PageFour Help - Document Importer

Picture this. You've just downloaded a new piece of software from a very dodgy looking web-site called www.softwareforwriting.com. You were suckered in by the sexy screen shots and amazing set of features that seem to promise everything you ever wanted in a word processor. The installation runs flawlessly - you're impressed already. You open PageFour from the very attractive and colourful new icon on your desktop, and what do you know? It really is everything you ever wanted!

But sadly, there is a problem. All twenty seven folders of your fourteenth novel, not to mention the character summaries and multiple endings are buried in Word documents and text files somewhere nine folders deep on your D drive. Do you really have to move, or copy and paste all those documents?

Of course not. Thanks to the excellent feedback from our equally excellent beta testers, this little problem was quickly nipped in the bud. The PageFour Document Importer will do the work for you, transferring all your Word documents, Text files, and Rich Text documents into PageFour.

The import process converts these documents to RTF files, which maintain all your existing formatting, and are fully readable by other word processing packages. Your old files and documents remain untouched, so you never need to worry that PageFour will interfere or corrupt these files in any way.

It really is that simple.

To open the Document Importer, click the Import button on the toolbar, or select the Import Documents option on the Tools menu. The Document Importer, comprising three separate panes, should be simple to understand.

The middle pane provides a tree structure of every folder on your computer. Anyone who is familiar with Windows Explorer, or comfortable browsing for files and folders through other software applications, will have used a similar feature before. You simply browse through the tree to find the folder you wish to import, or the folder that contains some of the documents you wish to import. Alternatively, you can type or paste the folder path into the edit box under the file tree, and click the button on the right to open the folder.

After selecting a folder, the pane on the right will become populated with files available for import. These will be either Word documents (.DOC files), Rich Text documents (.RTF files), or plain Text files (.TXT).

The first pane presents options that allow you to filter which type of documents you wish to import, how you wish to import them, and which notebook and folder they are to be imported to.

You have the option of choosing Word documents (doc files), Rich Text files (rtf), and plain Text files and filtering the folders and files accordingly.

For example, if you are only interested in Word documents, unchecking the Rich Text files and Text files check boxes will display only Word documents in the Documents list on the right, and import only these type of documents.

Prior to importing, there are two methods of specifying what you wish to import:

Selecting a single document or multiple documents from the Document list will import just these specific documents.

Selecting a folder from the tree structure in the middle pane will import all documents in that folder that fit the filter criteria you specified earlier. If you had specified All sub folders as an import option, every folder within the folder you have selected will be searched as well, and should they contain any appropriate documents, they too will be imported.

Before running the import process, you should specify which notebook and folder the documents and files are to be imported to. The list to choose from will be every available notebook, plus a notebook called 'Imported Documents' which may or may not exist. If you select this notebook, it will be created during the import process. Remember, you can always move the imported pages or folders later by using the Cut and Paste, or drag and drop options in the notebooks. After you select a notebook, the folder list will change to list every folder within that notebook. If you decide not to chose a folder, the documents will be imported into the top level of the selected notebook.

Selecting the Import button of the left will launch the import process.

During the import, should pages of the same name already exist in the notebook, new pages with an incremented name will be created.

In this way, no page will be overwritten, and you can decide whether to keep both pages or delete one at a later time.

Tip 1: Word documents can only be imported if Word is installed on your PC. This is because Word itself carries out the conversion, rather than PageFour. To import the files saved as DOCX (the newest Word format), your version of Word must be able to open and read these files.

Tip 2: If you attempt to import Word Documents that you have password protected, you will be prompted to enter your password as each file is imported.