Showing posts with label freeware. Show all posts
Showing posts with label freeware. Show all posts

2014/04/24

How to print together multiple documents and files (PDF, DOC, XLS, DWG) or photos (JPG, BMP, PNG)?

Here some recurrent question:

  • Can I print multiple PDF documents at once?
  • Can you print multiple documents without opening them?
  • How do I put multiple files into one PDF?


Do you need to automatically print multiple documents, present in a folder, without opening them?

On Windows 98, XP, VISTA there is not natively a function like that, so you need to use a third-party software.
Print Conductor is an utility that do this and I tried! It works very well and it's free!



You must download and install the software application, then you create the list of files to be sequentially printed by selecting the files with the dialog box "Open File", or dragging them with drag and drop, or by automatic scanning of a specific folder. You can also choose different folders or files of different types from those available.



Print Conductor supports 26 different types of documents, here they are: 
  • Adobe ® PDF files, 
  • Microsoft ® Word DOC and DOCX documents, 
  • Microsoft ® Excel XLS and XLSX spreadsheets, 
  • Microsoft ® PowerPoint PPT and PPTX presentations, 
  • Microsoft ® Visio VSD drawings, Publisher PUB files, 
  • Autodesk AutoCAD ® DXF and DWG drawings, 
  • OpenOffice ODT documents, 
  • JPEG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, PCX, TGA, DCX and BMP images, 
  • XPS, SVG, TXT, WRI, RTF and HTML files.

Print Conductor can print documents on any printer:
  • Local printer,
  • Network printer,
  • Virtual printer.

Also, you can change the configuration of the printer selection before starting the printing process.

WARNING: The only condition you must abide is that on your PC, you must have already installed all the applications you normally use to open the same documents that you would like to print automatically. 
So for example, to print CAD files (DXF or DWG), you must have installed AutoCAD, to print Word or Excel files you must have a suite of Office installed, to print PDF files you must have Adobe Reader pre-installed, and so on.

The free version of Print Conductor has no limitation of use., but  insert a page of advertising in the print queue of your printer. Commercial version doesn't print advertising pages.

Print Conductor works well on 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, 8 and 8.1. 
Microsoft Windows Server 2003, 2008 and 2012 are supported, too. 

[Link features] Print Conductor features
[Download] Print Conductor

If you have Windows 7, 8 or 10 you can use this convenient feature natively in the operating system. Just open the folder containing the file to be printed and select those that interest you. To select multiple files with the mouse at the same time hold down the SHIFT key if they are contiguous instead if there are NOT contiguous hold the CTRL key. Immediately after you click on it with the right mouse button and select the item Print in the context menu. The important thing is that all the files must to be of the same type and NOT to be mixed (only PDF, only WORD, only EXCEL, etc..) The only downside is that the files are sent to print directly to the default printer, and then you can not choose your printer from the menu. With this method, normally you can select up to 15 files contemporary to print. 

An alternative method, with Windows Seven, is to search for the printer on "Devices and Printers" in the Start menu. Click with the right mouse button on the selected printer, then select "See what's printing" in the context menu. 
When appears the "queues" window of the printer, that you have chosen, you can drag and drop the files to print. 
Then another dialog box will appear asking if you want to "print multiple files at once." 
By clicking on 'Yes' all the files will be opened and printed in their entirety, with the default settings. With this method it is possible to mix different types of files! This method does NOT have limits on the number of files to be printed simultaneously.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: 
Print Conductor is intuitive to use and effective, I like it very much!
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

2013/10/04

HDD LLF: how to low level format the Hard Disk

HDD Low Level Format is a free software tool ( for personal / home use only ) that allows the Low-Level Format (LLF) of hard disks (and mass storage devices in general).
What is LLF
"Typically this involved subdividing each track on the disk into one or more blocks which would contain the user data and associated control information. Different computers used different block sizes and IBM notably used variable block sizes but the popularity of the IBM PC caused the industry to adopt a standard of 512 user data bytes per block by the middle 1980s. " Source Wikipedia English

HDD- LLF has the following characteristics :
  • Supported interfaces: S-ATA (SATA), IDE (E-IDE), SCSI, SAS, USB, FIREWIRE.
  • Big drives (LBA-48) are supported.
  • Supported Manufacturers: Maxtor, Hitachi, Seagate, Samsung, Toshiba, Fujitsu, IBM, Quantum, Western Digital, and almost any other not listed here.
  • The program also supports low-level formatting of FLASH cards (SD, MMC, MemoryStick and CompactFlash) using a card-reader.


HDD- LLF can also work with external drives connected via USB, and Firewire as well as with supports SD , MMC, MemoryStick and CompactFlash .
There is also an option to quickly delete the partitions and the sector MBR (Master Boot Record) of HDDs .
The utility is available in two versions: can be installed on Windows or directly executed ( portable).

WARNING: After running this low level format tool, the whole disk surface will be erased.
Data restoration is impossible after using this utility!


PERSONAL EXPERIENCE :
I used HDD- LLF for low-level format an external drive connected with USB no longer wanted to learn to operate and above who do not " want to be" formatted by Windows. With both Windows XP and Seven, the format utility (which try to format only high-level) returned an error message and did not proceed . With HDD- LLF I managed to break the deadlock and then, through the utility of Windows XP " DISK MANAGEMENT " , I was able to format ( high-level) disk with the NTFS file system and now it works !
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED