Glenn Alcott Software

Utilities for Windows
Compatible with all Windows versions from XP onward

Thank you for visiting this site, where you will find useful utilities to enhance your experience while working in Windows. All of the programs have been rated 4 stars or higher by ZDNet Software Library, a leading software distribution site.

Below is a brief summary of the programs. Full descriptions are in the individual program pages, where you may download a trial version.

The trial versions are fully functional for 15 days after installation, and contain complete instructions on payment and registration. These instructions are also available on the How to Purchase page.

For any questions please email me at galcott@nyc.rr.com.

Directory Printer	Print and export listings of files and directories, with many formatting options
Directory Compare	Compare, synchronize and manage directories
Super Text Search	Search files for any text, including powerful wildcard searches. In plain ASCII text files, text can be replaced.
PDF Converter	Convert documents and images to PDF, convert PDF to text, extract images from PDF
PDF Merge-Split	Merge or split PDF files, edit PDF document properties
Power Edit	Text editor for multiple files of any size, with many powerful features - excellent replacement for Notepad

Directory Printer 4.1

Directory Printer enables you to print or export directory (folder) listings, a capability which is not provided by Windows itself. Features include:

Print file list for single directories or entire trees. When printing trees, the number of levels of subdirectories printed can be specified.
Choice of fields to print (long and short file name, file type, size, date/time, attributes, version information, image information, MP3 artist/title/duration, MS Word/Excel title/subject/author).
Sort by name, extension, file type, date/time or attributes
Prints total number and size of files.
Option to print summary listing (subdirectories only, without files).
Option to filter files by date.
Print in any of three different column formats, using any available font.
Ability to export to ASCII text, HTML, or comma-delimited files (which can be imported into word processing, spreadsheet or database programs).
Print preview available.
As an alternative to the regular listing, a tree view similar to the view in Windows Explorer can be printed.
Appearance of the program can be changed by choosing one of 60 provided skins.

Directory Compare 2.3

Directory Compare provides a comparison of the contents of two directories (folders) and the ability to synchronize the directories. It includes the following capabilities:

Compare the contents of two directories, optionally including their subdirectories
Copy and move files between the directories or to any other directory
Delete or rename files and directories
Open files in their associated application
Synchronize the contents of the directories
Print listings of the directories
Export listings to comma-delimited or HTML files
Get file version information
Visually compare text and image files
Find and delete empty subdirectories
Save comparision specifications for later re-use
Appearance of the program can be changed by choosing one of 60 provided skins.

Files in the selected directories are displayed side-by-side in a grid. You can choose various display filters to limit the listing to files existing in both directories, files which exist in one directory only, or files in both directories with a different size or date/time. Once displayed, files can be easily selected either individually or in groups and then copied, moved or deleted.

Super Text Search 3.1

Super Text Search is a utility which enables you to quickly search files for text. In plain ASCII text files it also allows you to replace text. You can search anything from a single file to an entire drive for any text you need to find.

Both plain text files (program source code, batch files, HTML files, etc.) and binary files (word processing and spreadsheet documents, PDF files, databases, even executable programs) can be searched, as can files archived inside ZIP, CAB or RAR files.

In addition to simple searches for words or phrases, the program allows you to use regular expressions (as found in Grep utilities, which will be familiar to the more technical among you) to perform more advanced searches including wild cards and various types of pattern matching.

After performing a search, files containing the search text can be viewed, edited or opened in their associated applications. Search results can also be printed or exported.

Power Edit 2.2

Power Edit is a very powerful text editor for Windows. It is a far more functional replacement for Notepad and Wordpad, and an excellent tool for creating and editing Web pages.

With Power Edit you can simultaneously edit many files of large or small size, with lines of any length. You can quickly navigate between files with the simple tabbed interface, and can split each file window to see two views of the same file. The number of simultaneous open files is virtually unlimited.

Power Edit contains all the usual features expected of text editors and several that are unique. The search and replace function is especially powerful, including regular expression handling as well as soundex and approximate searches, which are found in few if any other editors. In addition, the program includes many text manipulation functions which are difficult to find elsewhere, such as removal of leading spaces, position-based text deletion, deletion of blank lines, conversion of data between fixed width and delimited formats, and extraction of e-mail addresses and Internet URLs.

