All IDM forums are USER TO USER forums.
Please send bug reports, feature requests and suggestions by email to IDM support - see top of the page.
The IDM support team members do not often look into the forums and rarely answer forum questions. Mofi, the author of this article, has the right to edit every post, delete posts or whole topics, split or merge topics, but I'm just a user like you.
Also all questions regarding registering / licensing / activation / registration / silent installation / deployment of a product of IDM Computer Solutions, Inc. are not answered in the user-to-user forums. For such questions please contact IDM support by email.
Note: When the most left number of the version number of the application changes, you need a new authorization code, for example when upgrading from UltraEdit version 14.xx to version 15.xx. If you have purchased your license within the last 12 months or you have purchased a lifetime license, you get the new authorization code for free. But you need to request it by email from IDM. Your email should contain your registration name as shown in Help - About and if possible the authorization code, the product name and the version this code is for. Or use the appropriate update request form, see
- UltraEdit upgrade request
- UltraEdit for Linux upgrade request
- UltraEdit for Mac upgrade request
- UEStudio upgrade request
- UltraSentry upgrade request
- UltraCompare upgrade request
- UE Mobile upgrade request
- UC Mobile upgrade request
1. Search before asking.
Before you ask something do following:
- Check the help file of the application.
Open the help of the application and look at the Content and Index tab to see if you can find a topic which helps you. Also use the Search of the help to find appropriate help pages. Many dialogs have a Help button. For most dialogs pressing F1 opens the help page for the dialog. Give it a try! - Use the FAQ on this website.
This website has an FAQ page. FAQ means Frequently Asked Question. Maybe the information you need is there. - Use the power tips on this website.
For some special topics, IDM writes Power Tips/Tutorials (UE, UES, UEx, UC, US). Look over the list of power tips to see if there is one which could be helpful for you. There is also a separate power tips page for UEx with just the UEx related power tips. - Check for an update.
If your last paid registration was within 12 months, check for a new version. IDM occasionally releases hotfixes which fix bugs. Click on the Help menu, then click on the Check for Updates item. If you have a firewall, allow the program once (or permanently) to connect to the version database and look to see if there is a newer version.
If there is a newer version, follow the link to read what was changed and how to manually download and install the update which probably solves the problem you were seeing. Depending on your version of the application the update can be done also by the application itself if you agree to update. - Use the forum search.
The last option to find the answer to your question by yourself is to use the Forum Search.
The forum search lists the results by default according to last reply date and not according to how often a topic was viewed or how important a topic is, so don't look only on the first 10 hits. The most frequently-viewed topics with the answers for the most frequently-asked questions are often old, and so are often at the end of the list. You can change the sort order before you search. Use this option.
If you find that your search returns many results, press the Back button of your browser and specify more keywords or limit the search to a specific application or forum to get a reduced list, or just change the Sort results by option. In most cases it is often better to use the search options as much as possible and first run a very limited search, and if no helpful topic is found in the short list of found topics, extend the search by removing some words or specifying more forums to search in. This "reverse" search method from extremely limited to less limited often saves much time, but of course requires some practice.
We expect you to "look it up"... if you can't find what you were looking for let us know (include your search criteria) and we'll try to improve the hits if your search should have found it...
2. Continue existing topic or create a new?
If you have found a topic relevant to what you are looking for, but the answer(s) is (are) not fully satisfactory for you, click on the POST REPLY button at top or bottom of the topic and continue the existing topic with your post and question. Even if the topic is already very old or is about a different application version, it is better to reply to an existing topic which has the same topic as your question, than creating a new one. Because of the topic sort order based on the last reply date, the old topic will automatically move to the top of the list and the power forum members will surely see it.
Create a new thread only when you could not find something similar to your request.
Note: Use the QUOTE button only when you really want to reply to a specific post of another user. Remove from inside the quoted text everything which is not important for the reply you write now. Often a reply with quote is only used to answer a specific question of another user, so the quoted text should contain only that question.
3. How to create a new topic?
First, think about what you want to write about. To which application does your new topic belong? For which forum is it best-suited? Choose the appropriate forum. If there are announcements or sticky forum topics there, at least read their subjects, and it could be helpful for you to also read their contents before you create your topic.
Note: The power users always use the View new posts special search at the top of the forum index page. So the power users always see all new posts, regardless of where a new topic was created or a new reply was added.
Now enter a good subject which summarizes the topic. Don't forget, the subject should be descriptive enough to be also helpful for other users searching in the future for what you have written about. Avoid writing the version of the application in the subject. That could let other users think your topic is specific for that version only. You may not know that.
4. What should every new topic or new reply contain?
Please always take into consideration that not all users have installed the same version as you on the same operating system as you or use it with the same settings as you.
Almost all questions require that you also post
- the exact version of the program - see Help - About,
- the operating system and the desktop theme you use
(WinXP is often not enough, because there are many variants like with SP1/SP2/SP3 or x86/x64 (32/64 bit), UAC enabled or disabled on Windows 7, 8 or Vista, desktop theme (Aero, Windows XP, Windows Classic), - other configuration settings or command options which are maybe important.
