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1. 1 PS S amp 5p 012345678 9 7 lt gt ABCDEFGHIJIJIKLULMNOPQRS TUVWXYZ Ew abcdefghigjykimnopgqrstuvw Xy be Sy F eae tT BO BAS Se EG PO gee Som S gt rezyY heEe 1 Sy e ea 7 Ob a 3 pd iloyun AAAAAARE CEE EFitirtrpnodd6 66x G vUtTUYrPRAAAAAAMR CFE EFFELLIUIOA oo6 OG Fou Uo y by This is adequate for most Western European languages but not for the rest of the world The computer industry has designed a new standard Unicode to allow you to type any character from any language in the world Cardbox supports version 3 2 of Unicode The characters that Cardbox supports At present Cardbox can display characters from any script that is written from left to right and is not a complex script complex scripts are ones where the letters change shape depending on the adjacent letters in the word as in the Devanagari scripts of India Cardbox may have got better at displaying other scripts by the time you read this check Help Point 553 or our web site for details Some samples of scripts that Cardbox can handle are shown in the margins of this page Displaying and printing Unicode Not all fonts contain all characters and this can be a problem if you use Unicode It is one thing to be able to type classical Greek and quite another to find a font to see it in Windows XP contains technology that should help with this it claims to be able to borrow missing characters from similar
2. Re enter new password for confirmation p IV Make Windows remember the password in future If the workspace already has a password enter it in the box Then turn on Enable Password Protection if you want to give the workspace a password or turn it off if you don t want password protection When you turn on password protection you ll have to enter the new password twice as a protection against mistyping If you give your workspace a password and you then forget the password the workspace is useless There is no way of retrieving the password and you will have to delete the whole workspace and start again Since workspaces don t contain any of your data this should only be an inconvenience and not a disaster 64 Getting Windows to remember the workspace password If it s too much bother to remember and type in the workspace password every time you open your Cardbox workspace you can get Windows to remember the password for you On Windows 2000 and above including Windows XP this uses methods built into Windows by Microsoft which tie secret information to the identity of a user If you choose to remember the workspace password in these versions of Windows e You will be able to open the workspace without being asked for its password e Anyone else using your logon account will be able to open the workspace without being asked for its password e Other users who try to use this workspace will be asked for its pas
3. 00 Lad 6 ee ae a en Pee eee er Linesand hoxe Sarh a a a A EEE e tei E ae Graphics eeeee Pushbuttons Format properties Validators een ee i How to add and modify validators siisii ee cece eee eee tiiin Getting more information about validators Validators that check what is in a field 0 Validators that change what is in a field Validators that replace what is in a field Validators and pick lists 2 2 s c03 desciees daca estes Aseesten ds eeassveeteescieesenes Part Six Inspiration Planning your database design ccceeeeseeeeeeeeeees Personal uses Of Cardb0x cccccceesssssseesceseenensssssseeeeeees Addresses and contacts 0 cceeceeeessccecccccesssseeeeeeeecesessesseeeeeseceesssaaees Collections and inventories R IPOS nn Bese tev Se eects coe Eaa Contents xi Bibliographies vaccvicnwiarnenauiinss deniivarihte ei awae ens eeds Abstracts 0 eee Passwords Photographs Daybook iiinis Other uses sisese Business uses of Cardb0x ccccccccssssssseseeseeeennssssceeeeees Customer relationship management essessesesrerrereererrererrnrrsrrernernrne INWOICES EEE EEEE TT Time critical situations Membership data aSeS sissrisiriniiseiieeiirsitinineniiiursi ineeie Actors and Casting iseni E a ia eai Soni tact Scientific research SEc UN Y ipiis E VEE A AA A E Medicea n e r a e E ECEE UEa EE NE a Museums
4. Home To the beginning of the line End To the end of the line Ctrl Home To the beginning of the whole field Ctrl End To the end of the whole field Ctrl F To specific text see Finding Text p 145 142 Edit gt Select All Ctrl A Selecting text If you want to delete or replace a whole block of text move it copy it to the Clipboard or even index or unindex it you ll need to select it first Cardbox handles selection in the same way as any other Windows program It s a simple two step process 1 Move to the start of the text you want to select 2 Hold down the Shift key and move to the end of the text you want to select The same rule applies regardless of the way you choose to move the cursor You can hold down the Shift key and click with the mouse or you can hold down the Shift key and use the arrow keys to extend or shorten the area of selected text Keyboard shortcuts You can also select a whole field at once with Edit gt Select All This is especially useful if you want to replace the entire contents of the field Mouse shortcuts To select a range of text move to one end of the range depress the left mouse button move to the other end of the range and release the mouse button If you don t get the ending point exactly right you can adjust it by holding down the Shift key and clicking where you really want the end to be To select a word double click on it To sele
