October 1996 - Lantica Software, LLC
Contents
1. lt pgdn gt lt pgdn gt lt pgdn gt lt tab gt lt tab gt lt f 6 gt lt f 6 gt lt f10 gt lt tab gt lt tab gt lt tab gt lt tab gt lt f6 gt 30 AS I1 lt f6 gt lt tab gt lt tab gt lt 6 gt 20 AS I lt f 6 gt lt begdef gt lt alt8 gt lt name gt Macro8 lt vidoff gt d lt enter gt Old lt sp gt records lt f3 gt y lt capsf4 gt O0ld lt sp gt records lt enter gt c lt ctrl 7 gt lt home gt lt dn gt lt home gt lt 9 gt lt tab gt lt tab gt lt tab gt lt tab gt lt f 6 gt lt caps gt DATE 730 lt pgdn gt lt pgdn gt lt pgdn gt lt tab gt lt tab gt lt 6 gt 44 O lt 6 gt lt f 10 gt lt tab gt lt tab gt lt tab gt lt f6 gt 10 AS R lt f6 gt When you design or redesign a report the first spec to appear is the Retrieve Spec So the first lt f10 gt in the Listing 1 macros at the ends of the italicized command strings denotes the transition from the Retrieve Spec to the Column Sort Spec In the examples shown just prior to the first lt f10 gt you ll see the command to expand the field lt f6 gt and in some cases a series of asterisks usually followed by a number of spaces lt sp gt Sometimes though another unwanted character or characters appear See Macro8 The only bad report macro I ve seen that doesn t contain the asterisks is Macro7 and it has a lucky charm between the two lt f6 gt commands which wouldn t be a valid retrieval parameter The important2. 294 Amt 75 00 Check Rec 3679 Donor ID 25 Amt 200 00 Date 8 9 96 3492 3621 3490 3611 14207 14208 14210 14211 14212 14214 14215 14217 14218 Form Printed with Data 14219 14220 Master Merge Documen J 0 l N E 3 ms D itom A NIO taches x 209 09 12 96 Amt1 100 0 15 96 Amt2 50 0 CONTROL DTF PageNo 1 StartPrintRecord 1 EndPrintRecord 7 Subtotal 2360 00 GrandTotal Merge Label sEmployor wackiress acs 0ccupation Date3 Amt3 General primary Dated Aat4 YED Aat Pages 16 7 Records Printed 7 Records Figure 3 From the original CHECK DTF records to printing the FEC report The Quick Answer October 1996 The escape codes that perform this feat look like this lt p300x900y lt c1800a4b0p The LaserJet escape character the left arrow tells the printer new command coming All LaserJet control codes must begin with it Other printer makes have their own control codes to perform the same functions though many support the HP PCL Printer Control Language To create this character in Write press Alt F10 then Alt 27 using the numeric keypad The first code tells the printer where to start printing on the x y axis The second one says print a line 1800 dots long c1800a by 4 dots thick 4b with a solid black fill Op which gives you about a two point line Laser printers have an unprin
3. F11 Alt F11 Ctrl F11 Shift F12 Alt F12 Ctrl F12 David Dvorin Phoenix Solutions Somerville New Jersey Separate a Combined City State and ZIP Field into Component Fields gt CSZ Replace CSZ csz Repllas CSZ CSZ Repllas CSzZ City Left CSZ Instr CSZ 1 City Replace City State Mid CSZ Instr CSZ 1 Instr CSZ Instr CSZ 1 Zip Mid CSZ Instr CSZ 1 11 CSZ Replace CSZ CSZ Replace CSZ The first line replaces any double spaces such as between the state and ZIP code with a single space The second line replaces the space following the state or province with the pipe character The third line replaces the space preceding the state with a plus sign The fourth line copies the city to the new City field The fifth line deletes any comma following the city The sixth seventh and eighth lines copy the state and ZIP code to their respective State and Zip fields The ninth and tenth lines restore the CSZ field To use this program for a Mass Update simply replace the on field exit symbol gt with 7 pound sign 1 colon Tom Marcellus The Quick Answer October 1996 Gorpon MEIGS Do garbage characters appear in your report Retrieve Specs Have you redesigned a database that contains saved reports Do you ever use the Copy Design Only feat
4. Iteml Ref RecNo Cust No Cust No Goto Item2 Else Goto Item2 Here if the Item1 Ref field is empty it means that no data for this line item has been posted to an external record In this case the Shell command launches a second copy of Q amp A and invokes a simple autostart macro The macro adds a record to SALES DTF where an on entry programming statement uses Number to assign the next record number to the RecNo field The macro then saves the record and exits the second copy of Q amp A returning you to the invoice you were working on The new external record number is then retrieved into the Item1 Ref field and the XPost commands posts the line item data If Item1 Ref isn t empty it tells the program that an external record for this line item has already been created In this case the old data is simply overwritten with the new data since the particular external record containing the data is referenced by Item Ref In an application like this you should add code that offers opportunities to change XPosted data Of course if you post data for each line item then neglect to save the invoice record the posted data will probably be useless and you ll have compromised data integrity But if you can prevent that from happening without too much trouble then XPost can prove an indispensable tool in your application strategy QA Jeff Nitka works for a chemical manufacturer and develops Q amp A applications p
5. amp A s printer drivers aren t designed to handle certain printer functions For example you can type the decimal code to set eight lines per inch printing or invoke a printer font and it ll work But try to specify nine lines per inch printing using a decimal code and it won t Likewise if you use decimal codes to draw a box the page will emerge from the printer with a lucky charm on it but no box The question was could I use this escape code technique to duplicate create from scratch the FEC form on plain paper in the printer and merge the Q amp A data into it at the same time It turned out I could Programming the printer with escape codes When using escape codes in a Write document you have to think in terms of the physical page Laser printers create an entire page before printing any of it You can use a 300 dpi based grid 300 dots per inch to position the elements lines text or whatever precisely on the page Using x as the horizontal axis and y as the vertical axis you can tell the printer to print a six inch horizontal line beginning one inch from the left and three inches down Here it is in English 1 Move 300 dots one inch to the right 2 Move 900 dots three inches down 3 Print an 1800 dot six inch line 4 dots thick Donor Check Record No CHECK DTF Check Rec 3466 Donor ID 215 Am 10 00 Check Rec 3596 Donor ID 123 Amt 100 00 Check Rec 3677 Donor ID
6. fly QA October 18 Spend a Day with The Quick Answer Masters You Read Every Month Now you can meet and hear these Q amp A experts and learn their best kept secrets their coolest tricks and their power techniques Discover new ways to coax more out of Q amp A and extend the functionality of your applications Watch what they do with Q amp A 5 0 and come away with a wealth of know how These speakers will be available all day to answer your questions and help you plan your next Q amp A database Then stay for the weekend and attend the National Q amp A User Group s 6th Annual BASH Register Now 10a m 6p m Friday October 18 1996 The Radisson Inn 800 780 5474 Miia Sponsored by Marble Publications Inc publisher of The Quick Answer in association with the National Q amp A User Group 800 780 5474 or 165 The Independent Guide to Q amp A Expertise CompuServe 73370 1575 Prodigy NEPY97A For Q amp A technical support call Symantec 503 465 8600 Q amp A is a trademark of Symantec Corp Other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders This publication is intended as a general guide It covers a highly technical and complex subject and should not be used for making decisions concerning specific products or applications This publication is sold as is without warranty of any kind either express or implied respecting the contents of this publication incl