The complete list of features includes:

File Operations

Open multiple files of large or small size, with unlimited line length
Preview files in the File Open dialog
Drag and drop files from My Computer or Explorer
Save all open files at once, save selected text as a file, save a copy of the file
Print and print preview with configurable font, margins, headers, footers, color syntax highlighting
Specify favorite files and folders in two different ways
Create projects to group files together for quick opening
Display file properties dialog
Compare files visually, showing added, deleted and modified lines
Insert file at cursor
Reload current file from disk
Delete current file from disk
View file in Web browser
Email file directly from the editor
Export to Adobe Acrobat PDF format with configurable font, margins, headers, footers
Export to RTF (rich text file) format
Open binary files for viewing only
Automatic timed backup available
When saving files, previous version can be saved as a backup

Editing

Cut, copy, paste, cut and append, copy and append
Unlimited undo and redo
Select word, select line, select all
Delete word, delete line, delete to end of line, delete to start of line
Indent and unindent
Change case of selected text (upper, lower, invert case, proper case, capitalize every word)
Insert date/time
Column (rectangular) blocks available

Search and Replace

Regular expression search/replace
Soundex (phonetic) search
Approximate search (allows for one or more non-matching characters)
Search/replace in current file or all open files
Search/replace in files on disk without opening them
When searching current file, scope can be entire file or from cursor down
When replacing in current file, scope can be entire file, from cursor down or selected text only
Case-sensitive and whole word options
List of search results can be displayed in two different ways
Count occurrences of search text
Delete all lines containing search text
Go to line, go to column
Match brace characters
Set and go to bookmarks

Text Operations

Optional word wrapping
Reformat text within margins
Unformat text (convert to one long line)
Align text left, center or right
Sort ascending or descending, with selectable starting column
Remove leading spaces
Convert multiple spaces to single space
Insert specified text in each line
Delete text from each line by column position or by occurrence of a text string
Automatically insert line numbers into text, with various formatting options
Invert order of lines
Delete blank lines
Insert selected file names into text
Convert data between fixed width and delimited formats
Create list of distinct or duplicate lines
Clean up and reformat HTML using HTML Tidy
Convert text to HTML
Remove HTML tags
Extract email addresses or URLs from text

Other Features

Spell checker with dictionaries available for many languages
Thesaurus (English only)
Syntax highlighting for over 25 languages including C, C++, Visual Basic, Delphi, Java, Perl, HTML and many others
Clip lists available to store frequently used words/phrases for quick insertion into a file
Option to show line numbers
Option to show ruler
Option to show visible markers for spaces, tabs, line endings and right margin
Count words, lines, characters
Create list of all words in a file and number of occurrences of each word
View ASCII table; characters can be inserted into text
View Windows error code listing; copy to clipboard or insert into text
HTML color picker chart
Built-in calculator; results can be inserted into text
Convert numbers between decimal, hex, octal and binary
Run DOS command with output sent to the editor
Add up to 9 external programs to the menu
Display list of all open files for quick navigation
Split window into horizontal or vertical panes for two views of the same file
Configurable keyboard shortcuts, fonts, file assocations
Various options to customize editor behavior
Right-click context menu for file and editing operations

Review by
Synergy Canada -
"Innovative and exceptionally useful"

Read Review

Review by
Kickstart News -
"Fast and the editing window is as clean as anything we've ever seen... One of the lowest cost serious choices... Perfectly stable - rock solid actually... Highly recommended.

Read Review

PDF Converter 3.0

PDF Converter is a utility to do batch conversions of four types:

Convert Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, WordPerfect, rich text (RTF) and plain text files to Adobe PDF files.
Convert images (JPG, GIF, BMP, PNG, TIF, WMF, EMF) to PDF files.
Convert PDF files to plain text.
Extract images from PDF files.

It allows conversion of any number of files at once, without opening them individually. No Adobe software is required to do the conversion.

PDF Merge-Split 1.1

PDF Merge-Split enables you to merge or split PDF files, and to edit some of the document properties. When merging, you may combine entire files or selected page ranges in any combination. This also enables you to rearrange or reverse the pages in a single PDF file. When splitting, you may split a file into single pages, by selected page ranges or by bookmarks.

If you have already downloaded the trial version of a program and wish to register it, you may do so in one of three ways:

1) Pay online at the ordering page. You may pay either by credit card or Paypal.

2) Pay directly to me by Paypal. If you do not have a Paypal account, you will need to create one. The payment should be sent to the email address galcott@nyc.rr.com and should contain the name of the program you are registering in the subject line.

3) Pay by check, cash or money order by printing this Registration Form and sending it to me with your payment. Immediately upon receipt of payment I will email you the registration code.

Please note that if you are registering for multiple users, you must pay the registration fee for each user. Contact me by e-mail for information on site license pricing.

Price List
The following prices are for orders placed online by credit card. For payment directly to me on Paypal or by check, cash or money order the price for each program is $4.00 less.

Directory Printer	$29.00
Directory Compare	$29.00
Super Text Search	$29.00
Power Edit	$29.00
PDF Converter	$29.00
PDF Merge-Split	$24.00

This shows Power Edit with several files open. The names of the open files are shown in the tabs at the top.
The current file is being viewed in split window mode, which offers two independent views of the same file.

