Here are the release notes for earlier versions of Creative Element Power Tools. For the latest release notes, see Release Notes.

Version 2.9.964, released October 29, 2009.

• All context menu tools are now natively supported on 64-bit Windows; see these notes for details.

• The UAC shield icon now appears next to any context menu tools requiring Administrator-level access on Windows 7 and Vista (64-bit only).

• A bug that prevented some actions from appearing for the * (all files) file type in File Type Doctor has been fixed.

• A few minor bugs have been fixed.

• KNOWN ISSUE: due to a bug in Windows 7, the context menu tools will never report more than 16 selected files. But the tools still work with any number of files; just disregard the number shown in parenthesis in your menus. Earlier versions of Windows are not affected.

• A few minor bugs have been fixed.

• New Affiliate Program - earn money by linking to Creative Element Power Tools!

• You can now hide context-menu actions in File Type Doctor, allowing you to reduce clutter in Windows Explorer without permanently deleting actions you may wish to restore later.

• The speed of File Type Doctor has been improved, particularly during startup.

• File Type Doctor has improved support for the "User Choice Override" system in Windows Vista and Windows 7.

• The Distribute files into subfolders tool can now move files to their parent folders.

• When you use the Quickly Create New Folders tool inside a Folder Shortcut, the new folder is now created in the target folder.

• The Copy folder listing to the Clipboard, Print folder listing, Copy file and folder names to the Clipboard, and Find Duplicate Files tools now include file sizes for files larger than 2 GB in their reports.

• A bug that prevented the Find Duplicate Files tool from reliably saving past searches on Windows Vista and Windows 7 has been fixed.

• A few minor bugs have been fixed.

• You can now copy & paste actions from one file type to another in File Type Doctor.

• The Stamp operation in Power Rename now lets you add file sizes, file paths, parent folder names, and photo dimensions to filenames.

• Registry Agent now works better on 64-bit Windows.

• The Creative Element Power Tools icon now appears in the main Windows Control Panel page on 64-bit Windows. In Windows 7, Vista, and XP (64- and 32-bit), it can be found in the System and Maintenance category.

• Fixed a bug that prevented the Distribute files into subfolders tool from working on some PCs.

• Creative Element Power Tools has a spiffy new installer and uninstaller. Among other things, the new installer will make updates much faster for users of older versions, since it downloads and installs only those files that have changed since the last install.

• A few minor bugs have been fixed.

• Windows 7 (beta) is now supported.

• The Configure Hotkeys has been improved. Keystrokes can now fire the Windows key, put your PC to sleep, and adjust sound volume. And the pause feature allows you to time keystroke playback to the responsiveness of your applications.

• A few minor bugs have been fixed.

• New tool: Distribute files into subfolders - move any number of files into folders (creating them on the fly) named automatically for the file dates, names, types, or metadata.

• You can now easily link (or unlink) one or more filename extensions with an existing file type using File Type Doctor's new Link button.

• File Type Doctor now provides access to the folder background file type, effectively allowing you to customize the context menu that appears when you right-click an empty area in a folder window or on your desktop.

• You can now sort filenames backwards (Z to A) in Power Rename for use with the Re-number operation; see Help for details.

• The Queue tab in Bulk Downloader now shows how many files are in the queue.

• The Raw Mode option in the Hotkeys feature is now the default when using Windows Vista, as this tool may not work properly without it when Vista's User Account Control (UAC) feature is in effect.

• Date comparisons in the Find Duplicate Files tool now work better with non-US date formats.

• A few minor bugs have been fixed.

• A bug that caused the Change Date tool to display an error when working with some folders in Windows Vista has been fixed.

• A few minor bugs have been fixed.

• The Resize Photos plugin can now do image format conversions.

• Power Rename is now faster due to a dramatically-improved conflict resolution mechanism, which includes a Vista-like file replace confirmation dialog window.

• The Create Folder Shortcut tool is now supported on Windows Vista.

• Bulk Downloader can now create new folders on the fly.

• The Find Duplicate Files tool can now search across multiple drives.

• A few minor bugs have been fixed.

• A bug that caused certain links in the Windows Control Panel to stop working has been fixed.

• Vista users will no longer be bothered with a User Access Control prompt each time Creative Element Power Tools automatically checks for updates.

• New tool: Take Ownership - right-click any file or folder and select Take Ownership from the context menu to become the owner of the item (NTFS file systems only).

• In Windows Vista, several tools now automatically switch to Administrator mode as needed, or allow you to manually switch to Administrator mode on the fly, to work with protected files.

• Power Rename now has an Undo feature.

• The Replace feature in Power Rename has been improved.

• Locks in File Type Doctor are now stronger.

• You can now remove all file type locks when uninstalling Creative Element Power Tools.

• In Windows Vista, the Open a Command Prompt in any folder tool now supports being run with Administrator access.

• It's now easier to change the keyboard shortcut letter for the Quickly create new folders tool. (See Help for details for Windows Vista.)

• Folder tools now appear in context menus for drives.

• A bug that prevented some context menu items from appearing for folders right-clicked in the tree pane in Windows Vista has been fixed.

• All tools are now digitally signed.

• Several minor bugs have been fixed.

• New Plugin: Resize Photos

Version 2.8.885, released October 3, 2007.

• All changes in File Type Doctor, including icons, now take effect immediately.

• You can now search for text in binary Registry values in Registry Agent.

Version 2.8.884, released September 29, 2007.

• New feature in Power Rename: use Switch to exchange the first part of a filename for the last.

• New feature in Bulk Downloader: use Search and Replace to automatically replace text in generated URLs so you don't have to modify URL lists by hand.

• New feature in File Type Doctor: after turning on the Show in Explorer's New menu option, you can now choose whether Explorer creates a new file, uses a template, or starts an application.

• The Lock & Unlock and Change Icon features in File Type Doctor have been improved.

• The Quickly create new folders and Clear out the Temp folder tools have been improved.

• A bug that caused an administrator warning to appear on Windows 2000 and Windows Me has been fixed.

• A few other minor bugs have been fixed.

Version 2.7.876, released June 18, 2007.

• The Re-number feature in Power Rename has been simplified and enhanced. (See Help for details.)

• A bug in File Type Doctor that prevented changes to icons of certain file types from being saved in Windows Vista has been fixed.

• A bug in Control Panel that made it impossible to see all the tools until the window had been resized has been fixed.

• The Raw Mode (previously Advanced Method) feature in the Configure Hotkeys tool is now smarter about how it handles quotation marks and symbols.

• A few other minor bugs have been fixed.

Version 2.7.853, released April 12, 2007.

• A bug in the Parse Web Page feature of Bulk Downloader has been fixed.

• Bulk Downloader is now smarter about how it handles URLs when you right-click Internet Shortcuts.

• A few other minor bugs have been fixed.

Version 2.7.848, released March 27, 2007.

• Minor bugs have been fixed in File Type Doctor, Bulk Downloader, and the Change File Dates tool.

Version 2.7.847, released March 2, 2007.

• Support for expandable string values has been improved in Registry Agent's Search-and-Replace feature.

• You can now right-click Internet Shortcuts for quick access to File Type Doctor (either for the Internet Shortcut file type or the protocol used by the selected shortcut).

• A few minor bugs have been fixed.

Version 2.7.844, released February 5, 2007.

• A bug in the Add Stamp feature of Power Rename that prevented it from working as expected in some circumstances has been fixed.

• The Clear out the Temp folder tool has been improved to work more reliably on Windows Vista.

• The Search and replace Registry entries tool now adds two context menu items to Registry patch (.reg) files.

• The Quickly create new folders tool does a better job of keeping out illegal characters in folder names.

• The Change file dates, FTP files on the fly, and Copy or Move files anywhere tools now appear in Windows' Alt-Tab list and on the taskbar, just like the rest of the tools.

• A bug that caused the Windows Control Panel to open slowly on some Vista PCs has been fixed.

• A few other minor bugs have been fixed.

Version 2.7.835, released January 29, 2007.

• File Type Doctor has been refined and improved for better Windows Vista support.

• The Copy file and folder names to the Clipboard tool now has an option to turn off filename paths.

• The Change File Dates tool has been streamlined.

• The Configure Hotkeys tool has a new Advanced Method option which is faster, more reliable, and usable in more types of applications.

• You can now clear temp files manually any time you like with the Clear out the Temp folder tool.

• The Quickly create new folders tool now works in File dialogs in Windows Vista.

• The Change the Registered Owner tool is now supported in Windows Vista.

• Several minor bugs have been fixed.

Version 2.6.821, released January 9, 2007.

• A few bugs have been fixed affecting the Clear out the Temp folder, Quickly create new folders, Bulk Downloader, and Registry Agent tools, and some minor changes were made to improve performance on Windows Vista.

Version 2.6.820, released January 4, 2007.

• Bulk Downloader can now follow links in web pages and parse those linked pages for images, files, or links.

• You can now right-click any file type or action in File Type Doctor for a peek into what makes the file type work. Links make it easy to search the Registry or the Web for information related to the selected item.

• Several minor bugs have been fixed.

Version 2.5.811, released October 24, 2006.

• A bug causing multiple browser windows to appear during the registration process (when the Get Code button was clicked) has been fixed. (This affected only some PCs.)

• The Change file dates tool now appears in context menus for folders as well as files.

• The Browse button in Power Rename now defaults to the last folder that was browsed.

