PK Tip: Creating Special Articles

I mentioned in my last tip post how you can start a keyword with a non-alphabetic character to force it to sort to the top of the Index in Personal Knowbase. In the same way, consider starting an article title with a non-alphabetic character (such as a punctuation mark or number) to force it to always rise to the top of the Titles list.

PK Tip: Creating Special Keywords

In Personal Knowbase, your keyword Index list is generally sorted alphabetically. But you might have special keywords that you use frequently and want to be able to access instantly.

PK Tip: Changing a File's Password

If you use password protection with your Personal Knowbase file, you may want, at some point, to change the password. Whether your entire file is password-protected or only a few articles are private, the password itself is the same for all articles and is stored at the file level.

PK Tip: Copying Articles to a Word Processor

Do you need to dump a group of Personal Knowbase articles into your word processor (or other software) fast?

Don't bother with the Export command. Simply copy-and-paste the entire group of articles directly from Personal Knowbase's Index Window.

PK Tip: Finding Articles Which Have No Keywords

Sometimes, in the rush of creating and saving articles, you may forget to assign keywords to every article. Or, you may delete a keyword, leaving an article with no keywords, if that was the article's only keyword.

However it happens, over time, you may discover that you have articles in your Personal Knowbase data file which do not have keywords assigned to them.

You can easily locate any articles with no keywords:

PK Tip: Getting a Custom Text Color Back

In Personal Knowbase, if you create text using a custom color from the color picker, its color swatch is available for re-use next to the Other button on the color down-drop from the Formatting Toolbar. For example, after making orange text, my color menu looks like this:

PK Tip: Running a Faster Find

Personal Knowbase's Find command (from the Edit menu) takes longer as the number (and length) of articles grows. The software does a straight string search for Find, so the search time is a function of the amount of text searched. Here are some tips for speeding up your Find operations.

PK Tip: Checking for Unassigned Keywords

Over time, you will inevitably discover that you have keywords in your Personal Knowbase data file that are not assigned to any articles. Perhaps you've deleted the articles that they were originally assigned to. Or you created keywords you intended to use, but your needs changed.

Of course, there are valid reasons to keep some unassigned keywords. There may be keywords you aren't currently using, but may need again in the future. Or you may want to keep complete sets of keywords for fixed groups like months or days of the week. Or you may want a keyword for each member of your club, even if no articles yet pertain to some members.

PK Tip: Assigning a Keyword to Multiple Articles

Do you need to add a keyword to a group of articles? You don't need to open each article and add the keyword separately to each one. You can assign a keyword to multiple articles at once in Personal Knowbase's Index Window by dragging it.

PK Tips for Protecting Your Data in Portable Mode

If you're using Personal Knowbase's portability mode to carry your notes with you on removable media such as a USB drive, you have extra security risks. Here are tips for protecting your data.