Having Fun With EQ7

Did you know that there are quite a few customizations that you can do to your EQ program? I’m going to share some of my favorites.

A tip I learned at the EQ Academy from Barb Vlack is one of my favorites. You can turn off the splash screen and the daily tip box which will make the program load much faster.

Faster! Did I get your attention?

To do this click FILE>PREFERENCES. When the dialog box pops up uncheck the box for “show intro splash screen” and “use tip of the day dialog”. The entire tip of the day list is always available in the help file.

My second most favorite tip, which I have all my students do at the start of class, is to increase the number of “undos”. Click FILE>PREFERENCES then GENERAL in the dialog box. Default is 10 but you can increase it up to 20.

My third favorite tip is about organizing your files. If you have a lot of projects it can get daunting to find things. Since I’m a very visual person I like to save a photo of my quilt next to the EQ file so I can easily search by image or name.

To do this place the quilt on the worktable. Next click FILE>EXPORT IMAGE. When the dialog box opens you will have to navigate to the correct EQ folder. Do this by clicking COMPUTER>MY DOCUTMENTS>MY EQ7>PJ7. Your computer might have a slightly different path but you want the My EQ7>PJ7 folders. These are your working files. Be careful not to delete any of them from this folder.

Now save the image of the quilt using the same name as its file. Don’t worry about duplicating the name because the image extension is “jpg” and the working program file is “pj7”.

Here’s the magic off it all…the images of the quilts will be right next to the pj7 file and easily searchable.

You might already know this one….EQ also has many hidden buttons and tools. Simply click the Add/Remove button on any tool bar. From here you can also change the size and appearance of your buttons. Don’t be afraid to “play”. It’s the best way to learn the program and you can always restore the tools back to their defaults at any time.

Just look at all the handy short cuts you could add to the main tool bar.

I hope you learned something new or helpful.

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More blogs posting tips, tricks and tutorials today.

Tina of Quilting Affection

Carole of From My Carolina Home

Marian of Seams to be Sew

Pamela of Pamela Quilts

Carol of FunThreads Designs (me)

Quiltshop Gal