Info-Base – Map your brain

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FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT By Deanna McElveen Sometimes I can’t remember why I walked into a room. Why should I think I’ll remember my daughters’ mailing addr
[See the full post at: Info-Base – Map your brain]

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DriftyDonN, abbodi86

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Deanna,

Every time i get a new issue of Ask Woody, the first thing i do is look to see if you have a new article. They’re always great and superbly illustrated.

This time, I have a question: Is there anything I can do with Info-Base that I can’t already do with Microsoft’s equally free OneNote? I don’t really discern any functionality like that, and OneNote has the significant advantage of being a cross-platform app — I can install it on any device whether Windows, macOS, iOS, or iPadOS,

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Taliaferro

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I had the exactly the same thought as Milleron.  Where are you 5 or 8 or 10 years from now when the Info-Base principals have a life event and disappear with your organised gray matter?  And anyway, should I be grateful that some wonderful entity in another Continent wants to, at no cost to me, store, back-up, and guard my life’s details?  And of course they won’t let anyone else to peek.  Right?  Well, if no one is peeking then exactly what are they doing with all that data?  Just a few thoughts.

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Taliaferro, all Info-Base consists of is a flat-file database with a useful GUI. It was early to the game, but far from unique, and it’s been superseded by OneNote and a few others. Deanna’s recommendations are 98% useful and superb, which grades out to A+, but I don’t think this one is worthwhile.

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Taliaferro wrote:

Where are you 5 or 8 or 10 years from now when the Info-Base principals have a life event and disappear with your organised gray matter?

One could say that about any program, even from the major players who may have a lifetime of centuries.

There was a very useful feature in Outlook that allowed contacts to be associated with one another. I used it extensively for a long time; it was simple and clever. One day, Outlook no longer had that feature. I think those connections are still in there somewhere, but Microsoft broke my ability to see and use them.

But you are right in a different way. Every program you use that stores your data must have a way for you to export the data, even if that export isn’t in a convenient format. My password vault can export to CSV format, so if the company vanishes I will have time to grab the data and run to a different program.

I use a few older programs that are either discontinued by an extant manufacturer or whose developer ceased to exist. They continue to work fine. At this point, only Microsoft could break them by deciding that some older version of the Windows API will no longer be provided.

This is the way things are. I can’t count the number of software companies I’ve outlived.

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Thank you for the work you put into showing us how to use your great freeware finds!
Is there any way to extract these sometimes lengthy walk thru’s from the newsletters?
thanks!

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DriftyDonN wrote:

Is there any way to extract these sometimes lengthy walk thru’s from the newsletters?

@DriftyDonN, what I do to extract a subset from a larger document is to Select/Copy that subset and then Paste it into a newly-created Word document that I’ve already given a relevant name. Sometimes I then have to “pretty it up” after it’s pasted.

Win 7 SP1 Home Premium 64-bit; Office 2010; Group B (SaS); Former 'Tech Weenie'

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DriftyDonN

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Sadly, the copy n paste method didn’t bring the nifty illustrations along…

 

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Ugh — when that happens to me (all too frequently lately), I’ll take a screenshot of each nifty illustration and paste it in its rightful place within the text. This makes the process much more tedious and time-consuming, and only you can decide if it’s worth it . . .

Win 7 SP1 Home Premium 64-bit; Office 2010; Group B (SaS); Former 'Tech Weenie'

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Try this:  Open the web site in the Chrome browser and use the the extension called “Clip to OneNote” to easily grab either the entire web page or you can clip a region.  You would probably want to clip a succession of regions, that is, it may take 5 or 6 or more, successive clips to grab all the text and illustraions.  I have found this is easier than copy/pasting into Word.

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