5. Cardbox chooses the index automatically when it looks at the term word number or date to be indexed When you are doing a search Cardbox looks at the search term you ve entered and deduces which index you want to search 36 Older versions of Cardbox did this differently see Help Point 552 For more about collating sequences see Help Point 533 How Cardbox indexes When Cardbox starts indexing text it splits it into terms words numbers or dates Terms are separated by spaces so if you inadvertently type SMITH JONES instead of SMITH JONES it will end up being treated as a single term To decide whether a term is a word or a number Cardbox looks through it If it sees any alphabetic characters then it treats the term as a word this means that 3M and 3RD both count as words Indexing words If the word is a very long one more than 64 characters long Cardbox truncates it It then goes through the word removing all non alphabetic characters It removes any accents from the letters and converts them to upper case it also does useful things such as converting the German double S B to SS This converted upper case word is what actually goes into the index There are a couple of exceptions to the remove non alphabetic characters rule Underlines are treated as if they were a letter of the alphabet and hyphens are treated specially Hyphens divide a word so that every piece of a hyphenat
6. ccs ccccesseeceeeseeeeeeeseeeseensneeeeeenenes Staring AISCALCM sei facies cheese a aaee doses dees ich E AAA A EEEIEE Choosing a field to search scares aia waa a Things you can search for Specialised options for index search Searching check box fields icien eeann Searching through record data csseccceseesseeeeseeeeeeeeees Staring Seathan i oo nad Atel ai i ee N oE CHOOSING a foldi s irienn einir ienien Entering the search text and using wildcards Sedreh OPUONS eiriaa ue etete ies Biaspepeniaaaids eee eectiaaes Tags and tagged searches cssesseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeneeneees The details aan PR ee a ieee ek ERA Kept selections cccceseeeeeeneeeeeeenseeeeeenseeneeeenseeneeenseneenenseeenes Managing kept Selections icicic se icssceezeesechecesdueseqesceehensseubeccenshceneneveess Using kept selections acc n2a esse alacvi ern ea ee Advanced search COMMANGG c cesceseseesseeeneneeeeeeees Searching by record NUMDET eeeeeeeececeeeeeseeeeeereeesseeeneeseeenerseneeees Combining selections from different windows SSOMUUING eects erases encase tanta A E T E EAEE Simple sorting Contents Custom sequence After sorting u TO CAanCel SOMMIAG e EE Changing the forimat cccsccsseceseeeeeseeeeeseeeeseeeenseeeensees 106 Changing the appearance ccssccsseceeseeeeeseeeeseeeenseeeeeeees 107 The Appearance
7. When you do a simple search you ll see the status bar change from Level 0 to Level 1 This reminds you that you re looking at the results of a search command and not at the whole database What happens if you do a second Select command without undoing the first one Cardbox looks at the current selection Level 1 picks out the records that match your new Select command and creates a new selection out of them In other words these two Select commands have combined and the records you re left with at Level 2 are just those that match both the Select commands If you are used to Boolean logic Select is AND and Exclude is AND NOT 74 In terms of Boolean logic Include and Select Also both function as OR Search gt Undo Search gt Clear Commands that expand the current selection Include Include starts with the current selection It creates a new selection from it by adding to it every record in the database that matches the Include command Select Also Select Also starts with the current selection It creates a new selection from it by adding to it every record from the previous selection that matches the Select Also command Select Also seems to do the same sort of job as Include so why did we put it in Here s an example that will help to show why Imagine that you run a pet shop and you want to make a list of girls in London aged between 8 and 12 who keep rats or snakes as pets The first fe
