Uninstall printer drivers in Windows7, non responding Excel and Word

In a recent odd problem on Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit machine Word, Excel started to hand/crash when trying to format bold, alter page layout etc. Eventually realised this was not within Word or Excel but seemed to be crashing of the Print Spooler Service [e.g. open another app e.g.  Firefox and choose to print but it then says cannot find any printers ].

Repeated crashing of Print Spooler Service seems to have multiple causes and hence multiple solutions but one of the more consistent is that relates to a bad printer driver and indeed the HP Universal Driver had been installed recently which seems to have a chequered reputation. . The genera advice is to uninstall the Driver and to ensure complete uninstall manually by stopping spooler service,  going to Print Server settings under File  in Print Folder and uninstalling the driver. This is not shown in Windows' 7 Home Premium which seems not to have Print management installed and the alternative of typing Print Management in Search also does not work.

However … if you type printui /s /t2  in a run command box the magically you get a window that lists all the installed print drivers and allows you  select the relevant one and uninstall it. Even if you choose to uninstall package certain services seem left behind e.g. Net Driver HPZ12 but at least these are set to manual.

Tweetcaster and network time

Running Android 2.3 CM7 for some time and suddenly after many months Tweetcaster app stopped working. Initially said time scale out of bounds (this was really a clue) , re-installed app, cleared cache all to no effect. It still said "cannot connect to Twitter. " The official Twitter app worked fine. Eventually the problem was solved by adjusting the android system time to use the network automatic time. Somehow this had become unticked and Tweetcaster then worked. It was the only app that seemed affected by by not using an auto network time.

Notability 4.4 converts office docs to PDF

How do you convert an Office document to PDF while on an iPad? You can purchase additional apps but if you only want to use this occasionally and you have Notability, one of most popular note taking apps, there is another option. While on iPad in something like the mail app, e.g. docx or xlsx email attachment , view it for and choose the “Open in” function and choose Notability. Notability will show importing and the document will be saved as PDF. It can be then reopened in other PDF apps e.g. GoodReader. It does need an internet connection to do the import and conversion as Notability is actually using the Google Docs API to do the conversion in the cloud.

Using Notability in wider iOS iPad ecosystem with Google Drive, Evernote, PDFs and OCR

UPDATE: as of August 2012 there is now an editor for RTF files on the iPad RichText Edit ( Knowtilus ) in app store . This seems a good start for v1 of an app does have some basic cloud sync function for DropSync etc. It also has an export to Evernote and you can choose PDF, RTF, Text or HTML. The HTML and text is entered directly in a note an the RTF as an attachment. You can get RTF files from Noteability into the editor but you may have to use an intermediate app to get from cloud and then use an Open in from another app. Also beware of RTF round tripping to G Drive in terms of conversion from RTF to gdoc format.

Google Drive

Share / Export File formats in Notability

1. PDF
2. RTF

Evernote

OCR

1. Handwriting recognition
2. Searchable PDFs

After reviewing the Notability note taking app on iPad it seems one of the best note taking apps albeit like all it has some limitations in its current format. Some of these limitations are due to the wider iOS ecosystem and some due to the app itself. After experimentation with a number of other apps this blog offers some suggestions of how it could be integrated in with apps to make it more productive.

Google Drive (briefly covered in previous post)

Currently Notability does not support Google Drive directly as cloud provider. The easiest way is gain access is to use a WebDAV gateway or cloud aggregator. Not all WebDAV cloud aggregates seem to work with each WebDAV implementation in each app but the free project https://dav-pocket.appspot.com/ which is solely a WebDAV gateway to Google Drive works well. You will need to register and then in Notability under Cloud providers in settings set the WebDAV Server to https://dav-pocket.appspot.com/docso with username and password.
To get notes from Notability to Google Drive select the note within Notability choose the Share option from toolbar, choose WebDAV this should then list your Google Drive folders and choose the folder you wish to export to. When you export (share) a note it will create a subfolder with the name of the Subject of the Note within the folder chosen for export. As an example id there is a note called “MyLetter” within a subject called “Finance” in Notability on the iPad and on share you choose a Google Drive folder called “My Exported Notes” on share the file will be called MyLetter (with appropriate ending – see below) in a folder called Finance (created by Notability in the share process) within the folder My Exported Notes (created manually by user and chosen for sharing). Any future notes from within the same subject (Finance) will go to the same folder on Google Drive.
Other cloud aggregators such as Otixo (free basic account) will give access to all your cloud providers within one WebDAV gateway