This shows a typical listing of two directories being compared.
For files that appear in both directories, any differences in file date and size are shown in different colors.
The check boxes may be used to select files for copying, moving or deleting.

Main Window

Preview Window

Tree View Window

This is the window for converting documents.

This is the window for document options.

This is the window for converting images.

This is the window for image options.

This is the window for merging files.

This is the window for splitting files.

This is the window for setting PDF properties.

This shows the Super Text Search window after a search has been performed.
The top section lists all the files containing the search text.
The middle section lists the individual lines from the currently selected file which contain the text.
The bottom section is where all search options are set by the user.

This shows the file viewer window, where files containing the search text can be
viewed with all lines containing the text highlighted in a user-selected color.

This screen shot shows Super Explorer with two file windows and a preview window open.
The preview window displays the currently highlighted graphics file.
Each window can have its own view settings (details view on the top, large icons on the bottom).

This is an unsolicited review of Power Edit received by email.

Dear Mr. Alcott:

Synergy Canada develops and integrates new media web based products out of Toronto, Canada.

On occasion we review software technology that we sometimes classify as meritorious and well implemented.

I am pleased to inform you that after reviewing the evaluation version of your software, Power Edit 2.11, we have determined that your software is actually a very good text editor for web development on several scripting platforms.

Our scale for evaluation and implementation is as follows;

General Overview: 1 to 10 (10 excellent and 1 being poor).
Usability Scale: 1 to 10 (1 very abstract to 10 being very intuitive).
User Level Rating: 1 to 10 (1 for beginners to 10 for expert users).
Innovative: 1 to 10 (1 not very original to 10 for very innovative).

Each scale represents 25% of the total product rating. Each scale is determined individually by four different users (2 male, 2 female) and an average of each scale is applied to the final score.

Your software has scored as follows:

User (M=male; F=female)	F	M	F	M
General Overview	7	8	7	9	Avg: 7.75
Usability Scale	7	7	8	7	Avg: 7.25
User Level Rating	8	8	8	7	Avg: 7.75
Innovative	8	9	7	9	Avg: 8.25
Total					31.00

The scale is then rounded to the nearest whole number.

In your case, 8.0 is your final score calculation out of a possible 10.

Our scale determined that your software is both innovative and exceptionally useful. Your software should be targeted at intermediate to advanced users.

Power Edit v2.24

Reviewed by: Howard Carson, with contributions by Mark Goldstein, November 2006
Published by: Glenn Alcott Software
Requires: Windows 95 through Vista, 32MB RAM and not much else
MSRP: US$25.00 (PayPal payment), $29 (via credit card or MO)

Power Edit has a reputation as a pure programmer's editor and the rep appears to be justified. You can use Power Edit as a general writing tool, but then you just wouldn't see the program's true power. I reviewed Power Edit, writing and research documents firmly in hand, but also asked contributing reviewer Mark Goldstein (who's a programmer) to have a look at it and put it to daily use for a few weeks.

As my good friend Paul Rochford of Techspertise repeatedly states to anyone who'll listen, "Dreamweaver and FrontPage suck! Real web developers use a powerful text editor to do all their programming!" Paul is correct to a significant extent. The cleanest web page code you'll find is usually that which is produced by a decent programmer working with suitable editor. Clean HTML, PHP and jscript often results in web pages that load faster and offer greater browser compatibility. Certainly as well, combining various methods in order to accomplish different web site development tasks, effects and so on means that web developers are usually better off learning how to code manually rather than relying on the complex workflows involved in getting Dreamweaver, FrontPage and GoLive to perform multidisciplinary programming tasks. For application programmers working in C++, VBScript and other common programming languages, a good quality editing program is frequently the difference between a positive, productive day and a really bad one. Obviously in most situations, coding talent wins the day. Combine the talent—even novice efforts—with a competent editor and good things can happen.

We installed Power Edit on several different workstations and laptops. We gave it a good workout in everything from Windows 98SE through XP. We did not have a chance to try it in Windows Vista (RC2). The Power Edit installer is tiny—3MB or so—and the program installs in less than a minute. The installation includes a nice selection of clip lists (commands, tags and so on that you can copy & paste from the clip list sidebar), and a robust and speedy spell checker. The supplied spell checker installs automatically along with the main program. The spell checker is as limited as you'd expect it to be considering its association with a programmer's editor. There are additional free spell check databases which can be downloaded from the product web site and they really help to fatten the basic database into something quite useful.

The clip list is similar to other such lists found in competing editors. The HTML list is literally an extensive list of HTML tags which can be quickly copied and pasted into your code. With the cursor properly positioned, hit the keyboard shortcut to focus the clip list, use the arrow keys to select the required tag, then hit the Enter key to make the tag appear at the cursor. It's a simple system and reduces or completely eliminates an enormous number of common coding errors.

