ass17

New version released folks, see website, merry christmas! - - - Updated - - - this has now been sorted in the new build available

of course, anything is possible in EWP, consider it done in the next version :-)

Not automatically no, you would have to click to print the coversheet first then the main document.

the coversheets are printed after the main document by default. Just make sure the config options "PrintCoverSheet_Form4 _AfterDocumentPrint" is set to 0 so it doesnt auto print after the main document. then once you have printed the main document, you can manually print the coversheet.

Yes in the config file you can disable printing of coversheets quite easily. with "PrintCoverSheet" set to 0.

Yes, EWP does indeed control the Windows key. There is currently no way to disable it or just allow a specific set of key combos. Its something I could do for the next build of EWP.

Hi, Please can you describe in detail because I'm not sure what you are trying to suggest, thanks

Got it thanks and fixed it, Will release it very soon.

Hi all, Hope everyone had an enjoyable summer and the frantic start to the school year is now over and settled. Just to keep you up-to-date with all thing EWP. Development has come to halt for now becuase there is nothing to do, literally. No new features/fixes reported or from me. The current vrsion is very stable, which has only take 6 years! The JCQ/CIE requrements from 2022 Summer will be used again for 2023, so nothing to do there either. Chances are I will get more emails towards december Jan for Mock periods and then again in March/April for the summer exams. If you can help to spread the word and ask your exams officers to recommend EWP to others when they have conferences, days out, remote training etc, that would be great. The EWP community is growing steadily, and because I dont collect usage data, I'm not able to tell exact numbers of schools using it, but at a guess it's over a 1000 now. As always, if you need advice on using EWP or suggest features or report issues, feel from too via here or the ExamWritePad.com website Thanks