7. might become severely fragmented over time How can you tell Run SCANDISK If your path statement includes the path to your DOS Defrag Misinformation 203 directory you can switch to your Q amp A data directory and enter this command SCANDISK F DTF You ll get a report that looks like this QA5 DATA VISITS DTF contains 5 noncontiguous blocks QA5 DATA EXCH DTF contains 6 noncontiguous blocks QA5 DATA LINKSBAK DTF contains 25 noncontiguous blocks QA5 DATA TIMEMATH DTF contains 2 noncontiguous blocks QA5 DATA CONTACT DTF contains 30 noncontiguous blocks QA5 DATA LINKS DTF contains 30 noncontiguous blocks GOGOA You can see the degree of fragmentation in all your databases at a glance SCANDISK works equally well in Windows 95 Choose Start Programs MS DOS Prompt and run the utility with the same switch and DTF wildcard leaving a space between the F and asterisk Alec Mulvey Keyword Training Ascot England The Quick Answer October 1996 Epitep BY Dave REID Calculate Miles Per Gallon run a trucking company that delivers locally 20 need to monitor my trucks mileage to track maintenance intervals and determine which drivers are the most efficient My database stores the ending odometer reading and the number of gallons used per day per truck This allows me to print a report showing the information but to compute miles per gallon have to use a calculator Is there any way t
8. thing to look for as in each of the Listing 1 macros just before the first lt f10 gt are oddball characters and commands To clean up the report macro files delete the lt f6 gt lt f6 gt commands before the first lt f10 gt along with any lt pgdn gt lt pedn gt lt tab gt lt tab gt commands preceding it Then resave the macro file to ASCII by pressing Ctrl F8 You can now switch to the Report module and proceed as in Case 1 When you re done you ll have a database with all reports of the same generation and the Copy Design Only command will yield a clean copy with reports of the same generation Thanks to John Dow Alec Mulvey and Bill Halpern for the many hours they spent with me investigating the problem and determining how to prevent and fix it QA Gordon Meigs is vice president and general manager of Professional Computer Technology Associates of Newtown Pennsylvania He teaches courses and does corporate training on Q amp A and has been designing and installing advanced Q amp A business applications for more than nine years 215 598 8440 CompuServe 71023 356 When designing or troubleshooting a password protected multiuser system it s easy to forget the User ID you used to log into Q amp A It s easy to set up a facility in Q amp A that emulates Novell s Whoami utility Here s how Create a new database call it WHOAMI DTF or just WHO DTF with these three fields You are User Te
9. 3 Amt3 Rec4 5 Date4 Amt4 Rec5 6 DateS AmtS Rec6 7 Date6 Amt6 RecNo Period YTD RumningTot SUMMARY DTF Merge Spec Page 1 of 2 Esc Exit F3 Clear Alt F8 List Shift F8 Save F10 Cont inue F1 Help Figure 2 SUMMARY DTF s Merge Spec filled out to import the disk report containing Donor IDs and check record numbers The YTD database Since the report also requires the aggregate year to date contribution amount for each listed donor we created a YTD DTF database with two fields Donor ID and YTD Amt and a second CHECK DTF disk report This report retrieves all the CHECK records for contributions made in the current year and totals them by Donor ID using the following Column Sort Spec and derived columns Donor ID 1 AS CS Check Amount 2 I Heading Formula 1 Spec 50 I Heading YTD Formula Text 1 lt gt 50 Str Total 2 1 Spec 3 F N2 With the page length set to 1000 the macro prints the report to disk then brings it into Write where it looks like this Donor ID YTD 933 900 00 1215 1000 00 1217 125 00 1311 500 00 1322 200 00 1420 375 00 1566 540 00 The macro removes the column headings and separator lines resaves the file then imports it as a Standard ASCII file into the empty YTD DTF database The Merge Spec for the import is 1 in the Donor ID field and 2 in the YTD Amt field At the ASCII Import Options screen the Field delimiter is set to Space With
10. 5 0 1700 8 200 25 0 2 1000 10 1200 10 200 20 0 1300 4 100 25 0 What to Do with Error 06A8 One of my databases has a problem that seems to be affecting several others Once in a while one of the records in a lookup database goes bad Then whenever another database performs a lookup to that record receive error message 06A8 can t edit the bad record without receiving the same error message but I can delete then re enter it Then all the databases are once again in harmony But a few days or maybe a week later another record goes bad and I ll have to delete then reenter that one Is there any way to prevent this from happening T D Angelo Galiber Christiansted Virgin Islands It sounds like the lookup database s index is corrupted The problem might go away if you copy the database design then copy all of the records to the new design To begin select Copy from the File menu and enter the name of the lookup database From the Copy menu select Copy Design Only then enter a new name for the file such as LOOKBACK DTF When Q amp A has copied the design choose Copy Select Records and specify the same database Press F10 at the Retrieve Spec and again at the Merge Spec All the records in the old database are copied to the new one Return to the Main menu and select Utilities DOS File Facilities Rename a File Type the name of the original lookup database and press Enter Type a new name for the damaged data
11. FCHECK reports it as a single generation file but the reports previously identified as generation 36 have been corrupted with faulty Retrieve Specs The current generation is 1 Generation 1 has 135 fields Checking report Open Reminders 14 If you add D path to the end of the DIFSPECS command line replacing path with the actual path the utility saves the macro files to the specified directory If you don t specify a path the utility saves them to the directory specified by your PC s TEMP environmental variable or to the directory from which you issued the DTFSPECS command if no TEMP variable exists You can The retrieve spec for this report has 135 fields and is generation 1 ERROR Last pointer inconsistent with size pointer 3D2F size 286 Checking report Uncleared L The retrieve spec for this report has 135 fields and is generation 1 The col spec for this report has 135 fields and is generation 1 POLICYF DTF the POLICY database after re creating all the reports using the macros generated by DTFSPECS Note that while the file still reports several generations all the reports are now of the latest generation 37 DIFCHECK verbose partial output The current generation is 37 Generation 9 has 118 fields Generation 35 has 133 fields Generation 36 has 134 fields Generation 37 has 135 fields Checking report Open Reminders The retrieve spec for this report has 135 fields and is generation 37 The co
