News Page

• When editing my photos I ususally have 5 programs opened simultaneously, all working in the same folder or its subfolders.
If I find a typo in a folder name and want to correct it, I used to close all 5 programs to unlock the folder, and then rename the folder.
Since starting these programs again may take a couple of minutes, I decided to write a script that would show me the program(s) that do need to be closed, thereby saving time waiting for the other ones to restart.
Enter WhoLocked.bat!
It uses Mark Russinovich's HANDLE.EXE to find the (b)locking program.
I could have use Windows' own OPENFILES.EXE but that requires elevated privileges to query the file handles (plus some one-time configuration requiring a reboot), whereas HANDLE.EXE does not.
To optionally terminate the (b)locking program, HANDLE.EXE would require elevated privileges, so I leave that to Windows' own TASKKILL.EXE which can do that without elevated privileges.

Hardware.hta had a minor update:

• ports inventory now includes IEEE 1394 Firewire ports
• parallel and serial ports are now grouped as "Legacy ports"

• Another major update for MonitorClipboard.exe: by using WebView2 many more file types can be previewed in MonitorClipboard's preview window.
Supported file types for this version are .bmp, .doc, .docx, .epub, .gif, .htm, .html, .ini, .jpeg, .jpg, .log, .mp3, .mp4, .odp, .ods, .odt, .pdf, .php, .png, .pps, .ppsx, .ppt, .pptx, .rtf, .tif, .tiff, .txt, .webp, .xhtml, .xls and .xlsx.

• MonitorClipboard.exe had a major update:

• besides previews of text and images on the clipboard, it will now also show a preview of the file content if a single file is copied to the clipboard
• previews are available for text, images, text files, images files, RTF files, PDF files, and Microsoft Office and OpenOffice documents, spreadsheets and presentations
• previews for most file types depend on conversion to RTF or JPG, so preview availability depends on software installed on the computer, i.e. Microsoft Office and/or GhostScript
• whereas previous versions of MonitorClipboard checked the clipboard and updated the preview window every second, that would take too much CPU resources with the new preview features; so the program now only updates its preview window when the clipboard content changes (credits: Gert Lombard)
• though MonitorClipboard is a GUI (Windows.Forms) program, it will show its help text in the console where it was started from, and in its preview window by copying it to the clipboard (credits: Timm)

The previews feature borrowed a lot of code from the programs listed on my Document Conversion page.

• A minor update for MergePDFs.bat: a typo in its help text was corrected, and a line of "leftover" debugging code was removed.

• I updated the useful PDF commands page in an attempt to make it more readable on mobile screens (or should I say: make it less unreadable?).

• MonitorClipboard.exe has been updated: besides text, it now also monitors images in the clipboard in real time.

• I added a collection of useful PDF commands to the website.

• MergePDFs.bat has been updated once more.
You can now specify the pages to be merged for each file.
This version uses GhostScript to do the real work.
If you prefer using PDF Labs' PDFtk - the pdf toolkit, stick with MergePDFs.bat version 2, which is still included in the ZIP file.

• JPGs2PDF.bat is a new tool that uses GhostScript to convert and merge JPG files into a single PDF file.
In essence, it is PDF2JPG2PDF.bat without the first of 2 GhostScript commands (and a completely rewritten command line check).

• MergePDFs.bat has been updated.
Whereas the old version (A.D. 2012) required PDF Labs' PDFtk - the pdf toolkit, the updated version can use either PDFtk or GhostScript to merge multiple PDF files into a single PDF file.

• Word2Txt.exe had a bugfix: the program would sometimes try to close Word twice.

• Word2Txt.exe has been updated:

• it will no longer crash on "unreadable content" in .docx files (i.e. corrupted files) when Word is installed
• in case of corrupted .docx files, it will try and extract text without the use of Word
• the return codes ("errorlevels") have changed: 0 for success using Word, 1 for success without using Word, 2 for command line errors or failure to extract text

So if the program returns errorlevel 1 while Word is installed, you can always try your luck with FixWordUnreadableContent.exe.

• I ususally know exactly where I took a photograph, often even after decades.
This week, however, I could not remember, nor recognize where I took a photograph of a dragonfly.
So I wrote GetLocation.bat, a new tool that uses Phil Harvey's ExifTool to find a photograph's GPS location and, if found, opens OpenStreetMap with that location.

• ODT2Docx.exe is a new tool to convert LibreOffice/OpenOffice Writer .odt files to Microsoft Word .docx format.
It was derived from ODT2PDF.exe, and just like ODT2PDF, ODT2Docx requires LibreOffice/OpenOffice and its SDK, and a Java runtime.
It has been tested with the latest versions of LibreOffice, its SDK and the Java runtime.

• FixWordUnreadableContent.exe is a new tool to fix Microsoft Word .docx documents suffering from "unreadable content".
Though Word may be capable of opening the corrupted file, it is hard to get rid of the error message on reopening it, not even when saved with a different name or as .doc file.
Until recently, I would open the corrupted document in Word, click OK to fix the error (though that does not remove the corrupted content, so the error message on opening will persist), then save it in OpenOffice Writer format (extension .odt), and finally use LibreOffice/OpenOffice to convert the OpenOffice document back to Word .docx format.
Then I found out that opening the corrupted file in LibreOffice/OpenOffice and saving it again will have the exact same result.
But now FixWordUnreadableContent.exe will do this a lot faster.
The "repaired" file will be saved with the same name and location, replacing the .docx extension by .repaired.docx.
The "repaired" file will miss the corrupted parts of the original file (in my case table borders), but at least it will be editable without error messages.
FixWordUnreadableContent borrows a lot of code from ODT2Docx.exe, and hence also requires LibreOffice/OpenOffice and its SDK, and a Java runtime.
It has been tested with the latest versions of LibreOffice, its SDK and the Java runtime.

• PDF2JPG.bat is a new tool that uses GhostScript to convert PDF files to image files, one per page.
It was derived from PDF2JPG2PDF.bat by removing the second GhostScript command from the latter.

• ODT2PDF.exe has been updated: it has been recompiled as 64-bit and tested with the latest versions of LibreOffice, its SDK and the Java runtime.

• PDF2JPG2PDF.bat is a new tool that uses GhostScript to convert ordinary "text-based" PDF files to "image-based" PDF files. i.e. like being printed and then scanned and converted to PDF again.
Though this may seem useless, I actually ran into a situation where it was necessary: a downloadable PDF form with checkboxes and tables, meant to be printed and filled in, was garbled on some computers, rendering checkboxes and table borders invisible.
By converting the PDF to "scanned" images, that were again enbedded in a PDF, I hope to avoid this problem in the future.

• PDF2Txt.bat is a new tool that uses GhostScript to extract plain text from PDF files.

• MimeType.bat is a new tool to find the registered mime type for a specified file extension or vice versa.

• A bug in FileHistory.exe has been fixed: the previous version would skip files if the destination folder did not exist.

• FileHistory.exe is a new command line backup tool, like Microsoft's own native File History, but more customizable.

• RxGrep.exe had a minor update: an error in its help text was corrected.

• A new page has been added to the batch techniques section: How to get string lengths in batch files.

• RxGrep.exe had a major update:

• the new optional /G switch allows selecting match groups for output
• the new optional /L switch allows using the program in line mode, i.e. treat ^ and $ in pattern as begin and end of each line, instead of begin and end of complete input
• the return code will now equal the number of matches found, or -1 in case of (command line) errors

• A new page Document Conversion has been added to this site.
It lists most of my document conversion scripts and programs, grouped by file types.