Cool Comments...
- "You know how much I love
cool programmers? *THIS* much. Greg Chapman
is one of my favorites..."
Yours Digitally,
Chris Pirillo
Lockergnome.com
How to Say Thanks!
- Even though many people tell
Greg he should sell his utilities, he refuses. They're free to help
anyone who needs them!
However, if you've found any of these utilities particularly useful, as I know so many tell us they have, feel free to click the button below to donate a few bucks to show Greg you appreciate his efforts and encourage him to create more useful utilities.
Subscribe to TechTrax, it's FREE!
Don't miss Greg's next time-saving code concoction. You'll find it first in TechTrax.
Resources Downloads MVPs
On this page...
File Cataloger
(Award Winning!)
Image Cataloger
(Award Winning!)
MouseTrax Downloads
Greg Chapman, developer, solution provider and Sr. Systems Engineer, loves creating solutions and he's created some wonderful ones, which many Word users have found incredibly useful! See the links along the left panel of this page.
Some utilities have complete details
listed below, 
some have links to TechTrax,
where you'll find an accompanying article in which Greg provides a full
accounting for his code and the idea behind how the utility works, as
well as directions for its use. To get the full benefit from the utility,
be sure to read the article, if one is linked!
Many of these very popular utilities are award winning tools that are all free for the downloading. Greg also believes in open code policies, so you will be able to open his code to view it, learn from it and enhance upon it for your own needs.
You are not allowed to
profit by selling
any products that contains Greg's code!
Domain Report Manager
Developed by Greg Chapman
Works with Windows Script Host (WSH)5.6
for Windows NT/2000/XP/2003
Hardware and Software Asset tracking is a bear!
Ever try to buy a product that will scan your domain and report back all the different vendor hardware, installed operating systems, installed software and running tasks?
Did you ever try to read the results those tools produce in a text editor or without using that tool's custom interface?
And did you ever notice that those tools can take a week or more to scan your Enterprise? Not counting the number of hours you lost configuring, scanning and then trying to get an accurate report, what did those packages cost you?
What if you were able to scan your Enterprise by Domain across the country and tabulate that data into raw text at the rate of roughly 1,000 machines per hour? Finding all those systems violating corporate policy because they've got Kazaa installed would be much easier, wouldn't it?
The MouseTrax Domain Report Manager is a tool you must try out, then. There's no client side installation required and there's no setup to manage on your server. This collection of 3 scripts executes a single inventory against each machine in the domain you scan, or it can simply scan a list of machines for you. The main collection script runs up to 150 system inventories concurrently without eating all your network bandwidth and without consuming the local server's resources. When the scan is done, there will be a time stamped, heirarchical directory tree containing text files all organized by a wide variety of your informational interests.
If you'd like to see how this tool works, be sure to read the TechTrax articles on "Hard and Soft Asset Management with VBScript". Or, if you'd merely like to get to work and start gathering some useful information, follow the link below, download the package, unzip it, read the documentation and get going!
Note!
Don't miss Part II of this code series for further enhancements
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=393
DOWNLOAD
MouseTrax Domain
Report Manager
[19k zipped]
[Works with Windows Script Host (WSH)
5.6 for Windows NT/2000/XP/2003]
NetBIOS
Name Retriever
Developed by Greg Chapman
Works with Windows Script Host (WSH)
5.6 for Windows NT/2000/XP
Windows vulnerabilities keep cropping up and Microsoft keeps on pushing patches! Sometimes they even provide some helpful tools. For example, with the recent RPC vulnerabilities, Microsoft has published scan utilities designed to identify systems on your network which haven't yet received the patch. Not bad!
These tools create lists of these machines, one IP Address per line, and save them to your disk. But, if you're like many admins, you may not know where in your shop that IP Address is being used. So how do you know which machine to send a technician to fix when the machine doesn't take the patch properly?
Well, here's a solution in script! This VBScript, designed to run via WSH, will take the output of Microsoft's scan tools and resolve the NetBIOS (Windows Network) name of the machines using those IP Addresses. Essentially, the script shells out to nbtstat, uses the -a argument and passes each IP as an argument to nbtstat. The results are saved to a temporary file, parsed and then logged to NetBIOSNames.log in the same directory with the script. The log results are stored in Comma Separated Values format, so you can use your favorite data tool to organize the results as you need.
To use, download the ZIP file, extract the GetNetBIOSName.vbs to your drive and drag, then drop, the list file on the script!
COPYRIGHT! Note that this code is copyrighted to MouseTrax.com. You are free to use it, give it to friends, learn from it, and enhance it; but you may not sell this code as your own!