12. Full Name Mailing Address and ZIP Code Frederick R Richardson 2344 Lakewood Terrace Blvd Unit 58 Huntington Beach CA 92644 A Full Name Maling Address and ZIP Code Gerald Darryrore Costa Mesa CA 92627 Osher isoocityi yA Full Name Maling Address and ZIP Code Josiah N Manconicotti 4577 Fredrickson Place Santa Ana CA 92454 o Other Inpecity SUBTOTAL ot Receipts This Page Optionall ccsssssessseecnseesseerseessesesesseesssnessenensueeenuensnnanennserserersres rien Naras of Employer Amount of Each Rockwell International Corp Occupanon K Primary Systems Programmer Aggregete Year to Date Name of Employer 1020 00 Amount of Each Recent this Porod United States Postal Service 75 00 p Occupanon e r r Recept For J Prey cE Genea Mail Carrier Aggregre Yos to Oste Naras af Employer Date imonth Amount of Each doy ver Receipt tres Perce 7 30 9 50 00 Survif l Insurance Inc Occupotion Insurance Broker Prmary Genors 50 00 Date imonth day yaan Aggregate Year to Date gt Name of Employer Amount of Each Recent this Peroa University of California trvine 340 00 Cecupation Prenery E General Professor Aggregate Year to Date gt 680 00 2360 00 TOTAL This Period last page this line number onty check record numbers With these we could Mass Update SUMMARY Figure 1 A complex form with compl
13. This free back issue of THE QUICK ANSWER is provided courtesy of S same The Monthly Newsletter for Sesame Database Manager http www insidesesame com Read a Free Issue of Inside Sesame AND L SOFTWARE LLC Makers of Sesame Database Manager Compatible with Symantec Q amp A http www lantica com Merging Data with Complex Forms A Case Study Tom MaArceLLUS Organizing data to print on complex forms even creating the forms DO in Write isn t such a brutal task if you know a few tricks 29 Y Congressman Chris Cox has been an avid Q amp A user and Quick Answer reader for years In fact he developed his own Q amp A 4 0 campaign management application to track information on thousands of supporters and their contributions He uses Q amp A Write and mail merge for his correspondence and fundraising mailings and prepares his Federal Election Committee FEC reports from the information in his databases What has stumped Chris and his staff though is how to automate the preparation of these periodic FEC reports It was taking two days to organize then manually enter the information into a forms program designed to print the reports even though the raw data was already in his Q amp A databases The data crunching required to generate the information was complex The form the FEC wanted it printed on was complex Here s why e The FEC form accommodates exactly seven contributors per page See Fi
14. act Numb Iter operation until the loop terminates Also the external Numb field stores the original value of X retrieved via XLookups This way you need only one local current database variable field Iter even though three fields are needed to perform the task Create a record and XPost to it on the fly Using Shell and XPost you can have Q amp A automatically create a record in an external database then post to it in what appears to be a single seamless step Suppose you re entering data into a line item type invoice database You want to create an external record for each line item so you can later run reports on sales by item or stock number You ve entered data for the first line item At this point the cursor moves to a field containing a program like this lt If AskUser Do you want to make changes Then Goto Iteml else If AskUser Post this line item Then If Iteml Ref Then REM Create new record in SALES DTF Iteml Ref Shel1 C QA5 QA COM m1 Iteml Ref XLr Sales 9999 RecNo RecNo If Iteml Ref lt gt Then XPost Sales Iteml Ref RecNo Item1 Item XPost Sales Iteml Ref RecNo Descripl Item Desc XPost Sales Iteml Ref RecNo QOty Sold Iteml1 Oty XPost Sales Iteml Ref RecNo Cost Iteml1 Cost XPost Sales Iteml Ref RecNo ExtPre Iteml Ext Prec XPost Sales Iteml Ref RecNo Date Date XPost Sales
15. ager but specifies that no Expanded Memory EMS is to be created Edit the file removing the NOEMS and reboot your computer When you start O amp A from the command prompt it should allocate itself up to 128K of Expanded Memory A word of caution though this change could affect the performance of your other programs QA I ve run a mix of memory intensive procedures on a variety of PCs and never received an out of memory message as long as Q amp A 5 0 had at least 512K Conventional Memory along with 128K Expanded Memory and for the Clipboard 3K Extended Memory Ed Dave Reid is the coauthor of The Q amp A 4 0 Wiley Command Reference published by John Wiley and Sons and works as an independent Q amp A consultant PO Box 12083 Eugene OR 97440 Have a nagging question Send it to Help The Quick Answer Marble Publications Inc PO Box 9034 Gaithersburg MD 20898 9034 or fax to 301 424 1658 When writing please include your name address and phone number along with your Q amp A version number and whether DOS or Windows and a detailed description of the problem We will publish those questions we feel are of general reader interest individual responses are not possible If the first field on your form contains an on field entry program it won t execute if you use a CHome command in another The on screen help that appears in Write when you press F1 omits two reserved function key assignments F9 to scr
16. art time for Epoch Software 908 874 3989 Jeff is the author of the Program Evaluator a Q amp A program debugging utility available from Marble Publications For more on auto generating an external record to post to for example creating a new customer record during invoice entry see Automatically Create Records to Post To in the March 1996 issue Ed Most function key combinations using Shift Alt and Ctrl are reserved by Q amp A The following are unreserved and thus available for use as macro hot key combinations If you have a combined City State and ZIP code field you might find it advantageous to have each component in its own separate field This way you can easily search and sort on any of the three Suppose you have the following arrangement CSZ is the combined City State and ZIP code field CSZ Corona del Mar CA 92655 You want to change it to this City Corona del Mar State CA Zip 92655 Start by adding separate City State and Zip fields to your database making them all text fields Next use the following program in the CSZ field to separate the components The program works whether or not there s a comma after the city whether the ZIP code is five or nine digits and for Canadian addresses with three character province abbreviations and no space in the postal code 12 Available Function Keys for Macros xe 5 0 Alt F3 Alt F4 Alt F10 Ctr1 F10 Shift