8. to K inclusive COB finds all words from the beginning of the index to the last word that starts with COB XE finds all words from the first indexed word that starts with XE to the last word in the index finds all indexed words as long as you ve got the Which Index option set to Words If you don t Cardbox will assume that you want a numeric search If you really want to find all indexed words you ll find it easier to use the asterisk instead For details see Help Point 510 Searching the index 83 Single numbers and dates To search for a single number or date type it into the Search For box and press OK For details of the date formats that Cardbox understands see Date formats and Cardbox p 37 Ranges of numbers and dates You can put two numbers or dates separated by a colon into the Search For box 17232 finds any indexed number between 17 and 32 inclusive 14 6 finds any indexed number greater than or equal to 14 6 730000 finds any indexed number less than or equal to 30000 finds all indexed numbers Phrases If you put a series of terms words numbers or dates in quotation marks Cardbox will search for records that contain those terms adjacent to each other and in exactly that order It will only look at things that are indexed unindexed text will be ignored RED DOG will match BIG RED DOG but not RED BIG DOG You can also search for words th
9. Cancelled C CD Ceased 232 Frensham secondary girls boarding school catering for 300 girls www frensham nsw edu au Gib Gate co ed primary school catering for about 250 from preschool to year 6 www gibgate nsw edu au Sturt craft centre educating to tertiary level and including a shop and caf www sturt nsw au Cardbox for everything Once people get Cardbox for one purpose they find more and more uses for it Here is an extreme example Winifred West Schools Ltd is an Australian company that runs three educational facilities in New South Wales John Huskisson is the Property Manager responsible for all buildings grounds and related infrastructure He first came across Cardbox when he used it in the British Army to run the subscriptions database for an in house newsletter Here is a summary of the Cardbox databases that are being used to help run this organisation Jobs property management a record of all maintenance jobs done since 1996 About 26 000 records Indent an online database of job requests Accessed by all staff across three campuses records are then transferred to Jobs and allocated to work teams Phonebook corporate address phone email and Web directory Phonecalls record of all external phone calls made Downloaded from the exchange as a text file converted by WordPerfect and then loaded into Cardbox Calculates cost of calls and prints bills using information from Auth
10. If you right click on this sort of field Cardbox will list all the possible values in the field Click on the items to use in your search di Cancel T Match all Text search Click on the item or items you want to search for Clicking once produces a tick meaning that you want records containing this item if you click again you ll get a cross meaning that you want records that don t contain this item if you click once more you ll get nothing at all meaning that Cardbox won t consider this item at all When you ve chosen what you want to search for press OK and Cardbox will do the search If you prefer to use the standard Search command window just as you would for a field that was displayed as text press the Text Search button The Match All option appears only when you re searching a field that is displayed as check boxes It makes a difference if you have clicked on more than one search item Effectively it changes the search from a Boolean OR to a Boolean AND for a full explanation see Help Point 586 90 Searching through record data In most databases there are fields that you ll never want to search and then some time later it turns out that never really means very rarely once in a blue moon For us telephone numbers are like that it would be pointless to index every telephone number but occasionally someone leaves us a really garbled voicemail message and the only thing
11. Things you already know about Windows Cardbox is a Windows program so it tries to behave as much as possible like other Windows programs However some features of Windows aren t used very often and it s possible that you may not have come across them recently Here to refresh your memory is a short description of them Multiple selections in list boxes List boxes are something you come across every day when using Windows Most of the time you look at the list and click on the item you want but some list boxes let you select multiple items at once This is very useful with Cardbox For example you can tell Cardbox to show you a list of possible search terms and then you can choose the ones that you want Cardbox to search for Here s how you can do this using the mouse Click on an item to a ALBANIA ALBANIA select it If you ANTILLES S ANTILLES ANTILLES click on another ARGENTINA ARGENTINA ARGENTINA item this deselects RUBA ELA aa ARUBA ihe fret one AUSTRALIA AUSTRALIA AUSTRALIA AUSTRIA AUSTRIA AUSTRIA BAKU BAKU BARBADOS BARBADOS BARBADOS Cirl click on an ALBANIA item to select it ANTILLES ANTILLES ANTILLES Other items aren t ARGENTINA ARGENTINA eal seer AUSTRALIA AUSTRALIA A AUSTRIA AUSTRIA AUSTRIA selected item this BAKU deselects it BARBADOS BARBADOS BARBADOS If you click on an item and then Shift click on another one you ii select all t
12. end of the process he sorted i the database into numerical order printed it out and sent the result to the publisher The concepts of Cardbox 27 Formats A format is what gives shape to your data It is everything you see on the screen when you look at a record except for the actual data It covers the way your fields are laid out and which ones appear at all plus any captions lines boxes and so on A Cardbox database can have as many formats as you like Put like that it s pretty abstract but the format mechanism is more powerful than it sounds and it s worth getting to know it early in your acquaintance with Cardbox Here s a format that looks like a form to be filled in Most databases have a format like this to make data entry easier The format has plenty of captions and boxes to guide you when entering data You can have more than one format of this kind if circumstances justify it perhaps a terse format for experts and a long winded one for novices or specialised ones for different stages in the use of a record On the next page you can see what this format looks like when you put some data into it Marne First contact How heard amp o Ref HH NS RE Many database programs call this sort of format a list view Here s a format that works as a summary This sort of format is useful for printed summaries but it s also very good when searching because if the records are just one l
13. screen image mode The image compression options have been simplified so that you only have to specify the image type document or photograph and whether you want standard or high compression You can rotate or resize images before storing them If you have a digital camera or a sheet fed scanner then you can import multiple images using a single Cardbox command A zoom control lets you view images at any scale Images can be moved easily from one database to another or accessed by external programs Spelling checker A new high quality spelling checker has been built in to Cardbox You can hit a key to check spelling in any field or you can tell Cardbox to underline misspelt words a simple right click will offer you alternative spellings Drop down lists People who display Cardbox fields as radio buttons and check boxes have often asked us if we can do drop down lists as well Now we have In addition actions on all of these field types can now be recorded as part of a Batch Edit and searches on them have been simplified Workspaces Workspaces are an evolution of the Sessions feature which we introduced in Cardbox 2 0 You can have as many workspaces as you like listed in the Windows Start menu to keep your projects organised but separate Whenever you open a workspace it remembers what databases you had open last time and the exact state 272 Appendix of your browsing and searches Unlike Sessions you can have
14. 118 191 grid spacing 108 Autodialling 127 Automatic See Indexing modes Automatic numbering of records 209 Automation batch editing 137 155 macros 263 programming 267 Background colours See Appearance Backup files 249 Bar codes 30 198 Batch deletion 138 Batch editing 137 155 BMP file format 39 Bold characters See Appearance Boolean searches 85 by combining search commands 73 in a single command 85 Borders See Format design lines and boxes Browse bar 48 65 Browse menu 68 Browsing images 69 records 65 step browsing 68 Calculations 130 Cameras 162 Captions 190 Cardbox editions 13 history 4 Home Edition xiv Cardbox window 46 48 Change Format command 106 Character sets 43 Check boxes 32 192 searching on 89 Checking spelling 147 Clear all selections 74 Clipboard operations 123 Closing Cardbox 53 Collating sequences 36 Colours See Appearance Columns printing in 122 Combining selections 98 100 Comma separated format See CSV file format Communications 127 Compatibility with earlier versions 67 269 Compression of images 163 Copying formats 183 records 123 text 144 Creating databases 173 formats 183 276 Index records 133 CSV file format 124 Custom sequence 102 D Data menu 90 Data searches 90 Data transfer 123 clipboard 123 comma separated format CSV 124 DDE 123 Excel 135 export 123 external format 126
15. HTML output 128 796 images 129 import 135 internal format 126 mail merge 124 print to disk 126 web pages 128 196 XML output 125 128 796 Database windows 46 67 Databases creating 173 opening 54 publishing 20 rebuilding 251 recently used 58 Dates indexing 37 reformatting 209 searching 83 Datestamping See Default Entry validator DDE 123 Deduplication 167 Default Entry validator 209 Deleted fields purging 190 Deleted fields 189 Deleted records markers 49 138 undoing deletion 138 Deleting fields 186 190 format items 186 images 166 records 138 Dictionaries spelling 149 Digital cameras 162 Disaster recovery 249 DMP file format 126 Documents scanned See Images Downloading from server 251 Drop down lists 32 192 searching on 89 Duplicate records removing 167 Duplicating database windows 67 databases 175 formats 183 records 133 Dynamic data exchange See DDE E Editing formats 183 Editing records 136 140 batch editing 137 155 Email 127 Encryption 59 257 Error displays 49 Error messages validation 152 Error reporting 11 Excel 135 Exclude See Search commands Exporting data and images See Data transfer External file format 126 Extra text 26 204 viewing 67 Fax 127 Fields 25 178 alternate field views 192 Index 277 calculating totals 130 changing index mode 190 changing type 190 deleting 186 190 extra text 26 in
16. Location WILKINSON GALLERY Accession No 752 259 Wilkinson Catalogue No LR 263 Old Wilkinson Catalogue No 355 Type CHERUB AND SHELL Variety MORTLAKE C YAR TWO PELLETS ON TASSEL NO POINT TO FLEUR IN SHELL Description ENGLISH TIN GLAZED EARTHENWARE DELFTWARE DRUG JAR DRY U VIRIDE Basemark Dry wet DRY Expanded Inscription Unguentum Viride Content Details Green Ointment Drug Reference Pemberton 1746 p 371 This is given as a new name for Unguentum martiatum in the 1746 pharmacopoeia Pot Reference Product of Image Ref TMM record photos Place Date 1746 H A Conventional source Conventional date Association l Ex Wilkinson Collection Place Note Association 2 Ex Richmond Collection Place Note Materials TIN GLAZED EARTHENWARE Dimensions H 7 3 8 18 7 cm W 5 7 8 14 9 cm Inscription 1 Position ON FRONT OF JAR Method IN GLAZE PAINTED Transcription U VIRIDE Inscription 2 Position Method Transcription Inscription 3 Position Method Transcription Condition SOME OVAL AND CIRCULAR SPALLING CRACKS PATCH OF GLAZE LOSS REAR SHOULDER CHIP IN REAR OF NECK RIM GLAZE FLAKED AND WORN ROUND NECK RIM Conservation The Thackray Medical Museum uses Cardbox to catalogue its specialist collections www thackraymuseum org Introduction 3 Introduction What is Cardbox Cardbox is a flat file database program It lets you design your own database
17. Match Accents If this is turned off Cardbox ignores accents when matching so that PECHE will match p che and p ch If it s turned on there won t be a match because the accents are different An unexpected use of Data search Sometimes someone writes to us quoting a non existent Cardbox serial number Probably they ve transposed two digits Fuzzy matching isn t very useful because it would change digits as well as reshuffle them and anyway it works only on words and not numbers So if the user has said something like 2170031 we successively do Data searches on 2 1 7 0 and 3 The result is a collection of serial numbers that contain just those digits and with any luck there won t be more than a handful of them and we can look through and find the likeliest one Changing your mind about indexing If you find yourself using Data search frequently in a field only because you hadn t originally marked the field as indexed you should consider editing the native format and changing the indexing mode see page 190 Help Point 541 tells you about re indexing existing records after you have changed the indexing mode Tag gt Tag Record TAB ID Ps40 Code MJK ID Ps40 2 5 13 14 Code Che D Ps41 Code MJK ID Ps41 2 3 42 34 Code Che ID Ps41 23 5 Code Che J Ps41 23 5 42 34 Code MJK IF Ps42 14 Code Che DF Ps42 1 5 Code MJK ID Ps43 10 11 14 15 2 Code Che ID Ps43 10 17 C
18. Save Ctrl S File gt Quit Ctrl Q How to edit or create a format 183 How to edit or create a format Creating a blank format Edit gt Format gt New creates a new blank format as a basis for your design When you have finished designing the format use File gt Save to save it Cardbox will ask you for a name to give to the new format Creating a new format based on an existing one You will often find yourself wanting to create a format that is almost identical to one that s already there especially if you regularly create standard letters for mail merging To create a new format that resembles an existing one select the existing format with View gt Change Format and then do Edit gt Format gt Duplicate This creates a new format but instead of being blank the format is identical to the one you were just looking at Now you can make any changes that you need and then use File gt Save Cardbox will ask you for a name to give to the new format and the original format will be left unchanged Copying a format from one database to another Sometimes people maintain similar but separate databases and they want to copy a format from one database to another This isn t quite as simple as it sounds because there s no guarantee that the field names you gave to one database are the same as the field names you gave to the other one but Cardbox can overcome these difficulties Editing an existing format To edit the
19. The Extra Text field Formats nens gatea eere e ie sacdlebeivvesdicacciaesdd adetevs ededebieeanadedeeveeenetant APPOArANCe sects nee teenies eccenstee essere nese spentieenneesn EFS AAA KEE O ESEE S ENEE ia INCOXING iirinn Marking indexed words Cardbox has two indexes cccccccccccccsssssceeeeecessessseeeeeeeeeesesssaeeeeeeeeeens Contents Networking UMICOCS Sie de fei E ea eteteg ahewcecsiceee Se T Things you already know about Windows Multiple selections in list DOX S ceecceeeceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaeeeeaeeeeeeeeteeteneees Multiple documents in one program WINCOW cceeeeeeeeeteeeteeteeeees A look at the Cardbox SCreen sccsseccseseeeseeteesteeenseeeeeeeees The top of a Cardbox WINAOW siieu eiiie riie neiaie anaana The bottom of a Cardbox window Progress of a long running command Warning displays within recordS sseseessseeresrssrereersrrernsrnrrernernrrernernne Part Three Search and Retrieval Opening and closing Cardbox Opening Cardb X ssis 02 vt ie areie iren a aakri GIOSING CardbOX iiris ien eaa sania tettasstenieshaiuentiebieysnesctebreuneniets Opening databases cccccseccecesseeeeeeeseeneeeeseeeeeeseeneeeesaes Open command My Computer tab oe ee eee eee teeter eee eeeeeaes Open command Server tab cccesseeeessteeeeseeeees Open command Recently Used tab 0 ee Security messages when opening a database
20. The Macro Recorder records your actions as a macro and you can use the Macro Editor to change details or add advanced features Macros can be activated through the Play Macro command or by keystrokes pushbuttons special menu entries or toolbar buttons Programming Cardbox can be driven by any language that uses ActiveX or Windows Automation including Visual Basic VBA C Java and Javascript For example a VBA macro within Microsoft Office can send commands to Cardbox to make searches or retrieve data It is also possible to run Cardbox on a web server and access the data through Active Server Pages Unicode Unicode is a worldwide standard for character encoding It is essential if you are using anything other than normal Western European characters Greek Russian or unusual accented letters from the Latin alphabet Cardbox 3 0 handles most left to right languages it does not yet handle languages that are written from right to left Index 275 A page reference in italics indicates that the page refers to a Help Point To read a Help Point open Cardbox and use the command Help gt Help Points A Accented letters 43 indexing 36 Access control See User profiles Adding fields to formats 189 images to records 160 records to database 133 Alignment fixed text 200 merge blocks 196 All See Indexing modes Alternate field views 32 192 Alternative formats 31 selecting 106 Appearance 33 107
21. Window sciis ieiunii esanian doeii aiiis 109 An overview Of Printing ccccssseecesseseeeesseeeeeerseeeeeenseeeenes 110 Printing one record Other Opllons A ricieaviacttaih e ile ea aia sa eee The Print command Choosing what to print Faster printing iin onn The print job ID optional eee Checking your design eee ee Choosing a different printer or paper Errors and WarninGS 2 cicsiiccsisiar Gisele tees tact aieerea etn ea ieee Printing iIMAGES ccecceeeceeeeneeceeeseeeseeeeeeeseeesneeseeeeneneeeesnes The Print Preview COMMANG c s eccseeeeereeseeteeeeeeeeteees ACCUACY Of PIOVIOW camis ccs sacs Seeds zacn caso a E A AS AS The Printer Settings command Units of measurement ssw senintenee inanan unaa aiaei audias Printer and Paper issn a anaana aa daana apa Ea E SaNa Text Margins ROCOIMS ceeceeeeeeeee APPCAraNnCe oii tein iene Aen a Se ee ey Rago Width eena aen i E noe arsacssedettes severe Paper sizes and label typPes cccssseeeceeeeeeeseeeeeeeneeeesnes Paper SIZES desi ieren iine Aa A E ATi ee ATENE Labels nia iainih Multi column printing Export and COMMUNICATION cceecceceeneeeeeeeneeeeeeeneneeeeeees Using the ClipBOard x sccrcecesascccz cera aa a A senagease settee cesean cases Dynamic Data Exchange DDE Exporting data to files eee Communicating with programs directly 0 0 eee eee eee cere 127 Exporting imago Ss anea oe es
22. are viewing it on the screen You won t usually need to do this but its good for experimentation and as one of our programmers discovered it is useful if you re colour blind and need to use a colour scheme that everyone else hates 34 See page 206 Setting up validators is a feature of the Professional Edition Indexing To make searching faster Cardbox creates an index of your database That way instead of having to look through every single record to find the ones you re looking for Cardbox can look at the index and find what you want in a fraction of the time The bigger the database the bigger the benefit Indexing is something that all databases do to some extent but here s how Cardbox is different e t can index every word number or date in a field e Within a single field it can let you choose which words or numbers or dates to index These are such obvious things to do that we don t understand why other databases don t do them The benefits are clear you don t have to twist names round to fit the way the computer wants them Public John Q or even John Q Public in three separate fields You don t have to have artificial fields KEYWORD 1 KEYWORD 2 KEYWORD 3 or use sophisticated programming You just mark the words you want to be indexed and Cardbox indexes them For each field you decide the indexing strategy when you design the field although like everything else in
23. gt Batch gt Delete Edit gt Undo Deletion Deleting records Deleting a single record To delete a single record use the command Edit gt Delete Record There are no toolbar buttons or keyboard shortcuts for this command because we don t want to make it easy to delete records by accident Most of the time the deleted record will disappear completely and if you re Se viewing a list of records then the other 30 11 1983 records will move up to compensate 1 12 1983 Occasionally it isn t possible for Cardbox 1 12 1983 to do this and the record will remain on C 26 12 1983 your screen but with the data replaced by 6 1 1984 shading this is not an error and the DA D 16 9 2 1984 shaded record won t appear in any printouts For one example of how this 17 20 2 1984 can happen see Help Point 506 e 5 9 7 1994 Deleting many records at once Start by selecting the records you want to delete Have a look through the selection to make quite sure that you have really selected the right records Go back to the first record and do Edit gt Batch gt Delete e Cardbox will display a warning to remind you of how many records you are about to delete e This command deletes all records from the current record to the end of the selection so if you re not on the first record when you use it some records won t be deleted If you delete a record by mistake If you do Edit gt Delete Record by mistake do Edit gt Undo De
24. gt Save Ctrl S File gt Quit Ctrl Q File gt Save as New Editing records Double click Edit The simplest way to make changes to an existing record is to double click on it This not only starts you editing but also gets you to the exact position where you clicked the mouse But you can also use Edit gt Edit Record to edit the current record this starts editing and positions you at the beginning of the first field For details of how you can enter and edit text in a record once you ve started editing it see All about Editing p 140 Saving your changes File gt Save stops editing and saves any changes that you have made Not saving your changes File gt Quit Without Saving stops editing and discards any changes that you have made The toolbar button behaves a little differently from the menu command because it asks you for confirmation this is because it s possible to click the wrong toolbar button by mistake and Cardbox doesn t want to discard all your hard work without being sure that this is what you really want it to do Saving your changes as a new record This stops editing It saves the record with all the changes you have made as a new record The original record the one that you started editing is left unchanged The Save As command is the traditional Windows method for creating a modified duplicate but we strongly recommend that you use Edit gt Duplicate Record instead for the reason
25. gt Save and the record will become part of the database The new record will appear at the end of the current selection if you want to get back to where you were before you added the record press Ctrl Z As far as Cardbox is concerned typing into a blank record is just like editing an existing one except that the record is blank to start with all the editing commands are the same For details of how to enter and edit text in a record see All about Editing p 140 Adding a record based on an existing one Some databases are very repetitive and you often find yourself wanting to add a new record that s almost identical to one that is already there For example in a library you may have to index Volume 105 of the Journal of Hellenic Studies when you already have a record for Volume 104 or in a bought ledger application there may be regular payments that happen every month To create a new record that resembles an existing one go to the existing record and use Edit gt Duplicate Record This creates a new record just like Edit gt New Record but instead of being blank the record contains exactly the same data as the current record when you issued the Duplicate command Now you can make any changes that you need and then use File gt Save The new record will become part of the database and the original record will be left unchanged 134 Ei Edit gt Copy Record Ctrl Shift C Edit gt New Record Ctrl N Edi
26. selecting all the format items and dragging them to the right Format height On the vertical ruler you ll see numbers counting from 1 showing the height of your current format design and the row number of each row within it If you click on the numbered area it will turn white if you then move your mouse to the thick border just above the number 1 or just below the last number the mouse pointer will change shape and you can depress the mouse button and drag the thick border up or down in order to change the height of the format If you drag upwards from the top you ll get blank lines at the top of the format if you drag downwards from the bottom you ll get blank lines at the bottom If you have format items sticking out beyond the numbered area Cardbox will automatically make the format taller when you save it but it is sometimes useful to set the height yourself by hand for instance if you want to have blank lines before or after your data 188 H1 wN h Headings and footings There are four kinds of headings and footings The single letter codes are the way that these areas are identified in the vertical ruler H The page heading appears at the top of each printed page If you turn on Screen Also Shows Page Headings in Edit gt Format Properties General then the page heading will also appear at the top of the screen assuming that the display window is tall enough to accommodate a list of records and not just o
