Types of Passwords in Personal Knowbase

Personal Knowbase can help you keep your data private using password protection. Privacy may be important for many reasons, including if you are using the software for financial or customer data, contacts or sensitive family information, or for a diary or journal.

PK provides two options for password protecting your notes:

Sharing Knowledge Using PK Reader

Personal Knowbase data files are great for sharing documentation and "lessons learned" within your business or organization. You can create a shared knowledge repository as a Personal Knowbase file (KNO file). Then distribute it across a network or on a CD together with the PK Reader viewer software.

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.

Do I Need Only One Personal Knowbase Data File or More? (Part 2)

Personal Knowbase users often struggle with the decision of when they would want more than one PK data file.

In Part 1, we talked about starting with a single file and using multiple files when they serve completely different purposes. Here are some additional issues with using one or more database files.

Do I Need Only One Personal Knowbase Data File or More? (Part 1)

New Personal Knowbase users often ask when they would want more than one PK database. Should they put all their notes in one data file? Or have several files? Why create a new file?

The short answer is to start out by putting everything in one file and to wait to split your data into multiple files until you're sure you need to.

There are pros and cons to keeping all your data in one place or spreading it into multiple files.

Fonts in Personal Knowbase

Personal Knowbase allows you to set the fonts for your text at three distinct levels. Use Preferences to set the font for new data files. Use File Properties to set the font for new articles. And use the Font command to affect article content text.

The rule of thumb for distinguishing Preferences and File Properties is that everything in Preferences applies to all data files, but the File Properties is for settings that apply only to the current data file.

Computer Basics: Determining What Software Reads a Data File

Do you have a data file that you can't read? Occasionally, you may run across a file that you don't know what software program created it. Perhaps you found an old unknown file on your hard drive or you inherited the file from another user who left your company or passed away. To access the data, you need to do some detective work to figure out what software can read it.

Here are some tips for finding out which program can read your unknown file.

Reading Personal Knowbase Files over a Network

If you need multiple users to be able to read the same Personal Knowbase data file (KNO file), you may find it useful to place the data file on a network. A centrally located data file on a network allows any user with a computer connected to the network to read the data.

PK Tip: Finding Text across Multiple Knowbase Data Files

Personal Knowbase has no built-in way to search for a text string across multiple data files.

However, within a single PK session, the Find dialog box remembers its settings, even after you've opened a different file. So you can search for the same string using the same range and search settings by opening each data file consecutively and re-running Find without changing the settings.

PK Tip: Opening a File Automatically at Startup

Did you know that you can make Personal Knowbase automatically open a specific data file whenever it starts up?

To specify a file to open at startup: