Personal Knowbase 4.1.3

Overview

Personal Knowbase is a comprehensive indexing tool designed to organize your files according to tags and keywords. Irrespective of how messy your hard drive is, you will be able to find that pudding recipe, or a list of birthdays of your friends and relatives.

All those note managers and personal notebooks are handy at the beginning, but at times you have so much work you simply don’t have time to compartmentalize and organize files in folders. I have so many work directories I sometimes get lost trying to find a file I think I must have. Personal Knowbase answers those issues. Your notes and files get condensed and catalogued so you can find whatever you are looking for in a matter of seconds.

Installation

Personal Knowbase installs seamlessly, even in Sandbox. If you are the security paranoid kind, disable spell check at installation and the program installs in sandbox just fine.

There are no special requirements for the program. You can also install this program on a USB stick for ultimate portability.

Features

Here is a brief outline of what Personal Knowbase can do for you:

• find relevant files using keywords combine keywords with AND, NOT, OR operators
• record text in articles of any size create hypertext links
• associate internet addresses with articles
• link to Internet addresses
• tag the commonly used articles
• protect your data with passwords
• generate article and keyword reports
• find and replace text strings
• find and sort articles by dates
• check spelling
• rich text edit articles
• store any amount of articles
• imports/export to and from Cardfile, HTML, RTF, CSV and custom formatted files
• drag text blocks to create new articles

Interface

While the interface is quite dull and unimpressive, and the program has a more or less smooth learning curve, it is very well worth a try. The program opens with a nag screen until you buy the license. Then you are suggested to take a look at the Tutorial and run through the sample file, which is exclusively valuable in the case of this program. The step-by-step tutorial, you will learn how to handle the powerful features under the PK’s hood. Once you get the basics out of the way, interface is very easy to navigate and manage multiple notes at one to organize, tag and do all sorts of things with your files.

Pros

You get to eliminate the mess on your hard drive by structuring and compartmentalizing your notes, articles, research, recipes, addresses and all sorts of information you need to organize. The space is limitless, so you can open many notes at once. Finding anything becomes very easy with Personal Knowbase, as long as you take the time to read the tutorial.

We loved the keyword and tagging features, as well as the possibility to link to Internet addresses and emails. The Tutorial is comprehensive and very helpful.

Cons

The program suggests a learning curve, which takes some patience and attention to detail. The GUI is plain and uninspiring, which is not a con per se, rather a suggestion to developers. Technically advanced users will feel at home with this application while novices will need some time to get used to the features and discover the program’s features for ultimate control over their files.

With too many windows open, navigating through them becomes somewhat challenging, so it is better closing the ones you don’t need.

If you do not tag your files when creating them, they will most likely be searchable via keywords only.

Alternatives