The useful Windows Freeware Megathread!

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Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; ...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. �Bertrand Russell

I use Evernote for that purpose. Let me recommend the Evernote ScanSnap. It's perfect for document archiving.

# ? Apr 13, 2015 15:08

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# ? May 7, 2024 05:04

RhoA: Jul 20, 2014

SEKCobra posted:

I want to get rid of paper, so Imma start scanning bills and letters, is there some sorta document storage software to manage them afterwards?

Evernote is probably your best bet in terms of organizing all of your scanned documents. You could also go the route of having an encrypted folder or drive for storing all of it as well.

# ? Apr 13, 2015 17:01

Dans Macabre: Apr 24, 2004

FWIW I switched from evernote to onenote because I was mad at evernote for some reason and I kind of regret the move.

# ? Apr 13, 2015 20:41

c0burn: Sep 2, 2003; The KKKing

That new Office Lens app is cool for snapping documents (still in Beta though)

# ? Apr 13, 2015 21:37

Generic Monk: Oct 31, 2011

NevergirlsOFFICIAL posted:

FWIW I switched from evernote to onenote because I was mad at evernote for some reason and I kind of regret the move.

tbf evernote does feel godawful to use; it's a shame that the apps that curb stomp it in UI design all seem to be missing one or two features that I just about can't live without

# ? Apr 13, 2015 21:54

SEKCobra: Feb 28, 2011; Hi
Don't look at my site

So do I use Evernote now or not :saddowns:

# ? Apr 13, 2015 22:42

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

Evernote is really good if you can set it up in a way that works for you and use it regularly, otherwise you just forget about it for 3 months after using it for a week, repeatedly.

# ? Apr 13, 2015 22:49

Dans Macabre: Apr 24, 2004

SEKCobra posted:

So do I use Evernote now or not

I think if you're starting from nothing, and you're the only one using it, use onenote

if you're going to be sharing this with other people in the household then evernote probably will work better.

# ? Apr 13, 2015 22:57

SEKCobra: Feb 28, 2011; Hi
Don't look at my site

Oh wait this is cloud software? I'd rather just keep my stuff locally.

# ? Apr 13, 2015 23:30

Manky: Mar 20, 2007; Fun Shoe

SEKCobra posted:

Oh wait this is cloud software? I'd rather just keep my stuff locally.

It's a Notepad/Journaling information management system. I've been using it daily for almost two years now professionally and it's really great and flexible. Use it. It is software that you download and it syncs transparently with the Cloud, it is a Good Thing

# ? Apr 14, 2015 01:28

Dans Macabre: Apr 24, 2004

SEKCobra posted:

Oh wait this is cloud software? I'd rather just keep my stuff locally.

with both evernote and onenote you can make local notebooks that don't sync but (at least with evernote) you need to authenticate with The Cloud.

# ? Apr 14, 2015 04:00

Squish: Nov 22, 2007; Unrelenting.; Lipstick Apathy

I thought that evernote was paid only?

# ? Apr 14, 2015 12:13

Dans Macabre: Apr 24, 2004

Squish posted:

I thought that evernote was paid only?

you can pay for noads and some other extra things. I don't know what the diff between free and paid is because I was paid until I stopped using it. But the base is free.

# ? Apr 14, 2015 13:36

dpkg chopra: Jun 9, 2007; Fast Food Fight; Grimey Drawer

I need to convert a M4A file to specifically a 8 KHz/16bit/MONO .WAV

Is there any software that will do this?

# ? Apr 15, 2015 21:58

Cactus Jack: Nov 16, 2005; If you even try to throw to my side of the field in a dream, you better wake up and apologize.

Ur Getting Fatter posted:

I need to convert a M4A file to specifically a 8 KHz/16bit/MONO .WAV

Is there any software that will do this?

Audacity should be able to do this.

# ? Apr 15, 2015 22:05

SymmetryrtemmyS: Jul 13, 2013; I got super tired of seeing your avatar throwing those fuckin' glasses around in the astrology thread so I fixed it to a .jpg

Ur Getting Fatter posted:

I need to convert a M4A file to specifically a 8 KHz/16bit/MONO .WAV

Is there any software that will do this?

Foobar2000 or the previously recommended Audacity.

# ? Apr 16, 2015 03:08

Nam Taf: Jun 25, 2005; I am Fat Man, hear me roar!

Ur Getting Fatter posted:

I need to convert a M4A file to specifically a 8 KHz/16bit/MONO .WAV

Is there any software that will do this?

Mediacoder if you want to twiddle every single knob in existence. Warning: possibly steep learning curve.

# ? Apr 16, 2015 10:36

ilifinicus: Mar 7, 2004

Is there a tool that's good at analyzing just what's destroying your computer's available memory?

# ? Apr 17, 2015 16:43

SymmetryrtemmyS: Jul 13, 2013; I got super tired of seeing your avatar throwing those fuckin' glasses around in the astrology thread so I fixed it to a .jpg

ilifinicus posted:

Is there a tool that's good at analyzing just what's destroying your computer's available memory?

