YOUR TOP TIPS FOR... SOFTWARE
Back up Thunderbird settings
In your Cover Feature on email (Issue 511), you provided instructions on how to back up your Thunderbird settings. To do this, I use the program Mozbackup ( http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com). It backs up my settings, address book and emails. I also use it for backing up Firefox settings and bookmarks. Works a treat in Windows 10! David Jolly
Scan anything quickly and easily
I’d like to recommend the program Not Another PDF Scanner 2 (NAPS2, www. naps2.com). When I first saw its name I was highly dubious. But I haven’t been so pleased with a program for ages. I am using a Canon Pixma MP800 to digitise a lot of my stuff: paperwork and photos. The camera’s scanning software is pretty decent with plenty of options, but when it comes to processing the finished article it gets very clunky.
NAPS2 makes the process an absolute breeze and I cannot recommend it highly enough, though of course I can only speak for how it works with my particular printer.
I click Scan (see screenshot below) and it takes me to the scanner’s software to set up and activate the scan. It then immediately returns to NAPS2 where a scanned thumbnail image is shown. You can repeat this as many times as you like and all the thumbnails will be displayed together.
You can then tweak the images for brightness and contrast within the program, or export them to your own
photo software and flip and rotate them, perform OCR, and if necessary reorder them by dragging and dropping. You can also import any other pics, even multipage PDFS. Then I can instantly bundle them into a PDF or save the scans as images in a variety of formats. All in all, this is a brilliant, highly effective and time-saving program. Tony Allaway
Use simple PDF programs
Many programs for managing PDFS are large, complex and intrusive (Adobe, do you hear me?). Here are two useful alternatives. SLIMPDF ( www.snipca.com/26012) lets you open a PDF quickly and then store it in a folder of your choice. There are no extra tools, such as editing. DOPDF ( www.dopdf.com) will convert a file such as TXT or .doc to a PDF, which in turn can be printed to paper. To download the free version click the green ‘Download Now!’ button (see screenshot below). Kay Tuckton
Stop spam using Mailwasher
One program you didn’t mention in your recent Cover Feature on email (Issue 511) was Mailwasher ( www.mailwasher.net). I have found this exceedingly useful over many years for dealing with the
umpteen daily emails I receive from various sources such as previous clients, scams, spam etc.
The program reads the emails direct in a remote server without downloading them (and any potential problems) to your PC and displays them in table form. These can be marked ‘Good’ in which case they will be highlighted green or ‘Spam’ in which case they are red.
Clicking the Wash Mail button deletes the red emails at the remote server and downloads the green emails to your inbox. This should happen automatically but I’ve found that it doesn’t always work. However, this may be down to how my PC is set up.
Red-highlighted emails can also be set to ‘bounce’ back to the sender, giving the impression that your email address is no longer active. You can also recover an email if you deleted it by mistake.
Setting the program up is easy, and it automatically gathers details of your email accounts and passwords as part of the setup process, so you don’t need to enter these manually. David Carmichael