-------------------- Phone Base 2.1 By Randy Isbell February 27, 1996 Written with Visual Basic 3.0 Pro -------------------- Hello, and welcome to Phone Base! This program was designed for simplicity. It is very simple to setup and use, and very handy too. It is compatible with both Windows 3.1+ and Windows 95. Phone Base is a Phone/Address Index and an Auto-Dialer. You can store your phone numbers, addresses, and other notes, in a file on your hard- disk. Then just run the program any time for instant access. Select a number, click the DIAL button, and (if you have a modem) the computer will dial the number for you. If you get a BUSY signal, you can let the program redial for you continuously until it gets through, at an interval that you select! Phone Base will even convert letters to numbers for you before dialing. So, if you enter "1-800-EAT-DIRT", it will dial the corresponding numbers... Alphabetized Index buttons make it easy to look up numbers, and There's a Search feature for those hard to find entries! There's also several Print options so you can print out your phone numbers! Phone Base makes a great phone/address database, even if you don't have a modem! ----------------- Whats New in 2.1: ----------------- 1. Phone Base now comes with its own setup program. 2. Several people Emailed me, and said that when they printed a phone list, the phone numbers were running off the page or were being cut off. So, I added a 'Settings' box where you can make adjustments to your printed page. Here you can change two settings, the Spacing and the Lines Per Page. If your text runs off the right side of the page, you can decrease the Spacing value... If your text exceeds the page length, you can decrease the Lines Per Page value. These settings are saved along with the other program settings, so that you don't have to change them each time. Finding the correct settings for your printer is a matter of Trial and Error, but the defaults should work for most printers. ------------- Installation: ------------- Unzip the files into a temporary directory and run the Setup.exe file. Follow the instructions on the screen and it will install the program for you. If you have any problems with the Setup program, you can manually install it yourself. Just follow the instructions below. Create a directory on your hard-drive to put the Fonebase.exe file. For example - C:\Fonebase. Copy the '.VBX' files into your Windows\System directory. Make sure you also have the VBRUN300.DLL file in your Windows\System directory. If not, you can download it from America Online, Prodigy, Compuserve, or just about any BBS. The program will not work without it. And last but not least, add Phone Base's icon to one of your Program Manager icon groups. Or, if you are running Windows-95, just create a Shortcut to the 'Fonebase.exe' file... Now you are ready to run the program! Just double click the icon and... Welcome to Phone Base! ---------------- Program Buttons: ---------------- A - Z: The 'A to Z' buttons are a quick way of searching for an entry. For example, if the person's LAST name begins with 'S' you would press the 'S' button. If it's a business number you want, like 'K-Mart', then you could press the 'K' button to find it. Manual Dial: Use this key-pad to dial any phone number that you want to dial manually. Such as a number that your unsure of, and want to check before recording it in your Phone Base's memory. List All: Puts your entire list of names in the display area, alphabetically, from top to bottom. If there are more names than will fit in the display, a scroll-bar will be provided on the right side of the display box. Search: Lets you search for a phone number by typing in a search string (criteria). The program will display all records that contain your search string. For example: If you entered "car" for the search criteria, any record that contained those letters in the name, address, number, notes, etc. would be displayed. This could include 'Carol' or 'Avis rent-a-car' or 'Carlington Avenue' or '1-800-car-toon' or even an entry that contains these letters in the record's NOTES. Select 'Yes' or 'No' for Case sensitive... (upper or lower case). If you choose 'No' then all letters will be treated as if they are upper-case. If you choose 'Yes' then you can type in upper-case letters to narrow down your search. Print: Prints out the Phone list in 3 different ways. You can print out a list of names and numbers that begin with a specific letter, you can print out whatever is currently shown in the display box (mainly for printing 'Search results', or you can print the entire phone-list (in alphabetical order) from top to bottom. This program assumes you have your printer set up already, and will use your regular Windows printer setup. You may want to check that it is set to 'Portrait' and that the 'Print Mode' and 