|------------------------| |** Download Now **| |------------------------| What's New/Fixed? Added: MP3 Player and CD Player are pinnable/unpinnable so they can be moved around the screen instead of just being docked. Changed: The Symbol Button has been removed and all symbols have been added to the ‘Accent Characters’ Button. Therefore, these symbols have been split up and three new categories have been created: Scientific, Currency and Symbols. Therefore, the ‘Accent Characters’ button has now been renamed to ‘Accents / Symbols’. If there is no symbol within, you can still press F9 to bring up the Windows Character Map to select the symbol font and insert anything that EWP doesn't have available. The main reason for doing this is because EWP uses the ‘PrintFontFamily’ config option, which will print the document in the configured font only. If you inserted symbols from the cymbal font, these would be converted to the ‘PrintFontFamily’ font and therefore look incorrect. To override the ‘PrintFontFamily’ and use the fonts contained in the document when printing, set ‘PrintFontFamily’ to nothing (leave the font box empty). Also with this name change, the config option to disable the button has been renamed from ‘Disable_Ribbon_Btn_CharMap’ to ‘Disable_Ribbon_Btn_AccentsSymbols’. Fixed: MP3 Player now fits within its sidebar to accommodate smaller screen resolutions. Fixed: When pressing Print with any sidebar open, the sidebar disappears and you have to press the Print button again to activate it which is cumbersome. Fixed: Open an ExamText file, then press Print and Close, some values would be highlighted in red even though there were values inside them. Added: Automatically insert the user's candidate number from a specified Active Directory field/attribute. This will require you to use the ConfigEditorGUI to fill in the following options: AD_Auth_User = {use any AD account, preferably one that has the lowest permissions} AD_Auth_Pass = {password for above account} AD_GetCandidateNames = 1 AD_GetCandidateNumberFromADField = {select from ‘Description’ or ‘employeeID’} AD_LDAPServer = {Server name or IP address} AD_OU = {distingushedName of the OU you wish to search within} for example: OU=Pupils,DC=example,DC=co,DC=uk Added: The Ribbon bar will now hide separator/divider bars if no buttons are visible in between, likewise if all the buttons/drop-downs on a tab are disabled, the tab will now be hidden also (The only tabs that can be completely hidden are Insert, View and Narrator). Fixed: Config option ‘PrintCoversheet’ if set to 0 (disabled), would still show the print coversheet buttons and allow printing. Fixed: Config option ‘PrintCoversheet’ if set to 0 (disabled), would still auto-print the coversheet if either config option ‘PrintCoverSheet_Form2_AfterDocumentPrint’ or ‘PrintCoverSheet_Form4_AfterDocumentPrint’ were set to 1 (enabled). Fixed: When clicking the ‘New’ button, the labels for ‘last auto-backup’ and ‘last auto-save’ are not reset on the ‘Help’ tab. Fixed: Narrator voice selection has been disabled when narration has started and is re-enabled once you click on stop or the narration has run its course. Fixed: Using a colon in the Exam Subject on the Candidate Information Window would cause the auto-backups to fail. Added: Added new shortcut key combinations for CTRL + [ (decrease font size by 1), CTRL + ] (increase font size by 1), CTRL + E (centre the selected text), CTRL + L (left-align the selected text), CTRL + R (right-align the selected text), CTRL + J (fully justify the selected text). Also, shortcuts for subscript and superscript have been added. CTRL and = will result in subscript and CTRL + SHIFT and = will result in superscript. Fixed: On the MP3 Player sidebar, double-clicking on the blank list of MP3 files will now prompt you to browse for a folder to select. Fixed: If you have an MP3Player_PreloadPath specified in your config file, it will now disable the drag/drop on the audio list box and double-click to select a folder function. This is so the user cannot deviate from the predetermined list of files. Fixed: The ‘FIleExists’ and ‘DirectoryExists’ functions would throw an exception if the path parameter were empty/blank. Changed: The text info has been removed within the MP3 Player and has been replaced with a help button so that more information can be displayed on how to use the MP3 player. Added: MP3 Player can now support the following audio formats: AAC, FLAC, M4U, OGG, WAV, and WMA. By default the MP3 Player will only load a folder of MP3 files, therefore to activate other audio formats you need to set the config option ‘MP3Player_AdditionalAudioFormats’ to 1. Fixed: CD Player sidebar now fits within its sidebar to accommodate smaller screen resolutions. Added: Greek Polytonic Cosanants/Vowels/Symbols to the Accents/Symbols sidebar. Added: A help button on the Accents/Symbols sidebar making room to extend the max number of available character buttons from 96 to 104. Fixed: If your Locale language is not set to the US, for example, it is set to the UK, the ‘ZIra’ narrator voice is now hidden so that you only get the speech voices you have installed for your language. Fixed: When exporting an Exam to DOCX format, the footer width would not be 100% of the page width, making it appear more enclosed. Updated: Spire.DOC to version 10.7 Fixed: Accents/Symbols sider now hides all the empty buttons that are not in use for the language you have selected. FIxed: MP3 audio player tracklist has been condensed down to filename only, so you don't have to scroll across to see the name. Added: Config option ‘MP3Player_ShowOnStartup’ has been added so that you can display the MP3 audio player on the first run ready to go. Fixed: ‘Export to DOCX’ feature would result in some instances, where the last paragraph of a double-line spaced document becomes single-line spaced. Added: Accents/Symbols sidebar now has a large preview panel as you move the mouse over a character or symbol. Now I'm off to a well earned holiday, flights and security permitting of course! If you have a major issue, I will respond from Wednesday 20th July onwards..

With the exam season now drawn to a close, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that has supported EWP and spread the word out there (please keep on doing so)! I will be making a few announcements in July which will be posted on the website, Twitter (@ExamWritePad) and sent our via our mailing list (please signup if you haven't, no SPAM or marketing I promise!) Have a great holiday period and again, thank you :-)

This will be useful for others to see: http:// https://sheldnet.co.uk/examwritepad/issues/a-student-has-lost-their-work-on-screen-or-they-have-closed-without-saving-or-the-computer-has-crashed-how-do-i-restore-their-work/ Specifically point #3

Now is the time to do it - Ive enterted EWP in the Bett awards 2023, under the "SEND Resources, Products & Services" category. Hope we get shortlisted!