Version 2.5.808, released October 8, 2006.

• The Copy file and folder names to the clipboard tool has been improved to support most common image formats (TIF, GIF, PNG, BMP, and so on) when calculating image dimensions. To use this feature, click the Add details link in the Creative Element Power Tools Control Panel, and turn on JPG Width and JPG Height.

• The Comparator tool now can recurse subfolders to include all the contents of selected folders for comparison. The Comparator window has also been further streamlined.

• The Open a Command Prompt in any folder tool now supports Microsoft's new Windows PowerShell, as well as a custom command prompt if you prefer a third-party terminal application.

• Fixed a few bugs in the previous version, including one that prevented the Creative Element Power Tools Control Panel from opening on some Windows XP machines.

Version 2.5.800, released September 23, 2006.

• Creative Element Power Tools now fully supports Windows Vista (RC1 and later). Of course, since Vista is in beta status at the time of this release, so is Creative Element Power Tools when running on Vista. Make sure to read About Security in Windows Vista in the Creative Element Power Tools help for further details.

• The visual styles used by Creative Element Power Tools have been updated to look more modern on Windows XP.

• New Tool: File Type Doctor, used to create or modify associations between documents and applications.

• New Tool: Change file attributes, which allows you to quickly change the Read Only, Archive, System, or Hidden attributes of a file or folder.

• You can now add extra details to the listings created by the Copy file and folder names to the clipboard tool, such as date, size, attributes, and even MP3 tags and extended JPG data.

• Bulk Downloader now has more flexible options in the Parse Web Page tab.

• The Remove unwanted items from Explorer's New menu tool has been removed, its functionality having been supplanted by a feature in the new File Type Doctor tool.

• A bug causing the FTP To tool to ignore the requested directory under certain circumstances has been fixed.

• A new auto-update feauture helps ensure you always have the latest version of Creative Element Power Tools.

• Several minor bugs from the previous version have been fixed.

Version 2.1.720, released March 22, 2006.

• The FTP To tool has been improved, and now includes full support for sending entire folders and making non-passive (PORT) connections to remote servers. You can also export connection profiles, making it easy to deploy FTP connections across many PCs.

• You can now right-click completed downloads in Bulk Downloader to open them with their default applications or show the downloaded files in Windows Explorer.

• Several minor bugs have been fixed.

Version 2.0.715, released February 9, 2006.

• Bulk Downloader now supports third-party download accelerators for faster downloading of large files.

• A minor bug affecting the registration system has been fixed.

• A bug causing Find Duplicate Files to act strangely has been fixed.

Version 2.0.712, released January 7, 2006.

• The Quickly Create New Folders tool can now optionally open newly-created folders.

• A minor bug affecting the installer has been fixed.

• A bug causing Registry Agent to stop at certain keys has been fixed.

• A minor bug affecting the Bulk Downloader queue has been fixed.

Version 2.0.707, released December 14, 2005.

• Three new tools for use with file dialogs: Show the full path in file dialog title bars, Quickly access recently-used folders, and Save file dialog size and view settings.

• New Tool: Comparator, used to compare files, folder listings, or lists of any kind.

• New Tool: Show shortcut targets, for use with Windows Shortcuts.

• New Tool: Delete in-use files, a handy way to remove certain types of spyware and virus-infected programs.

• New Tool: Create folder shortcuts, which exposes a little-known Windows power-user feature.

• New tool: Quickly select files, affording easy file selection with filename wildcards.

• Power Rename can now add date stamps to filenames (including EXIF data from digital photos) and insert text at an arbitrary position in filenames.

• The Change file dates tool is now able to set file dates based on file metadata (such as EXIF information in digital photos).

• Downloads queued in Bulk Downloader are now removed automatically as they're downloaded; no need to manually clear the queue!

• Registry Agent is now faster.

• Fix the Windows Search tool has been improved, and now works on network paths and even file dialogs!

• The Open a Command Prompt in any folder tool can now be invoked by right-clicking an empty area in an open folder or on the Desktop.

• A bug that prevented some files from being deleted by the Clear out the Temp folder tool has been fixed.

• The Quickly create new folders tool now works on network paths and file dialogs.

• The Disable Autoplay for CD, DVDs, and removable drives tool now offers control over the Autoplay feature on a drive-by-drive basis.

• All context (right-click) menu tools have been upgraded. The number of files selected is now shown right in the menus, and the tools themselves work better.

• Every tool now remembers that last dozen things you've typed into each box.

• A bug preventing the Browse buttons from working on some systems has been fixed.

Please see Frequently Asked Questions for issues concerning installing and registering the software.



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This document and all components of Creative Element Power Tools are copyright (c)1998-2010 Creative Element^tm. All rights reserved.