17. asterisk to the end of the escape code or use the ASCII 7 non printing character press Alt F10 then Alt 7 using the numeric keypad For example the following code prints Year to Date in whatever font you ve enhanced the text don t enhance the escape code starting at position 720x 1200y lt p720x1200y Year to Date Amount If you don t add the second asterisk you ll get ear to Date When you send an escape coded document to the printer with a merge file specified Q amp A thinks the codes surrounded by asterisks are merge fields and complains it can t find them Simply ignore the warning and press F10 to continue Chances are you ve used DEFRAG and SCANDISK the disk maintenance utilities that come with MS DOS 6 20 However be aware that the figure DEGRAG gives for the percentage of fragmentated files on your hard disk can be misleading For example DEFRAG might report that 95 percent of Drive C is not fragmented You might think means hardly any fragmentation at all but consider that the vast majority of the files on your hard disk are program files They re never modified and don t become fragmented over time Only data files or new or modified files become fragmented If such files represent just 10 percent of your hard disk data you can multiply DEGRAG s fragmentation percentage by 10 that s a whopping 50 percent in this example Worse yet if you have a large database it
18. asy to spot Listing 1 shows examples of portions of a DIFSPECS generated report macro file with several bad command strings shown in italics Listing 1 Report macros containing bad Retrieve Spec parameters lt begdef gt lt alt5 gt lt name gt Macro5 lt vidoff gt d lt enter gt list lt sp gt by lt sp gt skills lt sp gt 6 26 lt sp gt test lt f3 gt y lt capsf4 gt list lt sp gt by lt sp gt skills lt sp gt 6 26 lt sp gt test lt enter gt c lt ctrl 7 gt lt home gt lt dn gt lt home gt lt 9 gt lt tab gt lt tab gt lt tab gt lt tab gt lt 6 gt lt caps gt 1 1 95 lt 6 gt lt tab gt lt f 6 gt res lt f6 gt lt pgdn gt lt pgdn gt lt pgdn gt lt tab gt lt tab gt lt f6 gt lt Ssp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt lt sp gt The Quick Answer October 1996 lt sp gt lt f6 gt lt f10 gt lt tab gt lt tab gt lt f6 gt 10 AS R C F T U lt 6 gt lt tab gt lt tab gt lt 6 gt 30 AS R CS lt f6 gt lt begdef gt lt alt7 gt lt name gt Macro7 lt vidoff gt d lt enter gt Next lt sp gt Reminder lt f 3 gt y lt capsf4 gt Next lt sp gt Reminder lt enter gt c lt ctr1f 7 gt lt home gt lt dn gt lt home gt lt 9 gt
19. base such as LOOKOLD DTF then press Enter Select Rename a File again and this time type the name of your copied file LOOKBACK DTF Press Enter type the original name of the database then press Enter again The lookup file should now be free of damage and be reliable Managing Memory Under Windows 95 use Q amp A 5 0 for DOS on my Windows 95 PC v0 A DO start Windows from the command prompt instead of having it start automatically This way my PC boots much faster and I can get into Q amp A without having to wait However when try to use Page Preview with a merge document get an out of memory error I ve examined the System Information screen press Crtl F3 from the Main menu while running Q amp A under the two modes In Windows the Q amp A column shows 128K of Expanded memory and no Extended Memory and Page Preview works fine In DOS where Page Preview doesn t work the Q amp A column shows no Expanded memory and 33K of Extended memory suspect these values are crucial to solving the problem but don t know how to control them Walt Weaver Lincoln Nebraska The amounts of Expanded and Extended memory available to Q amp A are controlled by settings in the CONFIG SYS file It appears that having some Expanded memory is important for your mail merge Page Preview and I suspect your CONFIG SYS file includes a line like this DEVICE C WIN95 EMM386 EXE NOEMS D 64 This line enables the Expanded Memory Man
20. d by DIFSPECS expect a filename to be present From the Report menu press Shift F2 for the macro menu and choose Get Macros Press the spacebar to clear the default macro filename usually QAMACRO ASC then press Enter for Q amp A s List Files screen Navigate to the directory where the report macros are stored and select the first one REPORTSA MAC With REPORTSA MAC in memory press Shift F2 again and select Run Macro Select the macro named Define all reports and it go to work re creating the first 10 reports bringing them up to the current generation If you have more than 10 reports in the database repeat the process by loading the other REPORTSx MAC macro files B C and so forth and running them When you re done all the reports in the database will be of the current generation Now you can use the Copy Design Only feature and the reports in the copy should be 100 percent clean Case 2 Steps to take if Copy Design Only has already corrupted reports Proceed as in Case 1 up to the point where you start O amp A Since there are bad reports in the database there might now be bad macros in the report macro file s that DTFSPECS created You ll need to examine each macro in Write and remove the bad parts Since we first discovered this problem John Dow has modified DIFSPECS to generate clean macros but it s worth checking the macro files anyway since the bad spots are usually e
21. e FEC form you see in Figure 1 TIl briefly cover how we did this then describe the extraordinary merge document that brought it all together Hopefully you ll pick up a few ideas SCHEDULE A Henri Caborde 23455 Elden Ave Geoffry R Martin Lakewood CA 4s Carry Williams A Full Name Mailing Address and ZIP Code Costa Mesa CA 92627 Recewt For LI rev JEE Tenersi other tspecitya TA Full Name Maiiag Address and ZIP Code 2344 W Lakewood Blvd Apt 7 923 Recelp For PJ rime one spacery A Full Name Maling Address end ZIP Code 3455 North Elwood Apt Newport Beach CA 92456 with XLookups to pull in everything else To generate an importable disk file of Donor IDs and their check record numbers we designed a CHECK DTF report The Retrieve Spec included all contribution checks received during the reporting period and the Column Sort Spec and derived column looked like this Donor ID Check Record No 1 AS I 3 AS CS F JL Heading Donor Formula 1 Spec 2 AS With the Report Global Options set to No Repeating Values and Skip Line at Column Break and with a page length of 1000 the report prints the data to disk in Donor ID and check number order like this ITEMIZED RECEIPTS Use separate schedulesis PAGE 1 OF 20 tor each category of the Detailed Summary Page FOR UNE NC 11ai Any information copied from such Reports and Statements may not be sold or used by an
22. e s Almost Up Tom MARCELLUS EDITOR F you see this by October 16 there s still time to register for The Quick Answer s Q amp A Master Seminar October 18 in Colorado Springs Colorado Call 800 780 5474 or 301 424 1658 right now to find out if we can squeeze you in We d love to see you If you ve ever tried to spruce up a Q amp A for DOS merge document with Line Draw chances are you soon abandoned that little adventure Trying to keep the lines from going all kerflooey as you carefully place the text or merge fields is practically impossible And if you use a font other than Courier your output looks like it exploded Now there s a way you can add graphic lines and boxes that won t distort anywhere you like and still precisely position your text or merge field data Use the tricks I reveal to print sophisticated forms with your data joined or merged exactly where you want it Speaking of avoiding explosions have you ever redesigned a database that contains saved reports or used the Copy Design Only feature to copy a database s structure If the answer is yes your application could be headed for disaster Gordon Meigs tells you why and what you can do to prevent it In The Program Spec Jeff Nitka shows you how to eliminate interim calculation fields from your database by using XPost and XLookup to save and retrieve temporary variables externally He also describes his technique for creating postable records on the
