Review
CanOpener 4.0

CanOpener 4.0
Abbott Systems
1-800-552-9157
Price: $65.00
http://www.abbottsys.com

There are many utilities that you are all familiar with and that you use frequently when working with your Mac. If you haven’t tried CanOpener 4.0, it’s time to do so.

Developed by Abbott Systems, CanOpener 4.0 continues a tradition of providing Mac users with an excellent tool for working with different applications, files, folders, graphics or items that may be damaged, missing data or formatting info. How many times have you gotten that familiar message: “Could not locate the application program that created the document…”? Well, with CanOpener 4.0, there’s no longer a problem. Open CanOpener, select the file or item from the list located in the upper left hand corner (File List), click on it and the type of contents will be displayed in the upper right corner (Contents Area). Select the item that you wish to open, text – pictures – sounds, and the contents will be displayed on the bottom part of the window (View Area). You can select whatever part of the recovered item that you wish to save or just save the entire item. How’s that for simple ease of use?

CanOpener 4.0 reads TEXT plus over 30 different picture formats including DOS and WINDOWS files: BMP, CGM, CUT, EPS, GIF, ICON, IFF, IMG, JPEG, PCX, PICT, RAW, RIFF, RIX, TIFF, XBM, XWD, Lotus BIT/RLE, Lotus PIC, MacDraw, MacPaint, PC Paint, Photoshop, PhotoCD, Pixel Paint, QuickTime Movies, Silicon Graphics RGB, Sun, Targa. You can use drag and drop on a file, or folders full of files as CanOpener now lets you do bulk extraction using any of the special text extraction filters. You can extract names, URLs, telephone numbers, email, IP and Web addresses, strip HTML coding, even remove extra carriage returns and blank spaces from email and Web text. CanOpener permits you to extract important sentences such as questions or anything containing $’s and numbers.

For example: You want to scan through a document to find a particular URL? Use the URL filter, highlight the URL you wish to go to in the View area, hit Return and off you go. (of course you will need an ISP connection and a browser) How’s that for making it easy?

Does CanOpener really work? I’ve been testing it on any file, folder or application that I can try it out on and I haven’t had any problem gaining access. But the real test came when one of My Mac’s writers sent in the monthly column, including a graphic to go along with the text. The only problem was that no matter what I did, I could not open/convert the graphic. It just would not tranlate for me. Until I used CanOpener! I simply dragged the file over to the CanOpener icon on my desktop, and bingo, there were two files listed in the upper right hand box. Double click on the picture file and there it was… the graphic in all its glory staring back at me. Select copy, then close CanOpener, open DOCMaker and paste the picture right where I wanted it. It couldn’t get any easier then that.

Now if there is really a severe problem with the file/folder you’re working with, you may not be able to recover every last bit of text that was there. But, recovering as much as you can is better then not being able to get any of it back at all. Particularly if the information is really important to you or a client.

Abbott Systems even offers the CanOpener User Services Web page. How do you get there? Easy… click on the CanOpener button in the upper right portion of the CanOpener window, and you’re taken there. CanOpener will even open your browser for you. Not bad, huh?

Requirements
CanOpener 4.0 will work on a Mac or a Power Mac, starting with the ‘020s and up, and is compatible with System 7.x and System 8.x.

Summary
A very worthwhile investment for Mac users. You can never tell when you’ll have the need for a program like CanOpener, and it’s always better to be safe than sorry.

MacMice Rating: 4

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Russ Walkowich (editor@mymac.com)

 

Websites mentioned:
http://www.abbottsys.com