AlomWare Toolbox

One of the most annoying things about starting your work is moving all your app windows to where you want them to be. With AlomWare Toolbox, you can set them to open where and how you like: always on top of others, partial transparency, as a thumbnail version, minimized to the system tray, dimmed, and more.

🎥 Watch a video of this procedure, or just follow the steps below.

1. Set the window state. First, run the application and move and resize its window exactly where you want it to appear. Then middle-click its icon area (top-left of its window) and set any additional options, such as being "Always on top" of all others, or "Transparency".
   Next, middle-click the icon again and select "Opening state > Open like this".
2. Confirm the window's opening options. Next, choose how the window should be identified: its window title when opening, its window title after opening and ready for use, or its app name. Set any options after it's ready, such as sending keystrokes to it, running a DOS command, or running one AlomWare Toolbox's actions. Click "OK" when done to save the state.
3. Done! Test by closing and re-opening the application; its window should open just how you saved it. If you no longer need this saved state, repeat step 1 but choose "Opening state > Open how the Operating System determines".

Nobody likes typing the same things every day, such as your email address, physical address, phone number, logins, canned responses to customers, and so on. You run the risk of making typos to your important clients, and also repetitive strain injury (RSI). With AlomWare Toolbox, you can set shortcut texts that expand to full text.

🎥 Watch a video of this procedure, or just follow the steps below.

1. Create a new action. Select the "Automation" tab, and click the "Action Wizard" button at the top-left of the tab (it looks like a wand).
2. Select the text automation type. From the "Action Wizard" pop-up menu, hover over "Typing automation" and select "Replace typed text".
3. Specify the short trigger text. Specify something that you will remember that will trigger the longer text when typed. Do not use spaces, and note that the trigger is case-sensitive. In this example, we're specifying "ty4" as the trigger.
4. Specify the long replacement text. Now specify the long text to be auto-typed when the short trigger text is typed. In this example, the longer text is the phrase "Thank you for your enquiry about our product."
5. Specify the name for this action. By default, AlomWare Toolbox uses "Type:" and the first 30 characters of the long text, but you can use any name you like.
6. Done! The action is added to the Action List, and you can see its trigger is by typing "ty4". Try it by switching to any other app (like Notepad) and type "ty4". The trigger text is deleted and the full phrase typed in its place.
7. Tip: If auto-typing the full phrase is too slow, you can swap the "Macro: Type keys or use mouse" step with "Keyboard: Paste this text" instead. This won't lose the current text in the clipboard, and the full phrase will be pasted instantly. To do this, select the macro step in the Step List and press the Delete key to remove it. Then click the "Add Step" button to open the Step Chooser window, and scroll to "Keyboard: Paste this text" and double-click it to add it to the action. Lastly, double-click that new step in the list to re-specify the full phrase to be pasted.

There's nothing worse than having some important text in the clipboard but then you accidentally copy something new, thereby losing the other text. AlomWare Toolbox rescues you from this by keeping an unlimited list of copied text so that you're able to re-copy them later or modify them into something new. Important clips can be locked to prevent deletion, and you can convert the text ones to other formats, such as "lower case" to "Title Case", or alphabetizing a list of unordered items.

For privacy, you can also specify clips to never be saved, either by partial text (making the whole clip get ignored) or by the app name where they're copied from.

1. View the Clipboard history. Click the "Clipboard" tab in AlomWare Toolbox. Your list of copied text and images will be there. At the top of the clipboard list is an item in blue called "Session" and the number of clips that it's composed of. This is so you can copy lots of text and have them all together as one bulk text.
2. Modifying a clipboard item. Sometimes you'll want to modify the clipboard text, such as convert it to title case. You can do this from a hotkey (see video) or manually from the Clipboard list. For manually: right-click the clipboard item in the Clipboard list and select "Action" from the pop-up menu.
3. Double-click the modification type. A list of modification actions will open, with a one-line version of the target clipboard item shown in its title bar. Scroll down to find "Convert to title case" and double-click it.
   The selected clipboard text is modified, copied to the clipboard, and put at the top of the list.
4. Do another modification. Right-click the new modified text in the Clipboard list and select "Action" again, but now double-click "Line as ribbon" as the modifier.
   The clipboard text goes inside a nice ASCII art ribbon effect, is copied to the clipboard, and put at the top of the list.
5. Sorting a list of lines alphabetically. In this example, assume we've copied these lines to the clipboard in this order, but we want them to be alphabetical:
   • dog
   • zebra
   • cat
   • rat
   • mouse
   
   Right-click the unsorted text in the Clipboard list and select "Action" and then "Make alphabetical" as the modifier.
   

   

The sorted lines are copied to the clipboard and put at the top of the list.

There's nothing worse than working on a document that you accidentally mess up, be it from deleting data that it still needed, or your PC crashing before you saved it, or whatever other disaster scenario you can think of. A lot of apps have backups built-in, but if not then AlomWare Toolbox provides file versioning with any document or file that you need to open for editing. There's only two requirements: the document or file can only be up to 512 MB in size, and it must be opened with AlomWare Toolbox to be backed-up. Opening can be from the "Files > Backups" tab, or from a hotkey, or from an automated action to make it easy and seamless for you.

🎥 Watch a video of this procedure, or just follow the steps below.

1. Add a file to be backed-up. Click the "Files" tab in AlomWare Toolbox, and then the "Backups" tab. Then click the green plus button to add a file for backing up, or drag-and-drop a file onto the "Protected files" list with the mouse.
2. Optional: Give this first backup a description. Right-click this first backup in the "Version" list, and select "Edit description". You can also just click the version and press the F2 key to edit the description.
   Type your description and click the "OK" button (or press the Enter key).
   At this point, you can simply double-click the file in the "Protected files" list to automatically back it up and open it for editing, and you can end this tutorial here. However, opening AlomWare Toolbox and going to the "Files > Backups" tab will get cumbersome very fast. So, it's better to create an automated action to open the protected file for you. Read on.
3. Create an auto-opening action for the file. Right-click the document in the "Protected files" list and select "Create action to backup and open".
   Give the action a useful name, and end the name with a plus sign so that it gets added to AlomWare Toolbox's system tray icon.
   If you switch to the "Automation" tab, you will see the new action there. You can choose to set a hotkey for the action if you like, by clicking the "Add trigger" button above the Action list.
4. Open the document from the system tray. If you didn't set a hotkey to open the document, you can instead right-click AlomWare Toolbox's system tray icon and open the document from there. The backup occurs silently before opening.
5. Restoring an older backup. To restore an older backup of a file, double-click it in the "Version" list and click the "OK" button. You can also select versions and press the Delete key to delete them. To stop a file being backed up (and remove its backups), select it in the "Protected files" list and press the Delete key. The latest edit will become the current one.
6. Did you know? The backup files made by AlomWare Toolbox don't use the file's normal extension, which is what most ransomware looks for to encrypt your files for payment. This means AlomWare Toolbox's backups are unrecognizable and therefore ignored by most ransomware. Just what you want!