If you want, I can send you our Profile we dump into the mandatory user profile so you can have a play to see what is different. We don't get the profile chooser window pop up. PM your email address and I can ZIP up and share it to you.

This is what we used but nothing stopping you from using it on computer startup and removing the launch EWP bit. https://github.com/sheldog17/Scripting-Snippets/blob/main/ExamWritePad-Launcher.vbs Then all you would need to do is set permissions.

Change the local state file as I’ve stated above, while we are mandatory profs, I’m sure you will know how to make the change permanent to suit your environment.

Just to let you all know that I have implemented a mailing list on the EWP website (scroll down the page) https://sheldnet.co.uk/examwritepad/get-in-touch/ This is so you can be informed or any important news or new releases by email, rather than just relying on EduGeek or the EWP website. I also now have a twitter account @ExamWritePad so that you can follow anything posted on the website will auto push to twitter.

If it is specific to the build of EWP and not your environment, you could test the new version to see how it performs before allowing it into full pupil use. What we do here is utilise the start-up scripts to copy EWP to the local PC on start-up (or shutdown if you prefer), then change permission to read-only, so they cannot delete or modify anything. deliver a desktop icon to EWP upon login.

We have fixed it ourselves using a login script which alters the 'local state' file stored in the users profile. The line we alter is: "user_accepted_account_management":true,"user_name":"[email protected]" and change the email address to the login users own email address. Popup box now gone away!

Hi, Not had any reports of this and I would be interested to know, what version this applies to? And also what people have done to fix it? The first thing that screams out to me is programs/policies like applocker or windows defender SmartScreen.

Yep it will do in the next version as I did realise that afterwards lol.

