HomeCraft Software ORGANIZE! USER'S NEWSLETTER IN THIS ISSUE:  ORGANIZE! A Big Success!  New Features  User Tip - dBase Files  User Tip - Catalog Formats ____________________ ORGANIZE YOUR COLLECTION! It's A Big Success! The feedback from the first users of HomeCraft's version 5 software, ORGANIZE YOUR COLLECTION, is 100% positive. User's have been writing to tell us how much they enjoy many of the new features and like the convenience of having everything available on one screen. One of the big hits appears to be the new "Lock Top Line" feature on the Reports Menu. This feature allows you set the top line of a printed report so that it is repeated only when different from the previous entry. It's used, for example, when printing a list of songs. The artist's name is put on the top line and the song title placed on the second line. The printed report will then list the artist's name with all of the songs listed below that - without repeating the artist's name. The listing would look like: BEATLES, THE A Hard Day's Night I Want To Hold Your Hand Penny Lane She Loves You BEACH BOYS, THE Help Me Rhonda I Get Around Surfer Girl Another popular feature is the Quick Total feature. Anytime you want to see the value of your collection just go to the Main Screen and push CTRL-ENTER. New Features: I'm amazed. The user's manual just went to the printer's last week and already we've added a couple of new features. They're not big changes, but you may find them useful at times. However, since they aren't covered in the manual I'll describe them here. That way you don't need to print the README.TXT file - which is where you'd normally find this information. By the way, the Lock Top Line feature is a new feature that did not make it into the manual. To use this feature go to the _______________________________________________NEWSLETTER, Page 2 Reports Menu, highlight "Lock Top Line" and push ENTER. This will toggle it on. If you don't want to be using it, just repeat this procedure to turn it off. DELETING MEMOS - a new feature has been added that provides a way to delete memos. It is called "Remove Memo" and it is found on the Edit Menu. To delete a memo use the editor to get the entry, that has the memo you want to delete, on the screen. Push ALT-E for the Edit Memo. Highlight "Remove Memo" and push ENTER. DELETING REPORT FORMATS - we have added a feature on the Report Menu (push ALT-R) that will delete report formats. To delete a report format push ALT-R, highlight "Delete Format" and push ENTER. Then highlight the report format name you want to delete and push ENTER. A prompt will appear at the bottom of the screen asking you to confirm that this is the report format you want to delete. Push the letter "Y" and it will be deleted. (Push "N" if you do not want to delete this format). REPORT MODE - the report mode (the report Send To setting) is now displayed at the bottom center of the Main Screen. User Tip, dBase Files: ORGANIZE YOUR COLLECTION can directly import dBase III files (use the import feature on the Utilities Menu) with no problems. ORGANIZE YOUR COLLECTION can also export dBase III files, but with exporting there can be all kinds of problems - not problems associated with ORGANIZE YOUR COLLECTION - but problems that come up as a result of limitations in dBase. Here's a couple of things to watch out for: The field names (line titles) in dBase must all be different and unique. If you use the same title on two lines, you will need to change one of them before exporting your information as a dBase file. Field names (line titles) in dBase can not contain spaces or punctuation marks or other non-alphanumeric characters. Before exporting a file to dBase you will need to be sure that each line title only has letters and numbers. Most of you will never need to use the export to dBase function. It would only be used if you needed to share your files with someone who uses a different database program. However, if you do use this function, and you get an error message, the first place to look is at your line titles. They will need to conform to dBase's very strict format requirements. (By the way, you can change them to meet dBase's requirements, do the export, then change them back to they way you want them). _______________________________________________NEWSLETTER, Page 3 User Tip - Catalog Formats ORGANIZE YOUR COLLECTION is designed so that, if it should detect any type of problem with your data file or catalog name, it will automatically switch to use the default catalog name of CATALOG. Although ORGANIZE YOUR COLLECTION stores your catalog information in ASCII files that are difficult to damage (and easy to recover, in most cases, should they be damaged) problems can still occur. In most cases any problem that might occur is simple and harmless. However, I get nervous when it comes to protecting information that I spent a year typing into my catalog. So ORGANIZE YOUR COLLECTION is designed to err on the safe side. (Of course, you all should have backup copies of your catalogs. In six years I've lost my catalogs twice as a result of problems with my computer. Fortunately I was able to recover from backup copies both times. If it should appear that your catalog format has disappeared, check to see what catalog name the software is using. If it has switched to CATALOG, in most cases you can switch it back to the name you were using and there will be no problem. If the software will not let you switch to your catalog name, try running the RESET utility (see page 134 in the manual). In addition to resetting the security feature, this utility will clear up some of the problems that can effect a data file. Another possible problem might be that there are fragmented files. See page 133 in the manual for more information about fragmented files. That's everything I wanted to pass on to you in this newsletter. However, since I have a little space left I'd like to use it for an interesting story about one of those times when I lost all my catalog files. Several years ago I noticed that my computer was taking longer and longer to find files on the hard disk. I had no idea what the problem was and finally, one morning, it wouldn't boot up. It just kept searching the hard disk without loading the DOS system files. I called everyone I thought might be able to help and the verdict was unanimous - my computer had a virus! Since I could no longer access my hard disk this meant booting from a floppy and reformatting the hard disk to erase everything that was on it. This would eliminate the virus and everything else on my disk, including my catalog files. With sadness in my heart, but also with the confidence of knowing I had backed up my hard disk, I reformatted. The next day, when I turned on my computer, it appeared to be working fine. But then, as each hour passed it began to run slower and slower until once again I could no longer access anything on my hard disk. Had the virus struck again? Where did _______________________________________________NEWSLETTER, Page 4 it come from? The only place it could come from was one of my floppy disks. So I checked them all for viruses. They were clean. Somehow the virus had survived the reformatting (which should not be possible) and that meant I'd have to spend another day doing a complete low level format of my hard disk. Which I did. And the next day the problem appeared again. Fortunately, on the third day I was talking with one of the dealers who carries our software. He suggested that I check the battery in my computer. "The battery?" I asked, with a puzzled look on my face. It turns out that all computers have small batteries that are used to maintain basic information in the computer's memory. The battery in my computer had run down and my computer was "forgetting" that it had a hard disk. After a quick trip to the store I put in a new battery and my computer was it's old self again. Because of my lack of knowledge I had erased all of my files, twice. And that's why having a backup copy of your catalog files is important. (By the way, this was an old computer. The lithium batteries in today's computers last much longer).