23. er 113 will be the first one on page 17 and so forth By including in the SUMMARY Mass Update a statement to calculate the running totals of the records from record 1 on up to however many records there might be we can get the subtotal for each report page seven records along with the grand total for the final report page Printing the report forms At this point all the data required for the FEC report is neatly organized in the SUMMARY DTF records The second part of the procedure automates printing it to the report forms The mailing label To print a group of records to a page we created a custom mailing label that includes merge fields for the name address employer occupation YTD amount check received dates and amounts all from SUMMARY DTF Here are the particulars Width 8 Left margin 6 Height 1 7 Other margins 0 Regular font LaserJet Line Printer 16 Lines per label sheet 86 Blank lines at top 13 Print to PtrE The label height characters per inch and lines per label sheet work together to produce the precise line spacing needed in this case just a hair under 8 lines per vertical inch to fill the FEC form with seven records The macro prints a group of seven labels to FILE rather than to the forms We installed Printer E to print to FILE specifying the correct printer an HP LaserJet 4 Later you ll find out why we didn t print directly to the forms The macro then opens the file dele
24. ex data formatting requirements You can create forms like this in Write and place your data in them with precision The Quick Answer October 1996 Donor Check Record No 1215 3492 1217 3490 The macro that prints the report pulls the output file into Write presses Shift F4 twice to remove the column headings and separator dashes then replaces the asterisks with carriage returns Cr The reformatted output file looks like this 933 3488 3732 3800 1215 3492 3621 1217 3490 3611 The file is now in a format suitable for importing as a Standard ASCII file into the empty SUMMARY database The Merge Spec for the import is a 1 in the Donor ID field and 2 through 7 in the Rec1 through Rec6 fields See Figure 2 Although our SUMMARY records could accommodate up to six donations it s rare that more than three are received from any donor during a reporting period At the ASCII Import Options screen the Field Delimiter was set to Return This way two carriage returns serve as a Record delimiter With the import finished SUMMARY contained one record for every person who made a campaign contribution during the reporting period along with his or her pertinent check record numbers Itemized Receipts for Schedule A 11ai SUMMARY INDIVIDUALS Donor ID 1 Menu Name Address C 8 Z Occupation Employer Primary General Rec1 2 Datel Amt1 Rec2 3 Date2 Amt2 Rec3 4 Date
25. gure 1 on page 3 A full report for a given period might run to 20 or more pages e Each page must show the page number in a 1 of 20 2 of 20 and so on format along with a subtotal of receipts for the page e The final page 20 of 20 for example must show the grand total of all receipts the sum of the page subtotals for the reporting period e Persons making a campaign contribution during the reporting period have to be listed by name and address in a small address block with their employer and occupation in adjacent blocks e The receipt date of each contribution along with the amount have to appear in two adjacent line item like columns A person might make several contributions during the reporting period e Each contributor s aggregate year to date contribution amount must be shown e The report must show whether each contributor s contributions were for a Primary or General election Continues on page 3 The Independent Guide to Q amp A Expertise 1 11 12 12 13 16 UIC October 1996 Volume 7 Number 10 O QuickTip Change in Function Key Assignments David Dvorin The Program Spec XPost Your Data Post Haste Jeff Nitka QuickTip Available Function Keys for Marcros David Dvorin QuickTip Separate a Combined City State and ZIP Field into Component Fields Tom Marcellus Report Retrieve Spec Glitch Solved Gordon Meigs QuickTip Who Are You Anyway Alec Mulvey Tim
26. he report can do that work for me Paul MacLellan Sydney Nova Scotia Canada A few modifications to your existing report should do the trick Here s a sample report s Column Sort Spec Truck 1 AS Odometer 2 AS CS Gallons 3 This produces a report similar to yours Add the following Derived Columns Heading Dupe Truck Number Formula 1 Column Spec 50 I Heading Dupe Odometer Reading Formula 2 Column Spec 51 1 Heading Miles Traveled Formula Text 1 50 2 51 Column Spec 10 F NO Heading Miles Gallon Formula Text 1 50 10 3 Column Spec 11 F N1 Column 50 is a copy of the Truck and it s used in columns 10 and 11 to control when the calculations occur The values of column 1 and 50 are compared and when they re the same the related calculations are performed This is the reverse of a popular derived column trick where calculations are performed only when columns 1 and 50 aren t equal Column 51 is a copy of the Odometer reading from column 2 It s necessary because while column 10 is being computed column 51 contains the odometer reading from the previous record Thus the miles traveled today equals today s reading in column 2 The Quick Answer October 1996 minus yesterday s reading in column 51 Here s what a portion of the report might look like Miles Miles Truck Odometer Gallons Traveled Gallon 1 1000 10 1100 5 100 20 0 1250 7 150 21 4 1500 10 250 2
27. hey re the same generation as the database and another that automates the process of bringing prior generation reports up to the latest generation of the database How you use the utility to fix your reports depends on your case e Case 1 Your reports show no signs of being affected but you ve redesigned the database and at some point might want to use the Copy Design Only feature e Case 2 The database already contains some reports with garbage retrieval parameters in the last field Case 1 Steps to take before using Copy Design Only Assuming the latest DIFSPECS update is installed go to the DOS prompt in the directory where it s located and enter DFTSPECS filename dtf macro Substitute for filename dtf the complete path to the Q amp A database file The macro switch tells the utility to create macro files for your reports With the utility running select R for Reports and A for All and it will create a macro file for the first 10 reports in the database REPORTSA MAQ another macro file for the next 10 reports REPORTSB MAC and so on Instead of the RA command you can select RW to generate macros only on reports of the wrong Generation or RB to generate macros only on existing corrupted reports See Case 2 below About DTFSPECS and DTFCHECK DTFSPECS is available from John Dow 412 521 1577 Internet jtd pgh net CompuServe 102701 2751 for 100 or 25 if upgrading from a previous version In addition to pro