Power Edit has very few size limits. Editing multiple files containing long lines is part of the basic feature set. The file list is tabbed at the top of the main program window which makes it easy to navigate with either the mouse or via keyboard shortcut. The file window can be split vertically or horizontally to provide two different views of a file—very handy.

Power Edit contains all the usual features expected of text editors and several that are unique. The search and replace function is especially powerful, including regular expression handling as well as soundex and approximate searches, which are found in few if any other editors. In addition, the program includes many text manipulation functions which are difficult to find elsewhere, such as removal of leading spaces, position-based text deletion, deletion of blank lines and extraction of e-mail addresses and Internet URLs.

Cons: The spell checker is speedy because it's quite compact, and that means the word list is comparatively small. Where TextPad is clearly a tool which works equally well for writers and programmers, Power Edit is in our opinion much more focused on programmers. That's not actually a 'Con', but it's worth noting nonetheless. I get nervous when an editing program fails to display an indicator of some sort during a Save. Despite Power Edit's power, the product web site looks like a bit like a refugee from 1994, which is not a great recommendation for what happens to be a very good code editor.

Pros: Power Edit programmer Glenn Alcott has wisely developed his software without extraneous junk, resulting in a very fast little editor. Despite the 'Con' about the spell checking, it works properly. It's hard to ignore the built-in Thesaurus (for programmers who want to write intelligible comments possibly?) which also has a somewhat limited vocabulary. Nevertheless, it's there and quite useful, so prose and letter writers who need help in that area can also put PowerEdit to good use. Long time readers of Kickstartnews reviews are well aware of my personal view that formal word processors are really not the best tool for active writers, and especially not those writers who regularly produce copy for web sites, presentations and a thousand other sorts of projects where page layout is superfluous or otherwise ill-advised. Give me a competent text editor (with robust spell checking) any day—PowerEdit is another fine choice. Alcott continues to do a thoughtful and effective job of developing and supporting the software. The vertical and horizontal split file views are neat and allow you to quickly review various parts of your work without losing your place or even having to refer to line numbers. Power Edit v2.2 is fast and the editing window is as clean as anything we've seen. Code formatting features abound (justification, centering, line inversion, etc., etc.), so serious programmers of all types should find a use for this one. Anybody who is still fighting with Windows Notepad or Wordpad needs to stop right now. There have been superior alternatives for years and Power Edit is also one of the lowest cost serious choices we've seen. Power Edit v2.2 was perfectly stable—rock solid actually—in over two months of regular use. Highly recommended.

Review from download.com (2009)

This handy program lives up to its name with the wide range of file-management tools it offers. Super Explorer's familiar Window Explorer-like interface is easy to follow, and its enhanced viewing capabilities impressively allow you to open four windows and work on multiple folders at the same time. Common file-management tasks such as copying, deleting, and pasting, and their associated keyboard shortcuts are still available, but extra features allow you to change the date and time properties of files and rename groups of files. You'll definitely like the rich set of additional tools to encrypt, compress, and securely delete files. The downside is a short 15-day trial, but this application's numerous file-management features and ease of use are sure to please the user who wants more than the standard Explorer offers.

Review from Smart Computing magazine (2001)

Super Explorer isn't the first program from Glenn Alcott Software to appear in Technology News & Notes, but it is quite possibly the coolest. As its name suggests, Super Explorer is to Windows Explorer what Superman is to the average Joe. Sure, you can use it to browse through your PC's various drives and directories, and it gives you all kinds of neat information about your digital stuff, but Super Explorer doesn't stop there.

The program incorporates lots of basic Windows functions that you'd otherwise have to perform outside Explorer. For example, you can open a preview window and check out the contents of your files without opening them, and that includes graphics files. If you preview a file and want to print it, you can do so straight from Super Explorer instead of browsing to it, opening it, and then printing it. The program has an integrated command line, so you can type DOS and Windows commands without first clicking Start and Run. You can even bring up Windows features such as Calculator, Control Panel or a DOS window without touching your Start button.

But wait, there's more. Super Explorer can also do the work of several third-party utilities. It can convert graphics files to different formats, it can create and open Zip files, and it can permanently destroy files on your hard drive by writing over them (for times when clicking Delete just isn't enough). Super Explorer even has data encryption capabilities, so file security won't be a problem.

In other words, it's a one-stop Windows control center that replaces several add-on utilities, and you can get it for 29 bucks. Now that's super.

Utilities for Windows Compatible with all Windows versions from XP onward

Power Edit v2.24

Utilities for Windows
Compatible with all Windows versions from XP onward