The easiest place to look for a feature is probably through the PC-Com tips that pop up when you load the program.  If these no are no longer loading, you can activate them again by right-clicking the PC-Com icon in your system tray and clicking Options.   There are about 45 tips, and you can quickly look through all of them by clicking the Next button.

If a feature is not covered in the tips, you will find it in the Command List (and the Other Features button), Options, or the PC-Com Tutorial.

How do you use the Insert Text Function?

You can use the Insert Text function by opening the Command List and clicking the Other Features button.  The Insert Text function will let you create your own functions that let you insert custom text or the date and time into any document or e-mail message.

How do you use the Automatic Catalog for custom folders?

The Automatic Catalog will scan your desktop, start menu, and quick launch, and PC-Com will automatically add keywords to files within these folders.  In PC-Com 7.32, you can now have PC-Com scan other folders in addition to your desktop, start menu, and quick launch.  Let's say you want PC-Com to add keywords to all of the files in your My Documents folder.  You open the Automatic Catalog and add this folder to the custom list of folders.

You can open the Automatic Catalog by right-clicking the PC-Com icon in your system tray and clicking Options.

I'm getting an error message right when I load PC-Com

If the error message says something about a missing/outdated file, visit http://www.boletrice.com/missingfiles.html.   From this site, you can download necessary Windows files that are needed to operate PC-Com.

Right-click the PC-Com icon in your system tray (the icon is next to the clock in the bottom right corner of your screen).  Click Options.  Click the Skins category.   Select any of the skins to reset PC-Com's position.

The hotkey is not working.

First thing to do is to verify that the hotkey is turned on.  Right-click the PC-Com icon in your system tray and make sure Turn Off Hotkey does not have a check mark next to it.  If it does, just click it to turn the hotkey back on.  The hotkey you are hitting may be different than what is configured in PC-Com.   Type "options" as a keyword in PC-Com to open the Options screen.   Click the Hotkey category in the left panel, and double check that the hotkey you are using is listed in PC-Com.  For some reason, the Pause/Break hotkey does not always work with Windows 2000.  If you use Windows 2000 you can change the hotkey to a different key from the Options screen.

The Registration is not working.

Make sure you are connected to the internet for every step of the registration process.   If you purchased PC-Com but need to start the registration over, you do not need to purchase it again.  Just click Next until you reach the serial number screen.   Verify that there are no spaces after the serial number.  This usually happens if you copy and paste it.  Double check that the number is entered correctly.   Don't confuse 0's with O's or 1's with l's. 

The screen saver keyword causes the computer to standby.

This problem has happened in Windows ME, but it should work with other versions of Windows. I have not yet figured out why this causes the computer to standby, but it will hopefully be fixed in the next version of PC-Com. You can check for PC-Com Updates by right-clicking the PC-Com icon in your system tray and clicking Check For Update.

I'm getting an error message when I change the skin color of font text.

If you are getting an error message, you might try downloading comdlg32.ocx to your Windows/System folder. You can download this file by going to http://www.boletrice.com/missingfiles.html. If your internet browser asks if you want to save or open the file, select save. Then save the file to your System folder. This is usually C:\windows\system32 or C:\windows\system.

Add keyword to PC-Com menu method returns shortcut path, rather than full target.

When you right-click a file or folder, the Add keyword to PC-Com menu item is supposed to return the target to the actual file. However, if this returns the target for the shortcut, it is either because of an error in the registry or a program you may have used in the past to tweak Windows settings. An example of a program that causes this is one that removes the arrow from shortcut icons. To fix this error, try adjusting the program's settings, or uninstall the program if all else fails.

My macro stops before finishing./How do I stop a macro that is playing?

If a macro stops playing suddenly, it might be because the stop key was pressed when you recorded the macro.  Not pressed to stop the recording, but pressed accidently -- if you pressed the key as a shortcut key to another program.  Changing the stop key to a different key should fix this problem.

The stop key will stop the recording and playback of a macro.  The default stop key is F12.

How do I restore preset keywords?

If you deleted a preset keyword and want to restore it, you can do by opening the Command List (right-click the PC-Com icon in your system tray and click Command List).   Then click the Add button.  For the keyword name, you can really type anything, but you will probably want to name the keyword the same as it was before.   The target for the keyword must be one of the following: