Castell Computers

If you use Microsoft Office but haven’t got the FULL version of Adobe Acrobat, you may be missing out on a crucial ability that can help streamline your interaction with your customers, suppliers, family — anyone!

I’m talking about the ability to generate a PDF.

You’re probably familiar with the advantages of PDFs (smaller, less easily editable, etc.) but haven’t made much use of the format because you’re not sure how to make one yourself.

That’s where PDFCreator comes in. It’s a free, open source tool that installs as a printer driver on your machine.

When you’re ready to create a PDF, all you have to do is PRINT it. When the print dialog box pops up (be it in Word, GoldMine, Internet Explorer, Crystal Reports, whatever!) you simply choose to print to the ‘PDF Creator Printer’. You are then presented with a screen like this:

…allowing you to name the PDF file and select where to save it (along with a few other options.) It then quickly ‘prints’ to the file you specified and you have created a PDF!

You could tweak the advanced options, share the PDF Printer on the network and all manner of things, but that’s more than I’m talking about here. For more information about the PDFCreator tool, visit the PDFCreator web site!

Mailbox X, from my buddy Dexter over at EndUser Software, is better than ever and now supports GoldMine Premium Edition!

What is Mailbox X, you ask? Here’s the short description from EndUser Software:

Mailbox X is a simple tool that allows users to automate the recognition/deletion of invalid e-mail addresses based on returned e-mails from a previous mass e-mail merge. There is no easier way to manage those invalid e-mail records / contact records when it comes to identifying which e-mail is invalid and where they are located in your database. Mailbox X automates everything !

Essentially, it helps you deal with bouncebacks, unsubscribes, bad addresses, etc. etc. It supports all versions of GoldMine from GoldMine 5 on up (SQL or dBase.) It’s a really handy tool that not a lot of people seem to know about. Here are a couple of screen shots to illustrate the capabilities of the tool:

More information can be found here on the EndUser Software Mailbox X page.

It’s worth noting that EndUser Software has lots of other great GoldMine tools as well! Check out the freebies supplied in the GMX Tools package, for instance! Good stuff.

By the way, if you buy anything there, be sure to let them know I sent you! I might just get a few bucks in commission — and it won’t cost you anything extra!