Even if you use the most current available version, include the version number because tomorrow it may NOT be the latest version anymore, and when another user reads this topic in 6 months, it is definitely not the latest version anymore.
For UltraEdit and UEStudio related topics, often the file format (encoding) and the type of line termination is also important. Please tell us the encoding of the file displayed in the area right to "line, column, clipboard" area in the status bar at bottom of the UE/UES window which can be:
U- ... UTF-16 LE (little endian)
U8- ... UTF-8
UBE- ... UTF-16 BE (big endian)
UESC- ... ASCII Escaped Unicode
nothing ... ASCII/ANSI (= no encoding)
The line termination type DOS/UNIX/MAC is appended to one of the 5 different encodings above.
Starting with UE v19.00 and UES v13.00 the status bar changed and contains separate fields for line termination type and encoding. The encoding field displays for ASCII/ANSI files also the code page. With activating setting Use basic status bar at Advanced - Configuration - Application Layout - Status Bar the status bar layout of previous versions of UE / UES with showing only status information can be selected.
Please don't insert hard returns while you are writing a post, except if you need to end a paragraph or insert a blank line. In the edit field and later when the text is displayed, the text is automatically wrapped by the browser. You don't know the window width used by the readers of your text.
5. How to add a code example (preformatted text)?
According to HTML standards, browsers display a sequence of spaces/tabs only with a single space, and spaces/tabs at start of a line are completely ignored except in preformatted text areas.
So, if you want to add to your post an example of your file which contains important spaces/tabs at the start of the line or anywhere else, you must code the text so readers' browser know that your post should be displayed as preformatted text. To do this you must enclose your lines in the BBCode tags [code]your example lines[/code] which you can easily add by selecting your lines and clicking on the Code button above the edit field. Make sure the Disable BBCode option below the edit field is not checked when you use BBCode.
Tabs are always displayed by the browsers as spaces, even in a preformatted area. If it is important for your question that the readers should know where tabs are and how many tabs are in a sequence, you must replace them with a different character as a place holder for the tab character. In a new file, copy the sample lines and search with UltraEdit or UEStudio for ^t and replace all occurrences with something different, for example #. Make sure the option Regular Expressions is NOT checked when you run this replace. Copy the modified text into the edit field of your browser and write that every # is a place holder for a tab. We then can easily paste those examples lines into a new file and run the replace with reverse search and replace strings to get the tabs.
If the tab characters themselves are not important, but the spaces used to align it are, then instead run the replace command Format - Tabs to Spaces on your example lines in the new file, and copy the new lines then into the edit field of your post.
For hex mode related examples, select the hex bytes and use Edit - Hex Functions - Hex Copy Selected View.
6. How to upload and attach files and snapshots (screenshots)?
You can attach file(s) to your post. But the number of files per post, the file types (extensions) and the size of the files are restricted because this is a forum and not a file sharing platform. To avoid file attaching problems always pack your text/binary file(s) with ZIP or RAR and attach the archive file with a good description. The size of the archive file must be smaller than 250 KB. The number of files attached to a post is limited to 3.
You can also attach a snapshot of the window, especially if you write about a display problem. On Windows use Alt+PrtSc to copy only the active window instead of entire screen to the Windows clipboard, open any image viewing/editing application, paste with Ctrl+V the graphic data into the imaging application and save the data as PNG file. The image type Portable Network Graphics (PNG) is supported by all applications which can display or edit images and is the best format for snapshots because of the lossless compression (like GIF) with true color support (like JPG). JPG is not good for snapshots because depending on the compression level this image format adds more or less pixel noise and the size of a JPG snapshot is often larger than a PNG snapshot.
7. Use the preview button!
Left to the Submit button is the Preview button. Although I have written thousands of posts, I almost always press this button and read over my post again before I press the Submit button. If I spot an error, I use the Back button of my browser, correct the mistake, and preview it again. When everything is fine, I submit the post.
Please use the preview capability, especially when using BBCode or when you have added example lines. Frequently the power users are unable to write a useful answer because of missing information like the application's version or a poorly-formatted example. You save us all a lot of time when you yourself review your post with the preview button before you submit it.
8. Submit the new topic or your reply.
Finally, submit your topic or reply.
Note: You can edit your own replies whenever you want, but you cannot delete it. Your modified post is saved without any automatic information that it was edited by you. Always edit your post before adding a new post with additional information if nobody replied in the meantime.
Thanks for saving your and the (power) forum members' time by reading and following the steps in this article!
Do you have a suggestion for a further improvement of this article?
Have you found a spelling or grammar mistake or an incorrect statement?
Yes, please post a reply to this topic and tell me what I should add or correct in the article.
If your reply was deleted by me, I have done the modification on the article according to your suggestion.