Sharing File formats in Notability

Many will wish to continue to work on files that perhaps they have started from off in Notability. The options (excluding Notability internal file format) for file sharing to the cloud e.g. Google Drive via WebDAV are currently limited to PDF and RTF file format.
If you choose to Share to / Export a cloud destination e.g. Google Drive or Dropbox then you can choose PDF or RTF but if you choose to “Open in” another app on the iPad the PDF is only option.

PDF

If it is typed text within Notability note then the PDF exported is searchable and can be edited in some format with more specific PDF tools that allow annotation, bookmarks etc. either on a PC (accessing the cloud) or directly on the iPad e.g. Readdle PDF Expert. To get it into apps such as PDFExpert it can be either opened from the cloud where you have saved it or directly from within Notability using the Share option at the top of a note and choosing “Open in” then the relevant app e.g. PDFxpert in my example. Each app varies when opening rom a cloud as to whether it keeps a local copy of not (e.g. Office2HD does not but PDFExpert does) so thought will be need to ensure which edited copy is the latest. Any Notability handwritten notes in PDF will not be editable as they will be graphics (see OCR comments below).
It is possible use cheap or free desktop software to convert the PDF file to Microsoft to Word e.g. Nitro 6 (often freely distributed on magazines etc.) and conversion is OK but for more consistency RTF may be better option.

RTF

Many may wish to continue to edit (either on PC, Mac or iPad) a note they have started e.g. an outline of a proposal taken at a meeting on iPad and then it is fully expanded and written later on different platform or more specific app, this usually means Word docx format at some stage and Notability does not support that.
It is possible to do a simple Copy All of typed text from within a Notability note and paste it into another iPad app e.g. Office2HD to produce a Word docx document BUT any formatting does not seem to get copied which may defeat some of the object. The most consistent way seems to be to Share/Export to a cloud server in RTF format then open the RTF note from a word processor on a PC or Mac and re-save in Word docx file format. At that point it can then be shared with co-workers in a normal manner e.g. via Google Drive, Dropbox et or can be edited locally on the iPad in docx format in apps such as QuickOffice or Office2HD. Currently there appear no apps that will edit RTF files on the iPad although some may display with or without formatting but that is no advantage over the PDF option.


If you choose to export in RTF then it is best to turn Off paper on shareas otherwise you may have each line interspersed with a right side carriage return prefixed by a long underscore to mimic a line
There appear no conversion options for running directly on the iPad to convert RTF to docx and although there are in theory cloud services to carry this out accessing them realistically from iPad does not seem feasible. If Google docs format is required not docx then the file conversions can be done in normal way on Google.

Evernote

Evernote is one of the most popular cloud resources for organising and managing notes, associated documents across multiple platforms with specific apps for iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows as well as a web login. Details of Evernote are outside the scope of this article. There is currently no direct support from within Notability for either the Evernote cloud or the Evernote export/file access.
The simplest way to get the note from Notability into Evernote is to have the free Evernote iOS app and from within a note in Notability “Share” and then choose “Open in” (PDF only option) and the choose Open Note in “Evernote”. A new note will be create within Evernote with the title of the Notability note but added to default Evernote Notebook. The PDF will show in line (i.e. not as an attachment) and the Evernote note itself is editable in that you can type above or below the PDF section in line section. If the note was typed in in Notability it should be searchable using the Evernote search facility. [For Notability photos and “scanned” but searchable PDF notes into Evernote via Notability see the OCR section late.].
To get a non PDF version of a note into Evernote you will need to save it to a cloud server and then add it to an Evernote note from within Evernote on either a PC or Mac (little experience of Android) as there is no way of adding it within the Evernote iOS app. Once the RTF (or converted to docx file) is added to a note it is available via Evernote app on the iOS but shows as an attachment and not inline. It can be opened in another app e.g. Office2HD and can be edited BUT this creates a local copy and no direct updating the attachments in the iOS Evernote app. To update the attachment in Evernote either (i) the file would need to be copied back to a cloud server from within the iOS office app or (ii) email the updated file to the Evernote email address. Whichever update route from iOS is chosen a new note from the updated file will be created and the attachment in the original Evernote note updated from a PC or Mac will need to be corrected.