Like task manager?

# ? Apr 17, 2015 18:18

dpkg chopra: Jun 9, 2007; Fast Food Fight; Grimey Drawer

Thanks for all the audio recommendations! Audacity did the trick.

Different question: is there any simple way to send emails to a specified address/service which will then forward them to specific people based on keywords contained in the email and also adding custom text?

So, for example, if the body of the email contains the word "Sally" it will forward that email to "sally@company.com" with the message "Sally, you should check this out".

I'm not trying to spam anyone, our PBX sends emails to people when they have a new voicemail but the canned text is in English and I need it to be in other languages (at just to inform people they have a new voicemail).

We use Google Apps so I can do the first part fairly easily with filters, but it's adding the extra text which is tricky.

# ? Apr 17, 2015 18:23

Avulsion: Feb 12, 2006; I never knew what hit me

ilifinicus posted:

Is there a tool that's good at analyzing just what's destroying your computer's available memory?

Process explorer is like task manager, but better:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

# ? Apr 17, 2015 21:27

Mr. Clark2: Sep 17, 2003; Rocco sez: Oh man, what a bummer. Woof.

My wife's mother has takes a large amount of pictures and as a result of this, has a single folder with a very large number of images files saved in it. My wife wants to do something nice and organize the pictures in this folder by year and month. So there would be a folder for each year, and this folder would contain a subfolder for each month. Each of these subfolders would contain all the pictures taken in that month/year.
Is there any software that will do this? I've tried googling "image organization software" but as you might imagine, the number of results is quite large and it's hard to tell what's real and what's just some junky bloatware. Any recommendations?

# ? May 5, 2015 03:47

Baloogan: Dec 5, 2004; Fun Shoe

If it were me I'd write a short program that does that

# ? May 5, 2015 04:00

Mr. Clark2: Sep 17, 2003; Rocco sez: Oh man, what a bummer. Woof.

Baloogan posted:

If it were me I'd write a short program that does that

Well don't let me stop ya...

# ? May 5, 2015 04:06

doctorfrog: Mar 14, 2007; Great.

Mr. Clark2 posted:

My wife's mother has takes a large amount of pictures and as a result of this, has a single folder with a very large number of images files saved in it. My wife wants to do something nice and organize the pictures in this folder by year and month. So there would be a folder for each year, and this folder would contain a subfolder for each month. Each of these subfolders would contain all the pictures taken in that month/year.
Is there any software that will do this? I've tried googling "image organization software" but as you might imagine, the number of results is quite large and it's hard to tell what's real and what's just some junky bloatware. Any recommendations?

http://www.mjbpix.com/automatically-move-photos-to-directories-or-folders-based-on-exif-date/

haven't used it, looks ok. If you're worried, download it and submit it to VirusTotal.

This is also the sort of thing that you could probably get someone to do for you for free at donationcoder.com.

# ? May 5, 2015 05:31

Avulsion: Feb 12, 2006; I never knew what hit me

Mr. Clark2 posted:

My wife's mother has takes a large amount of pictures and as a result of this, has a single folder with a very large number of images files saved in it. My wife wants to do something nice and organize the pictures in this folder by year and month. So there would be a folder for each year, and this folder would contain a subfolder for each month. Each of these subfolders would contain all the pictures taken in that month/year.
Is there any software that will do this? I've tried googling "image organization software" but as you might imagine, the number of results is quite large and it's hard to tell what's real and what's just some junky bloatware. Any recommendations?

I made a Powershell script that will sort the contents of a directory according to the last modified date. This will sort everything in the directory, not just pictures, so handle with care.

1) Install PowerShell, if your version of windows didn't come with it already installed.
2) Dump all your images/files to be sorted into one directory.
3) Copy this code to a .txt file, rename it to "Sort by Date.ps1" drop it in the directory to be sorted, right click and run.

code:

Get-ChildItem * -file -Exclude *.ps1 | foreach { 
$datedir = $pwd.tostring() +"\"+(get-date $_.LastWriteTime -format yyyy\\MM-MMMM\\)
if(!(Test-Path $datedir)){
New-Item $datedir -ItemType directory 
}
Move-Item -path $_.FullName -Destination $datedir
}

Click here to learn all about custom formatting of date stamps if you want to change how the folders are named. ex: -format yyyy\\MM-MMMM\\ = 2015\01-January\

Avulsion fucked around with this message at 10:47 on May 5, 2015

# ? May 5, 2015 10:39

dpkg chopra: Jun 9, 2007; Fast Food Fight; Grimey Drawer

Is there a good PDF creator/editor out there that is also free?

PDFArchitect recently locked down the most useful features and I don't use them enough to justify actually spending money on them.