DOWNLOAD
MouseTrax NetBIOS Name Retriever
[3k zipped]
[Works with Windows Script Host
(WSH) 5.6 for Windows NT/2000/XP]
Word
Directory Cataloger
Developed by Greg Chapman
Works with Microsoft Word 2000, 2002
or Office 11
Windows Script version Works with WinNT, Win2K or WinXP
A much requested utility that allows you to assemble your directory structure in a printable document or HTML file, which also links the files with hyperlinks to let you easily check your files right from the compiled file.
Read the TechTrax article on this utility for more details.
There are two downloads below. One is a Word dot (template) version—simple to use for the smaller, quick jobs. The second is a more industrial version for use with larger jobs and runs faster through the DOS prompt using Windows Scripting Host. Once downloaded and unzipped, you can keep them on your desktop for quick access. See the article listed above for complete details.
COPYRIGHT!
Note that this code is copyrighted to MouseTrax.com. You are free to
use it, give it to friends, learn from it, and enhance it; but you may
not sell this code as your own!
DOWNLOAD
MouseTrax Directory Cataloger
Word DOT version
[18k zipped]
[Works with Microsoft Word 2000,
2002 or Office 11]
DOWNLOAD
MouseTrax Directory Cataloger
Windows Script version
[8k zipped]
[Works with Windows NT, 2000, XP]
Word
Options Utility
Developed by Greg Chapman
Works with Microsoft Word 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007 (in most cases)
A fantastic utility that you simply open in Word to have it gather all your current Word optional settings. After it finishes opening, you'll see a document with a professional looking listing of all your current settings, including file paths for backups, clipart and all those other things for which you spend hours hunting.
Read our TechTrax article on this utility for more details.
The download, below, contains two templates, zipped. Once unzipped, you only need the template for the version of Word you use—either 2000 or 2002 (XP). Then just open it and it'll provide you with all the details.
COPYRIGHT!
Note that this code is copyrighted to MouseTrax.com. You are
free to use it, give it to friends, learn from it, and enhance it; but
you may not sell this code as your own!
DOWNLOAD
MouseTrax Word Options Utility
[107k zipped]
[Works with Microsoft Word 2000,
2002, 2003 and 2007 (in most cases)]
Update!
Mac version now also available!
Big thanks to John McGimpsey, Excel MVP, who modified the code for the
Mac!
DOWNLOAD
MouseTrax Mac Word Options Setting Utility
[146k sit file]
[Works with Microsoft Mac Word
98, 2001, XP]
Word
Crayon
Developed by Greg Chapman
Works with Microsoft Word 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007 (in most cases)
With actor's scripts in mind, a writer asked if there was any way to use Word to colorize specific words in a Word document. This can be done manually in Word using the Search/Replace feature, but it's not a simple task. And coding this process in VBA is a challenge due to inconsistent color codes in newer versions of Word.
But Greg came up with a way to do it and now he shares this template with you. Be sure to read Greg's article in TechTrax to learn the details of how to make this template and its instructional text file do the job for you, as well as learn how he came up with the VBA solution to this problem and all the raw code.
COPYRIGHT! Note that this code is copyrighted to MouseTrax.com. You are free to use it, give it to friends, learn from it, and enhance it; but you may not sell this code as your own!
TechTrax subscriber and editor,
Terry O'Connor, loved Greg's Word Crayon. He uses it to check news article for cliches. And he's written a great list you can download and use to check your own docs. See this additional article for details: Word Crayon...Revisited
DOWNLOAD
MouseTrax Word Crayon
[13k zipped]
[Works with Microsoft Word 2000,
2002, 2003 and 2007 (in most cases)]
Word
Backup Utility
Developed by Greg Chapman
Works with Microsoft Word 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007 (in most cases) for Windows NT/2000/XP
Use this coded Word template to backup your system. We here at MouseTrax use this system to backup our entire network, in an amazingly short time! Greg even uses this same code for enterprise network backups. Just include the directories you want backed up and provide a backup destination and let 'er rip.
A great tool! But be sure to read the details of how it works in Greg's Word as a System Management Tool article. Greg's Word innovations surprised many and his knowledgeable comments were even featured in Enterprise System Magazine.
COPYRIGHT!
Note that this code is copyrighted to MouseTrax.com. You are
free to use it, give it to friends, learn from it, and enhance it; but
you may not sell this code as your own!
DOWNLOAD
MouseTrax Word Backup
[100k self-extracting EXE file]
[Works with Microsoft Word 2000,
2002, 2003 and 2007 (in most cases)]
MouseTrax
File Cataloger
As Featured in Lockergnome!
Developed by Greg Chapman
Works with Microsoft Word 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007 (in most cases)
Dian does a lot of project management
work and likes to organize files by linking them to a master document
with hyperlinks. This allows her to keep one master file and easily
sort and locate the files she needs with a single hyperlink click. But
linking a lot of files can take time. So Greg, great guy that he is,
built Dian a cool utility to do the job for her! (And now he uses it
too, to keep all his Administrative logs sorted!)
Greg Chapman shares his freeware Cataloger utility with you here. Just
download it, double click to unzip, and place the resulting, unzipped
DOT file somewhere convenient (like your desktop!). Then whenever you
have a pile of files you'd like to organize, just double click this
Word template to open it and an option dialog box will open. Set your
preferences, point it at a directory and let 'er rip. In a few moments,
you'll have a document linking all the files.
And for VBA fans, Greg has left his
code open for you to learn and enhance.
Note! For great ideas of
how to use this cool utility, see Dian's Get
Organized Now! article in Computor
Companion Magazine, as well as our TechTrax
article: Using
File Cataloger for Code and Support Libraries.
These articles describe the idea behind the Cataloger creation and ways to use it. Think of all the photo files, documents, project files, or even music files you have scattered around your hard drive. Wouldn't it be nice to have them organized? Download this free utility and see how easy it can be to sort them.
COPYRIGHT!
Note that this code is copyrighted to MouseTrax.com. You are free to
use it, give it to friends, learn from it, and enhance it; but you may
not sell this code as your own!
DOWNLOAD
MouseTrax File Cataloger
[57k zipped]
[Works with Microsoft Word 2000,
2002, 2003 and 2007 (in most cases)]
MouseTrax
Image Cataloger
As Featured in Lockergnome!
Developed by Greg Chapman
Works with Microsoft Word 97, 2000,
2002, 2003 and 2007 (in most cases)
This is another one of Greg Chapman's useful utilities! Dian had a constant problem finding just the right graphics from all those saved in various directories on her hard drive. She didn't have a decent program to view her graphics, particularly one that would also show the animated gifs. So Greg built her this cool graphic viewer template to allow her to locate the image file she needed. He now shares this useful tool with you, free!
Download it, unzip it, and place the resulting, unzipped DOT file in a handy location. When you need to locate image files, double click it to open it in Word, point it to any directory on your hard drive and let 'er rip. It'll insert any graphic (jpg & gif) images it finds in that directory, into a Word document. It'll then save the file as an HTML page so you can easily view all the graphics from that directory in your browser. Great for viewing those animated gifs!
Path and file names are shown under each image, so you can easily go back and locate the file itself. And, as always, Greg's left his code open so you can learn from it or enhance it.
COPYRIGHT! Note that this code is copyrighted to MouseTrax.com. You are free to use it, give it to friends, learn from it, and enhance it; but you may not sell this code as your own!
DOWNLOAD
MouseTrax Image Cataloger
[34k zipped]
[Works with Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007 (in most cases)]
List
All Programs
Developed by Greg Chapman
Works with Microsoft Word 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007 (in most cases) for Windows NT/2000/XP
Do you have a ton of programs loaded on your computer? Wish there was an easier way to get a list of all those programs and subcategory program listings you see when you click Start/Programs? Wouldn't it be nice to have a list you could organize to help you go back to Windows and better organize your menus?
Lots of folks wished that, too. So Greg Chapman granted their wish by creating the List All Programs utility! Be sure to read his TechTrax article: A Macro to List All Programs in the Windows Start Menu to get all the details.
COPYRIGHT! Note that this code is copyrighted to MouseTrax.com. You are free to use it, give it to friends, learn from it, and enhance it; but you may not sell this code as your own!
DOWNLOAD
MouseTrax List All Programs
Utility
[9k zipped]
[Works with Microsoft Word 2000,
2002, 2003 and 2007 (in most cases) for Windows NT/2000/XP]
Temp
Scrubber
Developed by Greg Chapman
Works with Microsoft Word 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007 (in most cases)
All computers have, or should have a TEMP directory. This is a temporary location on your hard drive where files go, temporarily, when they have no place else to go. When you receive an email with an attachment, the attachment needs a place to go while you view it from the email—so the file is temporarily opened in your TEMP directory. However, if you don't properly close the file, a copy of it may remain in your TEMP directory. Not only taking up valuable hard drive space, but also sucking up resources since many applications use this TEMP directory space as a working area when they are opened.