28. ield on the form It has been reported that once this begins to happen it gets worse or spreads Fortunately that s not the case but it can sometimes look that way Preventing the problem There are two things you can do to prevent the problem from ever occurring The following methods are practical for databases containing only a dozen or so reports The Quick Answer October 1996 Report Retrieve Spec Glitch Finally Solved e Immediately after you redesign a database use Report Design Redesign a Report to resave each of your reports This brings them up to the current generation As you display each report s Retrieve Spec check the last field to be sure it contains no garbage characters If it does delete them and continue to press F10 until you ve resaved the report You don t have to print it e Before you use the Copy Design Only feature bring each of your reports in the database up to the current generation by following the same steps as in the previous paragraph If you have a multitude of reports in the database resaving each one to bring it up to the current generation can be a time consuming process Fortunately there s an alternative A utility that can identify and fix affected reports DTFSPECS a Q amp A database utility from John Dow see the sidebar About DTFSPECS and DITFCHECK has been updated with two new features one that checks your reports to see if t
29. l spec for this report has 135 fields and is generation 37 Checking report Uncleared L The retrieve spec for this report has 135 fields and is generation 37 The col spec for this report has 135 fields and is generation 37 POL COPY DTF a Copy Design Only of POLICYF DTF Again a single generation file but this time all the reports are okay DTFCHECK verbose partial output The current generation is 1 Generation 1 has 135 fields Checking report Open Reminders The retrieve spec for this report has 135 fields and is generation 1 The col spec for this report has 135 fields and is generation 1 Checking report Uncleared L The retrieve spec for this report has 135 fields and is generation 1 The col spec for this report has 135 fields and is generation 1 Since we first began examining this issue John has modified DTFCHECK so it displays WARNING This report is not the current generation for reports such as the first one in POLICY from earlier generations This makes it even easier to spot potential trouble before it causes damage The Quick Answer October 1996 enter the SET command at any DOS prompt to display the system variables Look for a line such as TEMP C WINDOWS TEMP Exit DTFSPECS and start Q amp A From the Main menu select Reports Design Redesign a Report Specify the name of the database continue to the list of saved reports then press Esc to return to the Report menu The macros generate
30. main outside the file you re working in you don t have to worry about them Any number of databases can access XPost to and XLookup from the same external temporary variables database Simply have one database store its temporary variables in one record and have another database use a different record in the same file It works even ina network environment To demonstrate the technique let s use the factorial function used in statistical calculations symbolized in mathematics by the exclamation point For example 4 4 3 2 1 24 In this case you enter a positive whole number in the X field and the following program calculates X and returns the answer X gt X Abs Int X Rem Ensures a whole number gt 0 If X lt 2 Then Msg Str X 1 X 1 Goto X Else Rem Stores X in two variables Numb amp Fact XPost VAR DTF 1 Page X Numb XPost VAR DTF 1 Page X Fact Iter 1 GOSUB Iter Msg Str X XLu VAR DTF 1 X XLu VAR DTF 1 GoTo X Page Fact Page Fact Iter lt If Iter lt Tn XLu VAR DTF 1 Page Numb Then XPost VAR DTF 1 Page Tn XLu VAR DTF 1 Page Numb Iter Fact MUL The Quick Answer October 1996 Quick XPost Your Data Post Haste Iter Iter 1 Goto Iter Else RETURN In the Iter iteration field s program notice that XPost performs the Fact F
31. o saves the record and heads for the mailing label The label s Retrieve Spec is comprised of two XLookup expressions that retrieve the StartPrintRecord and EndPrintRecord values from the single CONTROL record so Q amp A knows to print labels for SUMMARY records 1 through 7 The macro prints the seven labels to 3PAGE LBL sends the merge document to the printer joining 3PAGE LBL and returns to the CONTROL record as the page is printing StartPrintRecord and EndPrintRecord are bumped to 8 and 14 respectively PrintPageNo is set to 2 the page Subtotal is updated and the macro is re invoked via Macro to process and print page 2 in the same manner This cycle repeats until CONTROL s PrintPageNo equals Pages at which time the Grand Total is retrieved from the highest record number in SUMMARY and the macro is invoked for the last time This is a variation on a theme by Jeff Nitka See his Make Your Macros Loop the Loop in the June 1996 issue As each page of the report prints merge fields in the 4FORM DOC document merge the PrintPageNo Pages Subtotal and Grand Total fields from the single CONTROL record The Grand Total field remains blank until the final page is processed Figure 3 shows how everything fits together The merge document We started out by printing to photocopies of the FEC forms but the problem of positioning the original exactly when making the copies gave mixed results Moreover when you
32. ok more than a few escape codes to create all the lines and boxes and position the text labels in the FEC form but after I typed a few and saw the results on the printed page I got the hang of it I copied and pasted using F5 then edited the codes for page position and line length Figure 5 shows the top left portion of the 4FORM DOC Write merge document I programmed to create the FEC form To have plenty of room for all the codes I set the document s top bottom and left margins to 0 zero and the right margin and page width to 240 at the Define Page screen If your output breaks onto a second page simply increase the page length at the Define Page screen The first printer code in the document is amp 15 5900C that s a lowercase L following the amp sign You ll find these codes at the back of your printer manual It tells the printer to set the line spacing what the HP LaserJet 4P Printer User s Manual calls the vertical motion index to 5 5900 which is 5 59 48ths of an inch or just under eight lines per inch exactly right for the FEC form The second line is the Q amp A JOIN command that joins merges the 3PAGE LBL document Further down the page are the merge fields for the page number last page number page subtotal and grand total all merged from CONTROL DTF amp 15 5900C JOIN 3PAGE LBL exp1575x0y c825a4b0p p1575x0y c4a144b0p pZ20ZOxOy c4a144b0p p2020x72y lt p
33. oll the Q amp A 5 0 changes the functionality of Alt F9 In Q amp A 4 0 Alt F9 displays the Calculations Options box in Write while in 10 CHome and Goto Differences Incomplete On Screen Help Change in Function Key Assignments amp T field to move to it If you move to it via a Goto command however it s program will execute Tom Marcellus T screen up and Shift F9 to scroll it down David Dvorin Phoenix Solutions Somerville New Jersey ue 5 0 it displays the External Programs menu The Calculations Options box was changed to Alt F8 David Dvorin Phoenix Solutions Somerville New Jersey The Quick Answer October 1996 The Program Spec Jerr NITKA By using XPost to save temporary variables then retrieving them with XLookup you can free your database from the clutter of all those otherwise useless calculation fields F I ve developed a love hate relationship with any Q amp A command it has to be 5 0 s XPost I love XPost s ability to post data on the fly in real time yet I shudder at the thought of losing data integrity should a post be performed in error That s why I ve come up with few ways to make XPost easier to live with Storing temporary variables You can use XPost to store temporary values variables in an external database This comes in handy when your programming requires several temporary fields for interim calculations and the like Since the fields re