# ? May 5, 2015 15:02

Squish: Nov 22, 2007; Unrelenting.; Lipstick Apathy

Mr. Clark2 posted:

My wife's mother has takes a large amount of pictures and as a result of this, has a single folder with a very large number of images files saved in it. My wife wants to do something nice and organize the pictures in this folder by year and month. So there would be a folder for each year, and this folder would contain a subfolder for each month. Each of these subfolders would contain all the pictures taken in that month/year.
Is there any software that will do this? I've tried googling "image organization software" but as you might imagine, the number of results is quite large and it's hard to tell what's real and what's just some junky bloatware. Any recommendations?

Have you taken a look at Google's Picasa? It has this kind of organisation, if you can ignore all the Google Gets Into Everything integration (which, thankfully isn't too intrusive in this program). It has a really neat facial recognition algorithm that you can use to identify and search/sort photos according to detected faces.

# ? May 5, 2015 15:30

Mr. Clark2: Sep 17, 2003; Rocco sez: Oh man, what a bummer. Woof.

Squish posted:

Have you taken a look at Google's Picasa? It has this kind of organisation, if you can ignore all the Google Gets Into Everything integration (which, thankfully isn't too intrusive in this program). It has a really neat facial recognition algorithm that you can use to identify and search/sort photos according to detected faces.

Picasa was one of the first programs my wife looked at when starting this and the Google Gets Into Everything integration is what made her immediately uninstall it.

# ? May 6, 2015 01:54

Squish: Nov 22, 2007; Unrelenting.; Lipstick Apathy

I guess Mrs. Clark2 could block it via firewall? The faces recognition thing is pretty handy.

# ? May 6, 2015 16:22

10bux: Sep 10, 2008

I'm looking for the best FREE video player. Preferably something that supports a ton of codecs, easy to use, and you can play multiple videos at the same time. I like windows media player but you can only have 1 video playing at a time right?

Err totally forgot about VLC, guess I'll give that a shot.

10bux fucked around with this message at 20:39 on May 10, 2015

# ? May 10, 2015 20:36

Nostalgia4Dogges: Jun 18, 2004; Only emojis can express my pure, simple stupidity.

Yup VLC is still king as far as I know

Hasn't followed the trend of being an awesome free program for a long time and then all the sudden costing $50 or being full of ads/spyware

# ? May 10, 2015 20:42

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; ...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. �Bertrand Russell

Video players were discussed somewhat recently in the regular Windows Software thread starting around here:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3137721&pagenumber=558&perpage=40#post443012542

# ? May 10, 2015 22:57

SymmetryrtemmyS: Jul 13, 2013; I got super tired of seeing your avatar throwing those fuckin' glasses around in the astrology thread so I fixed it to a .jpg

If you want something that just works with no hassle, VLC is fine, but I prefer PotPlayer with LAV/XY/MadVR for video/audio quality. You can get an easy to install setup with MPC-HC and the other parts by using Kawaii Codec Pack (ignore the anime name).

# ? May 10, 2015 23:21

Alder: Sep 24, 2013

I like CCCP for everything. I have and it tends to update often too. There's always the built-in MS media player if you don't want to deal w/third-party programs.

# ? May 10, 2015 23:47

SymmetryrtemmyS: Jul 13, 2013; I got super tired of seeing your avatar throwing those fuckin' glasses around in the astrology thread so I fixed it to a .jpg

Alder posted:

I like CCCP for everything. I have and it tends to update often too. There's always the built-in MS media player if you don't want to deal w/third-party programs.

CCCP hasn't been updated in 10 months. KCP is a more frequently updated version.

# ? May 10, 2015 23:52

Generic Monk: Oct 31, 2011

SymmetryrtemmyS posted:

CCCP hasn't been updated in 10 months. KCP is a more frequently updated version.

I had some issues with CCCP and embedded subtitles too - it wouldn't let me change or disable the subtitle track for some formats. K-Lite seems to do all that fine though.

Generic Monk fucked around with this message at 00:27 on May 11, 2015

# ? May 11, 2015 00:24

neogeo0823: Jul 4, 2007; NO THAT'S NOT ME!!

What's a good freeware replacement for Excel? Specifically, I'm looking for something that can find and conditionally format duplicate entries.

# ? May 12, 2015 14:43

LLJKSiLk: Jul 7, 2005; by Athanatos

neogeo0823 posted:

What's a good freeware replacement for Excel? Specifically, I'm looking for something that can find and conditionally format duplicate entries.

Google Docs Spreadsheets is almost identical to Excel except for some of the formulas are different, but there is usually a 1:1 replacement for most things.

# ? May 12, 2015 14:55

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# ? May 7, 2024 05:04

neogeo0823: Jul 4, 2007; NO THAT'S NOT ME!!

LLJKSiLk posted:

Google Docs Spreadsheets is almost identical to Excel except for some of the formulas are different, but there is usually a 1:1 replacement for most things.

I'm looking through it right now and I'm not seeing anything to highlight duplicate entries. Am I missing it?

neogeo0823 fucked around with this message at 15:25 on May 12, 2015

# ? May 12, 2015 15:10

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