It's important to always keep this directory empty. When you first learn to start cleaning this directory, you should take note of what's in there. Any files you're not sure about, you should move to another directory, rather than deleting them outright, in case you later find you may need them because you deleted the original. Read this article for more complete details about this process: Maintaining Your Computer.
Once you become familiar with the types of files that appear, and reappear, you'll feel more confident about ripping everything out on a regular basis to keep the area clean and free up the space for your working programs. But navigating to the temp directory takes time. Greg Chapman has created a Word template that does the job quickly for you. Just download the Temp Scrubber below, unzip it, and keep the resulting, unzipped DOT file handy on your desktop. Whenever you want to clean out your temp dir, just double click it to open in Word and click the OK to start button.
NOTE! Files that are in process (being used) will not be deleted and the resulting document will tell you just how many files were deleted. You do not need to keep the resulting document, but may wish to keep it as a maintenance record. Also...although Greg usually leaves his code open for learning/enhancement purposes, since this code deletes temp files from your hard drive, the code is not open to help ensure its safety.
COPYRIGHT! Note that this code is copyrighted to MouseTrax.com. You are free to use it, give it to friends, learn from it, and enhance it; but you may not sell this code as your own!
DOWNLOAD
TempDirScrubber.dot
[17K zipped]
[Works with Microsoft Word 2000,
2002, 2003 and 2007 (in most cases)]
WSH Script HTML Cleanup
Developed by Greg Chapman
Works with WinNT/2000/XP and 9x with
Modification
This is a Windows Scripting Host (WSH) file (.wsf), created by Greg Chapman as a solution to clean up converted TXT email files. For complete details on whether this script would be of benefit to you, you SHOULD read this article explaining its purpose!
Read this article for details: Converting Email to Clean Text Files
Greg's
instructions/comments:
"I've got a pretty good version at this point. There are a few
stray binary characters floating in and out of the results depending
on how Outlook puts out the MSG file. If I could get solid documentation
on this type of file (MSG COMMON DOCUMENT), I'd use Extended MAPI, from
which this format comes, to dump the text.
"Unfortunately, that documentation
is weak, so I'm left with string comparisons and regular expressions
to determine what's valid text content and what isn't. One other thing
I WON'T BE SUPPORTING in this script: Extended ASCII characters (characters
128 through 255). Text renderers like the FileSystemObject are not too
keen on determining the difference between character 234 and seeing
that character as part of a Hex/Bin/Octal/Unicode expression. Everything
below 127 is standard ASCII (and, therefore, English only) which should
cover most of us...including the Xenophobes.<g>
"Finally, all header info is preserved for you who want to actively
pursue spammers and the relays they use. Any RFC2822 compatible mail
server (Gee, that almost rules out Notes and Exchange!<g>) will
have the headers in the MSG file and I've taken care to NOT destroy
that info because it's 'Good Stuff, man!'
"Operation
is simple, too. All you have to do with WinNT/2000/XP is drag the folder
containing the messages you want to parse and drop it on the WSF (Windows
Script File) that is the parsing script. It will hit each file and create
a new version, stripped of binary and HTML, with the same file name
& "NoHTML.txt" in the directory. It will do the same for
all files in all subdirectories.
"If you're on a 9x system (including ME), however, the drag and drop method won't work since there is no file association on those systems for VBS, JS and WSF files. Instead, open a command prompt and type:
Cscript "<drive>:\<path>\StripHTML.wsf" "<path of folder to process>"
...where <drive> is the drive on which the script resides and <path> is the folder path to the file. <Path of folder to process> is the drive and file path of the folder containing all the messages and this path should be surrounded in double quotes (").
"If
you're not yet familiar with Cscript and Wscript (the Windows Script
Hosts), I highly recommend you hoof it on over to
http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting
and start giving it a look see. The path from VBA ops to using the
Windows Script Host is nearly painless and is, in a lot of ways, easier
to learn. I'll also recommend that you at least download the documentation
(a pretty well written Help file) as much of what's in there is 100%
portable to VB/VBA and it's one helluva lot easier to work with than
the Office VBA Help. Can you believe it?
COPYRIGHT! Note that this code is copyrighted to MouseTrax.com. You are free to use it, give it to friends, learn from it, and enhance it; but you may not sell this code as your own!
DOWNLOAD
StripHTML.zip
[5K DOC extension added]
[Works with WinNT/2000/XP and 9x with Modification]
Font
Sample Generator
Developed by Microsoft
Works with Microsoft Word
(all versions)
When you install Microsoft Office, it's always best to take the option to do a custom install. That way you can view all the options and reject items you don't need, as well as selecting options that do come in handy. One of those items is to select the additional templates and macros that can be installed with Office, particularly for Word.