34. rdinates type the text as you want it to print then enhance it Shift F6 with the appropriate font and size You can add merge fields in the same manner Simply precede them with an escape code telling the printer where on the page to print the data You can assign fonts Shift F6 A at any time If you need more fonts than the Font Assignments screen accommodates eight plus the Regular font you can always invoke them via escape codes See the sidebar Escape Codes and Printing Oddities This 4FORM DOC document uses Line Printer 16 as the Regular font for the joined Q amp A data several sizes of Univers and Univers bold for the text and text labels the Wingdings font for the small check boxes and two sizes of the Symbols font for the right angle brackets They re all internal LaserJet 4 fonts A procedure that took two days now takes just a few minutes And we did it all in Q amp A QA Tom Marcellus is editor of The Quick Answer and author of PC World Q amp A Bible IDG Books His QuickClick Calendar Plus a time and activity tracking database for Q amp A 5 0 is available from Marble Publications publisher of The Quick Answer Escape Codes and Printing Oddities LaserJet escape codes that specify printing coordinates have an asterisk after the escape character If you follow such a code with text or a Q amp A merge field the first character will be missing in the output To prevent this simply add another
35. run even high quality paper through a photocopier the sheets curl enough to make running them back through a laser printer problematic The first few might print with the data dead on the next few a bit off then the printer might jam due to the curling and physical handling But that wasn t all The original FEC form was designed just enough out of whack to cause problems The box for the first contributor s data was 30 cm high the next one a bit bigger and the next a bit bigger still so that by the time printing reached the sixth and seventh boxes the Q amp A data was creeping up printing a few centimeters off and on top of the lines and text labels designed into the form All these factors conspired to make printing to copies of the form too chancy The great escape Roger Skidmore an optician helped me see the light In his Create Shaded Text Boxes and More in the March 1996 issue Roger shows how to type LaserJet control codes in a Write document to print precision graphic lines If you ve ever tried to use Line Draw to spruce up a Write document containing merge fields or proportionally spaced fonts you know the mess that results You re about to find salvation When you use the decimal printer codes that Q amp A accepts at every Print Options screen Q amp A s printer driver converts them to the escape codes for the printer Escape codes not the decimal equivalents are what actually control the printer Q
36. table margin around the physical page The LaserJet 4 s are something like 5 inch top and 25 inch left so when you tell the printer to print a line one inch down from the top of the page and one inch in from the left it will start printing at one inch plus 5 inch down and one inch plus 25 inch to the right Be sure to take these unprintable margins into account when positioning any lines or text on the page Physical Page 2 inch 00y to make 6 inch b 2 j box at 300x Four lines oy 2 2100 2400 Z Ow gt meweaz wDvZzC 2700 3000 3300 1 2 3 4 56 6 7 8 X l l l 300 600 900 1200 1500 1800 2100 2400 INCHES DOTS Figure 4 Using a grid where 300 dots equals one inch you can type escape codes in your Write document to draw graphic lines and boxes anywhere on the page Using additional printing coordinate commands you can place text and merge fields inside the boxes The Quick Answer October 1996 In the earlier example the horizontal line begins at coordinates 300x 900y so you can send another command to create a two inch vertical line starting at 300x 900y Since the original horizontal line ends at 2100x 900y you can create another two inch vertical line starting at that point You can then create a second horizontal line between the end points of the two vertical lines and you ve got a rectangular box six inches wide by two inches high See Figure 4 It to
37. tes the first and last lines containing LaserJet printer control codes then resaves it The resulting 3PAGE LBL document is then joined with a Write merge document more on this later and out comes the FEC form page with the data from the seven records in it The printing procedure Each page of the FEC report is a seven record group The data originates from SUMMARY DTF reformatted by the mailing label output The macro prints labels for the first seven SUMMARY records to the 3PAGE LBL output file strips out the printer control codes then joins it with the The Quick Answer October 1996 master 4FORM DOC merge document to print as page 1 The macro then prints the next seven records to 3PAGE LBL and joins that file with 4FORM DOC to print as page 2 and so on until the entire report has been printed This process is controlled from a small one record database named CONTROL DTF When the operator gives the command to print an XLookupr statement in CONTROL retrieves the highest record number in SUMMARY If it s evenly divisible by 7 Mod MaxRecNo 7 0 that s how many pages the printed report will be Otherwise it ll be that many pages plus 1 The number is stored in CONTROL s LastPageNo field When the print command is invoked CONTROL s PrintPageNo field is set to 1 the StartPrintRecord field is set to 1 the EndPrintRecord field is set to 7 and the Subtotal field is set to the subtotal for page 1 The macr
38. the import done YTD DTF is ready to serve as a lookup file for the SUMMARY DTF Mass Update to follow Mass Updating SUMMARY DTF At this point each SUMMARY record contains a Donor ID and between one and six check record numbers Using the Donor ID as the key value the Mass Update performs an XLookup to retrieve the name address occupation and employer from ADDRESS DTF and the year to date aggregate from YTD DTF Using the check record numbers in the Rec1 through Rec6 fields as key values the check received dates and amounts are retrieved via XLookup from CHECK DTF The contributor s total amount for the reporting period is then calculated by adding the Amt1 through Amt6 fields The macro ends at this point so the SUMMARY data can be spot checked If everything looks okay a second macro performs a second SUMMARY Mass Update This one numbers the SUMMARY records the RecNo field starting at 1 and calculates the running total from record to record If for example SUMMARY contains 167 The Quick Answer October 1996 records then the lowest Donor ID s record is assigned 1 and the highest Donor ID s record is assigned 167 Record 167 therefore contains the grand total of all contributions from all donors during the reporting period We knew we had to merge seven records with each page of the report Therefore we also knew for example that SUMMARY record number 40 will be the fifth record to print on page 6 record numb
