disk order will be reflected on tree view, too. If you are using WhereIsIt 3.00 or newer, you can also use drag&drop to manually reorder your disks on the list, or your can use the Ctrl+Alt+ <Up> or <Down> to move selected disk(s) on the list. Q: Can I delete specific files or folders from catalog if I don't need them? A: Not in the older WhereIsIt 1.xx, but version 2.00 and newer do support such modifications, too. Older WhereIsIt 1.xx honors the data integrity in catalog, always assuring that data as stated in catalog resembles as much as possible the real data on your media. The only exception are hidden files, or special items like Recycle Bin, that can be set to be skipped during the disk scan. Version 2.0 will allow you to freely remove any selected item from catalog, although overusing this feature is not recommended. Q: How can one print an alphabetical list of all files in the catalog? A: The easiest way to do that is to use searching in combination with report generator. First, you have to get a list of all items that you would like to print - searching for all files with "*.*" mask should do the trick in this case. Sort resulting list by file names, and click on report generator button. Be sure to selected the "Print data in list 'as is', no sorting" option, in order to preserve items order as they are in search results list (nicely alphabetically sorted). Just select the columns you want in report, and that's it. Searching in combination with report generator is a very powerful and adjustable tool for making all kinds of reports. You can do a lot with it, but you will need to get a bit creative. For some more...
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