If you select this option, Microsoft Office will install some additional macros from Microsoft that can be very helpful. They will be found in your default Office directory under the macro folder. In an earlier version of Word, Microsoft added a very helpful macro called FontSampleGenerator. It creates a Word doc with a sample display of every font you have installed on your system. You can then print it out. Very handy for choosing fonts!
The zipped download here is the code module (.bas file) containing the code you need to run this utility.
To use this file:
Download the FontSampleGenerator.zip file. Pay attention
to where you download it! If you need help learning how to download
a file, see thisTechTrax article: Downloading
101.
Unzip the file. The resulting file will be called FontSampleGenerator.bas. This is a VBA code module. Open Word. Hit Alt/F11 to enter the Visual Basic Editor. Click on your Normal template project to select it. Then click File/Import and ferret around your hard drive to find this .bas file. Select it to add this code module to your Normal.dot template to make it available.
Note that you can also add it to a new template and then add that template to your ../Word/Startup directory to make it available, but not have it added as extra weight to your Normal.dot template.
Once the code is available to you in Word, through either method above, you can click Tools/Macro/Macro, locate the Font Sample Generator macro and click Run to get your sample.
See our TechTrax Sharing Macro article if you need more help installed this code module..
DOWNLOAD
FontSampleGenerator.zip
[3K zipped]
[Works with Microsoft Word (all
versions)]
Section
Manager Macro
Developed by Microsoft
Works with Microsoft Word
97, 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007 (in most cases)
When you install Microsoft Office, it's always best to take the option to do a custom install. That way you can view all the options and reject items you don't need, as well as selecting options that do come in handy. One of those items is to select the additional templates and macros that can be installed with Office, particularly for Word.
If you select this option, Microsoft Office will install some additional macros from Microsoft that can be very helpful. They will be found in your default Office directory under the macro folder. In an earlier version of Word, Microsoft added a very helpful macro called SectionManager. It displays a dialog box that provides detailed information and access to section, page information, headers, footers and other items in large documents, which makes handling large/complex docs, a lot easier.
I've attached a template here that includes a module containing the code for the SectionManager macro. To use this file, download this template, unzip it and save the resulting, unzipped DOT file somewhere safe.
You can then either move the template to your default Office/Startup directory, which will cause the contained code to become global in scope, meaning it'll be available to you whenever you use Word. Or you open the code editor by hitting Alt/F11 and export out the SectionManager module to a BAS file and then import this same bas file into your Normal.dot as an addition module in your Normal.dot file. Just be sure to backup your Normal.dot file. Then, should it become corrupt and you need to reset it, you can copy over your backup so you wont lose this module or have to reinsert it. You can also use the Organizer to pass the code from this template to your Normal.dot file. See our TechTrax Sharing Macro article if you need more help.
Then you can also create a customized toolbar or menu to quickly access this code to run it when you need to view details about your docs. Here's an article explaining details of setting up a custom toolbar or menu, should you need some instruction to accomplish this: http://www.mousetrax.com/toolbars.html.
DOWNLOAD
SectionManager.dot
[22K zipped]
[Works with Microsoft Word 97,
2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007 (in most cases)]
frmCustomTables.frm
Works with Microsoft Word 97, 2000,
2002, 2003 and 2007 (in most cases)
This is a custom dialog box (user form) created in Word VBA as a demo for an article in TechTrax explaining how to design and build custom dialog boxes. It's strongly suggested you read the Creating Custom Dialog Boxes article to get the full appreciation of this dialog box, its code and its uses.
This dialog box contains the code to quickly build customized tables as per a request by a user who originally gave me the idea for this article. (Thank you, David Cohen! <smile>) Special thanks to Greg Chapman, too, who took time to help me finish this project when I ran out of time.
To use this dialog box beyond accessing the code through the VB Editor, as explained in the article for which it was created, you need to create a short, separate macro that will call the form into view after you have installed the form into your project. To show the form to add input, you simply need to call the form with its Show method by calling frmCustomTables.Show.
The show form macro can be a simple macro like this one below. Then you'd run the CreateCustomTables macro to have the dialog box show so the user can input their choices. When they click OK on the form, the close we wrote in the article, which is contained within this zipped download, will run and create a custom table as per the specs requested.
Sub CreateCustomTables()
frmCustomTables.Show
End SubDOWNLOAD
frmCustomTables.frm
[2K zipped]
[Works with Microsoft Word 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007 (in most cases)