'Orientation' settings are correct, as well as any other settings. You can minimize Phone Base anytime you want to go check your Printer Settings. The Settings available in Phone Base are - Spacing, and Lines Per Page... (see section -What's new in 2.1- near the top of this text file. At this time, there are no font settings... Those will be available in a future upgrade. The program uses the standard Courier New font. Add Entry: This button will bring up the ADD ENTRY box. This is where you enter the NAME and PHONE NUMBER of someone (or someplace) to be recorded in the program's memory. Edit Entry: This button will bring up the EDIT ENTRY box. This is where you edit any existing record, to make changes, add notes, etc. When you click this button, the NAME in the display area that is 'Selected' is the record that will be loaded into the EDIT box. Delete Entry: Click this button to erase (from memory) the entry that is 'Selected' in the display area. You will be asked once to verify the delete, then if you choose 'Yes', ZAAAAP! It's outa there! Dial: Click this button to have your modem dial the current phone number in the 'PHONE #' box. This will be the number that goes with the 'Selected' entry in the display area. Once the Dialing begins you will see a Status box with 'Cancel' and 'Talk' buttons. You can pick up the phone anytime during or after the dialing sequence, just be sure to click the 'Talk' button after picking up the phone. Otherwise the modem won't hang up. Or - you can wait for the 'Status' message... Status messages include "NO DIAL TONE", "ON LINE" and "BUSY"... if the message is "ON LINE", you can pick up the phone and continue the call, otherwise don't bother picking it up. If the message is "NO DIAL TONE", then either you have a phone off the hook somewhere, or your phone line has problems of some kind. (Maybe you didn't pay your bill and they shut you off! Ha-ha, just kidding) If the message is "BUSY", then you have several options... (1) You can press 'Cancel' and forget about the call. (2) If you have the REDIAL feature turned on, you can let the modem redial the number as many times as you like or until the line is not busy anymore. (3) Let the modem start it's first redial, then click the 'Down-arrow' button to minimize the program and it will dial in the background. This way you could play 'Solitaire' or something while you're waiting. When the status box reports "ON LINE" the program will pop up and let you know. Modem Setup: This is where you select your Comm-port (1 - 4)... You can also change you REDIAL settings here. Under the words - REDIAL WHEN BUSY, you will see "ON" and "OFF", and a box for the Interval time. The Interval is: The number of seconds the modem waits before redialing. The range is 1 to 99 seconds... (Some phone lines take longer than others to reset, so you may need to increase the Redial Interval if your phone line takes longer than 10 seconds to reset.) You can also change several Modem Command Strings here, but this is recommended for trouble-shooting purposes only. If you are running Windows 95, leave the Init-string set to 'NONE'. Dial Prefix: Click the 'HELP' button on the ADD ENTRY (or EDIT ENTRY) screen for information on Dial Prefix codes. There are two ways to use the dialing prefixes in Phone Base: 1.) You can set a different prefix for every number from the 'Add Entry' screen or from the 'Edit Entry' screen. (just make sure your Dial-string setting is defaulted in the Modem Setup). 2.) You can use one 'Universal' prefix by adding it to the end of your Dial-string setting in Modem Setup. For example, if you need to dial a '9' to get an outside line, you can set your Dial-string command setting to: ATDT9, This would cause the modem to dial a NINE, followed by a 2 second delay (to wait for the dial tone), then the phone number. If this is set up in the Dial-string command box, your modem will use this method of dialing to dial ALL of your phone numbers. ------------- Distribution: ------------- You are encouraged to pass a copy of the shareware version of Phone- Base along to your friends for evaluation. If you do so, you must provide them with the entire set of the shareware version's files. These include: Phonebas.EXE Threed.vbx Mscomm.vbx Fonebase.txt Setup.exe Setup.lst ---------------------------------- Purchasing the registered Version: ---------------------------------- You may use the shareware version of Phone Base for a 30 day trial period. If you would like to continue to use Phone Base after the 30 day trial period, you are required to purchase the registered version! Please send your check or money order for $10.00 to: Randy Isbell 4406 Marsha St. Bakersfield, Ca. 93309-3120 Thank you for supporting the shareware concept! Your registration is truly appreciated, and will result in bigger and better programs in the future.