What’s New/Fixed? UPGRADED: TextControl has been upgraded from v29 to v30, therefore Keyoti spellchecking has also. ADDED: **MP3 Player** – You can now play MP3 files from a specified folder or via drag/drop, removing the need to use an external audio application. You can disable the button as normal and preload the MP3 Player with a specific folder of MP3s using the config option ‘MP3Player_PreloadPath’. Take a look via the button on the 'View' tab. ADDED: EWP will now detect whether TextControl is in landscape or portrait when loading a saved ExamText file. ADDED: If you wish to skip checking that the correct Assembly files/DLLs exist, you can now disable that check via “AssemblyChecking” set to 0, in the ConfigEditorGUI. ADDED: Ability to disable the Test Printer button on the splash screen to stop students from abusing it. ADDED: Ability to override the printing font colour when using extra time count highlighting, so that the font colour for extra time text is distinguishable. ADDED: Support for inserting SVG images FIXED: When opening the candidate information window during an exam, and then closing it, the auto-backup and auto-save functions stop working. FIXED: When Clicking on ‘New Document’ there would be no way to cancel the action in order to carry on, therefore forcing you to save the existing or discard it before starting new. FIXED: If you inserted an image that was only just larger than the document width, It would not ‘fit to page’ via the right-click context menu. FIXED: If an image were larger in height than its width, it would not scale correctly when selecting the ‘fit-to-page’ option. FIXED: If you inserted an image that was only just larger than the document width, It would not ‘fit to page’ via the right-click context menu. FIXED: If an image were larger in height than its width, it would not scale correctly when selecting the ‘fit-to-page’ option. FIXED: The candidate information window was visible on the taskbar and therefore could be closed via the taskbar and via the ALT+TAB combo. This screen on launch should not be closed other than via the Save/Exit buttons otherwise it could interrupt the flow of the launch sequence and cause unwanted errors or messages to appear. FIXED: The windows keys and CTRL+ESC keys were allowing the Windows Start Menu to appear, these have now been disabled properly while EWP is running. FIXED: When inserting an image, it should auto-scale to ‘fit the page’ if larger than the page size. FIXED: If the quick formatting bar was visible and you moved the mouse quickly, it would stay on screen over the top of anything else that may be visible like print preview or sidebars. FIXED: On cancelling the question to restore a backup from the backup history screen, it would still try to load the restored version. FIXED: On restoring a previous version, when viewing the candidate information screen, some values would be highlighted in red even though there were values inside them. FIXED: Print Control kept on resetting the visibility to true of the preview document, when already visible. FIXED: Exam board dropdown, in the candidate information window, would not turn red in error if no board was specified when trying to save and close. FIXED: Subscript and Superscript were never high enough/low enough in character height or using a smaller font. FIXED: Using the Insert Image dialog, if you press cancel it would return an error. FIXED: When printing a large document over 100+ pages, a ‘No printers installed’ warning would appear, and the page count would not move above 100, thus no printing was achieved. FIXED: When in fullscreen mode, pressing F9 to launch the Windows Character Map, would result in the CharMap app staying behind the main window and not being accessible. FIXED: When the quick formatting bar is near the top of a document page, it would disappear underneath the ribbon bar. FIXED: The debug log would lockout and stop logging after the auto-backup and auto-save timers had fired their first run. FIXED: When inserting a ‘symbol’ and closing the dialog, the focus didn’t return back to the document so in some cases the symbol font would continue to be used when typing. FIXED: The text description on the ‘Choose Page Colour’ sidebar was editable and could be deleted. CHANGED: The Insert Image dialog window will now allow selecting any of the compatible images rather than having to select the appropriate individual filter each time. CHANGED: Each Messagebox control that offers a question now has a more appropriate selection of answers, that answer the question without reading it, rather than the previous Yes/No/Cancel answers. CHANGED: Candidate Information Window button text has changed from ‘Exit’ and ‘Save & Exit’ to ‘Close’ and ‘Save & Close’. CHANGED: The default margins are now set to 25mm as per MLA guidelines, and also by other popular word processing software. CHANGED: On the candidate information window, the text labels at the bottom have been tweaked to now one simple line instead of two. CHANGED: PrintFontSize config option has changed its upper limit from 72 down to 24. No need for anything higher than that for official exams. If you wish, for whatever reason, to override the upper limit, you will have to alter the setting outside of the ConfigEditorGUI manually. CHANGED: MessageBox dialog icons are more uniform and consistent. Also, the main background colour has been tweaked to an off-white to make it stand out from the main window. REMOVED: Schema Checking against ExamText files has been removed so that any version of an ExamText will load without issues. How to Download Via exwamwritepad.com website // Built-in updater // links in my signature Disclaimer Always test EWP within your own test environment and report back to me any issues you have, before releasing this into a live production environment.!!

Just a quick update folks, For those likely to be using any version of EWP from this year (22.xx.xx.xxxx) for example, will have a issue that will affect the auto-saving and auto-backups from running. The issue has been highlighted by myself and another school where if you open up the candidate information window at any pointy during the exam, not at start-up or you ask it to load at start-up, it pauses the timers for auto-save and auto-backup as expected, but when you close the window, the timers are not reinitialised and therefore stop running, thus no auto-saves or auto-backups. The only way to fire them back up and working again is to press print then close the print preview window. This issue has been fixed for the new build out next week, and I appreciate its not ideal during the middle of an exam period but I've had a few schools testing this for me, as well as myself in a live environment and the results have been positive, no issues to so far... I will be releasing the version this weekend and as always, please spend time doing your own testing before putting it into a live production environment. If you wish to view the release notes of the next release in advance, the documentation is live on the EWP website and is updated live as and when I find something to fix or have made changes. Thank you

The default option in EWP is to delete backups older than 48 hours when launched. These are stored in the ProgramData folder so won’t get deleted if using DelProf2. You have the option to script something to completely clean out the folder or manually do it, not that you would :-)

With that version being so old, I’ve forgotten how it was created and certainly dont have the codebase to help further, sorry. Please upgrade to the latest version from the ExamWritePad website.