39. uding but not limited to implied warranties for the publication quality performance merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose Marble Publications Inc shall not be liable to the purchaser or any other person or entity with respect to any liability loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this publication Articles published in The Quick Answer do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of Marble Publications Inc The Quick Answer October 1996 Merging Data Continued from page 1 So we had three challenges How to compile organize the data how to arrange it to print to the FEC form and how to automate the whole thing Square one Virtually all the data required for the FEC report was ina check receipt database Each CHECK DTF record contained among other things an auto assigned sequential check record number the Donor ID the amount of the contribution and the date it was received They were printing a couple of columnar reports to generate the bulk of the required information one that listed contributors contribution dates and amounts and another that showed each contributor s year to date contribution total Using these they were retyping the data into this rather lame Windows forms program N designed for FEC filings that lacked any data import facilities Using a variety of techniques we eventually came up with a way to organize the data and print it on th
40. ure to copy a database s structure If your answer to any of these questions is Yes you d be wise to read on p03 amp A S Copy Design Only feature has been a hot topic on the Symantec Q amp A Forum on CompuServe in recent months Messages with subjects such as Bad Report Retrieve Specs complain of high ASCII graphics characters lucky charms but sometimes column headers and even programming expressions suddenly appearing in Q amp A for DOS Report Retrieve Specs usually in the last field Though the problem has been variously attributed to Q amp A 5 0 to using Q amp A 5 0 on a network or to running it in Windows it has shown up in Q amp A 4 0 and on standalone PCs running only DOS as well Anatomy of the glitch The problem is caused by a bug in Q amp A s File Copy Copy Design Only feature When you redesign a Q amp A database form to add delete or move fields O amp A creates a new generation of the database If you then create new reports or redesign and resave existing reports they become part of that latest generation However reports not redesigned or resaved following the database redesign are still of a prior generation Now if you use Copy Design Only on a database whose reports belong to two or more generations you stand a chance that some or all of the reports belonging to generations prior to the latest will be corrupted with garbage retrieval parameters in the last f
41. viding valuable information about your Q amp A databases see the October 1995 issue for a review of DTFSPECS See also Create a Q amp A Interface for DTFSPECS in the July 1996 issue the utility creates macros to regenerate Q amp A reports as you ve seen and even lets you copy report designs from one database to another database of similar design DTFCHECK which comes with DTFSPECS and can be downloaded separately from the Q amp A file library on CompuServe flags bad report definitions The latest version includes a verbose command line switch DTFCHECK filename dtf verbose that displays additional information about a database s reports The following excerpts are taken from DTFCHECK s verbose output on four variations of one database POLICY DTF a multiple generations database with good reports from several generations DTFCHECK verbose partial output returned the following The current generation is 37 Generation 9 has 118 fields Generation 35 has 133 fields Generation 36 has 134 fields Generation 37 has 135 fields Checking report Open Reminders The retrieve spec for this report has 134 fields and is generation 36 The col spec for this report has 134 fields and is generation 36 Checking report Uncleared L The retrieve spec for this report has 135 fields and is generation 37 The col spec for this report has 135 fields and is generation 37 POLICYB DTF a Copy Design Only copy of POLICY DTF DT
42. x5 y SCHEDULE A p2030x35y PAGE OF lt p2030x1 5y FOR LINE NO ITEMIZED RECEIPTS p1590x40y Use separate schedules s p1590x Sy for each category of the p15 p20x180y fny information copied from such Reports and Statements may not be so p20x220y commercial purposes other than using the name and address of any pol lt p30x285y NAME OF COMMITTEE Cin Full pOx36Oyx exp0x140y c2420a4b0p p2396xOy c4a3060b0p lt pOx140y c4a245b0p lt pOxZ50y xp140x385y c3a2465b0p p1140x385y c3a2465b0p p2020x385y c3a2679b0p exp2100x45y s4099T amp k45 s7B Page pZ2270x45y xof p2250x115y For Li lt p 160x420y A Full Name Mailing Address and ZIP Code p1180x420y Name of Employer p1790x420yxDate month p2100x4Z20y Amount of E p1750x385y c3a300bOp p1140x585y c610a3b0p p1140x685y lt cBBOasbOp lt pi4d lt p1180x615y 0ccupation ALLL pedi A UTUH LHA AHAAA AAAA 4FORM DOC 2 1 Line 1 of Page 1 of 1 Esc Exit Fi Help F2 Print Shift F Restore F Search F8 Options tF8 Save Figure 5 The top left portion of the Write document containing the LaserJet escape codes that create the FEC form in Figure 1 Placing text elements on the page As you move down the Write document typing the escape codes for the horizontal and vertical lines that create the boxes you can add text labels for the form s sections for example To position text on the page specify the x and y coo
43. xt Date Date Time Hours Add the following program to the You are User field 10 You are User Userid Date Date Time Time Press F8 from the Program Spec type 10 on the On entry field line and press F10 to save When you open the database in Add Data mode the form will show the User ID date and time See Figure 1 The on record entry program lets you press Esc to exit the database without the Save changes dialog box getting in your Who Are You Anyway D way Any records inadvertently saved can be deleted at any time You can create a macro to take you to this database in Add mode Alec Mulvey Keyword Training Ascot England Mi 2A 5 01 QAI of x You are User ALEC Date Jul 30 1996 Time 12 35 am Figure 1 Supplementary database tells you who you are PO Box 9034 Gaithersburg MD 20898 9034 Periodicals Postage Paid at Rockville MD
44. y person for the purpose of soliciting contributions or for commercial purposes other than using the name and address of any political action committee to solicit contributions from such committee NAME OF COMMITTEE in Full Christopher Cox Congressional Committee FEC ID No C00223297 Name ot Employer Wissen Motor Corp Occupation Regional Service Mgr Amount of Each Recept ths Penod 150 00 150 00 75 00 Name of Employer Smith Barney _ Gererat Amount of Fach Nore af Employer cept this Parod mas Perc Lankershim and McArthur 7 15 100 00 Oceupaton Recept For you can put to use in your own Attorney oO Primary Doin ispecity applications Gus R A SUMMARY database We started by creating a SUMMARY database to organize the donation information check amounts and dates received for each person who made a contribution during the reporting period See Figure 2 If someone made three contributions his or her SUMMARY record would show the Donor ID the three check record numbers dates and amounts from CHECK DTF along with the name address occupation and employer from ADDRESS DTF The first data items we had to get into the SUMMARY database were the Donor ID numbers and Recept For 7844 Elden Place Recept For Receipt For A Full Name Malling Address and ZIP Code Edmonson 2344 Enterprise Blvd South Suite 435 Newport Beach CA 92627 __ Other ispecity A
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