OCR

There are two types of OCR to be considered in relation to Notability (i) handwriting conversion to text and (ii) readable text from scanned documents into a PDF

Handwriting OCR

Notability does not offer OCR directly from handwriting recognition and behaves more as a jpg image. Evernote server does have OCR capability (prioritised for premium customers) but really expects to find jpg image and the for rules for OCR processing seem unpredictable despite the guidelines given by Evernote. Many Evernote users recommend to OCR their files before upload to Evernote.
The easiest way to get OCR of handwriting into Notability on iOS is to use a simple app called MyScript Memo whose main function is to convert handwriting into text. The free version is avaiable to test the basics but for decent amounts of text (multiple pages and more features) you wil have to purchase the paid for version. Use MyScript Memo to collect the handwritten notes and then choose the Export this page (top right arrow). To get the OCR choose as text then convert >>language. The Options are then to
(i) Copy and then paste the text into a Notability note (where any OCR errors can be adjusted)
(ii) Output the converted text directly into a Evernote note by choosing the Evernote service where anew Evernote will be created. You can then paste.
It is also possible to output an image of the handwriting from MyScript memo and send this image directly to Evernote where a new note will be created . The Evernote will attempt to read the image and OCR it to index it for search but this may take some time ( hours) on free service. OCR from iOS and MyScript before upload seems more reliable and correctable if you really wish to OCR handwritten notes.

Searchable PDFs

If a typed document is scanned on the iOS using something such as Readdle Scanner Pro it produces a PDF image that can then be opened in Notability and annotated as required. In Notability a simple “photo” can be inserted into a note as an image. The output from Notability would be a PDF which image content; any text inserted as annotation would be searchable within the PDF. To get a searchable PDF you will need to OCR the scanned image. The iOS app Snap2PDF is capable of doing this at least for simple documents. First scan the document then use the adjustments for contrast and or warp due to page binding etc.. etc. and choose preview and then done. (Get contrast as good as possible.) You can then select OCR option and searchable PDF will be produced (with option of document metadata etc.). After document the PDF is produced you can preview it and then choose to either (i) open it in Notability and later upload it to Evernote or (ii) directly open it in Evernote in which case a new note will be created containing the PDF bu which is searchable ( for any correct OCR). There seems no easy way to know what has been OCR and indexed correctly and what has not.
A word of caution. On the iOS and in the web versions of Evernote the text of the PDF produced from the OCR of the san seems searchable BUT even though the file is visible in the Windows Desktop app of Evernote it does not seem to searched. Whether this something to do with search index for the PDF being held on server or not downloading locally or a software bug is not clear

Send notes to Google Drive from within Notability on iPad

Notability on iPad supports sending to DropBox but not Google Drive. There is support for WebDAV but I have found that using some WebDAV gateways to Google drive (e.g. smestorage and dav-pocket.appspot.com ) currently give errors from within Notability. However the otixo WebDAV implementation does work and allows Notes to be sent directly to Google Drive

• Use Cloud aggregator www.otixo.com
• Create free account (2BG bandwidth / month limit)
• Add Google Drive as a service to your otixo account
• Use the beta WebDAV service https://dav.otixo.com as WebDAV entry in Notability
• Select notes to send in Notability and then choose Share within Notability and then select WebDAV as destination
• Select folder arrow and GDrive (or whatever you named in in otixo) appears as "Folder" within Notability WebDAV account. you can then choose an appropriate subfolder from Google Drive Send to WebDAV then works within Notability and documents ends up in your Google Drive

A comment on Autosync if you choose the WebDAV service, it is not full autosync in that deletions on the iPad are not carried through to Google Drive and they have to be repeated on Google Drive but this is also true for DropBox.