27. t need to program Cardbox You simply design a format to contain your data and then you start entering the data When you need to present information in another form summary reports standard letters etc you just create another format At the same time Cardbox is programmable if you want it to be through its own internal macro system which uses Microsofts VBScript as the programming language or from external programs such as Visual Basic or Microsoft Word About flat file databases Flat file databases are simple and straightforward which prejudices some people against them because they think that simple must mean trivial With Cardbox it doesn t You can imagine a flat file database to be like a card index but easier and quicker to search Cardbox can index every word in a record for fast retrieval With an index like that you can make your searches as elaborate as you like you can store and search millions of records and you can have many databases open at the same time and set up links between them Many of Cardbox s features such as Batch Edit and relational linking make traditional relational databases unnecessary and some features such as tagging are almost impossible to implement in a relational model Throughout the history of Cardbox we ve concentrated on keeping the concepts clear and simple and putting the sophistication where it should be under the hood making the simplicity work fast and as a result we re con
28. 1923 83 RE Wildcards p 82 M TH Searching through record data p 90 Sometimes you do need to search through unindexed text either because you forgot to index something or because it wasn t worth indexing a field because searches in it are so rare Data searches are slower but they re still quite fast What you can search for 77 Tags and tagged searches p 93 As you look through your records you can mark or tag particular ones The tagged search commands then let you select or exclude the tagged records This feature is unique to Cardbox and it s invaluable for fine tuning a selection by hand Keeping and combining selections p 97 When you have made a selection you can save it for later use You may never need this feature but it can be good when you want to combine different selections together or even if you want other people to review a selection you have made Advanced search commands You can also search on record numbers Select the 10th to 20th records of the current selection p 99 and you can combine selections from different windows p 100 as long as they re windows onto the same database Relational linking This is a feature of the Relational Select E Professional Edition only a a Relational searching is different from ordinary index searches in two ways Getting the search text In an ordinary index search you tell Cardbox which field to sea
29. 20th century is over you may choose to use 2 digit years to save typing though not for dates of birth obviously But you must be consistent because Cardbox sees no resemblance at all between 04 and 2004 or between 68 death of the emperor Nero and 1968 death of Martin Luther King Specialised date formats If days aren t interesting to you you can use dates in month year or month year format Cardbox will assume the day to be zero As well as dates you can index times either on their own hour minute second or together with a date 38 Only the Professional Edition of Cardbox is able to set up validators Once they ve been set up any edition can use them See Using Validators page 152 Validators Cardbox s great strength is that you don t need to declare your text fields as being of any particular type Once you ve drawn the field in your format it will accept anything numbers dates codes long text single letters A field is a field is a field There are times however when you do want to restrict what is allowed to be put into a field This is especially the case when more than one person is responsible for editing records since the more people are involved the harder it is to trust all of them to keep to the same conventions Validators can only be set up by the Professional Edition its Advanced Features manual gives full details of the available validators and how to set t
30. 534 2336 DATENC Mailshot 15 Cardbox External format is a format we defined ourselves so other packages won t read it out of the box But as you can see it s a very simple format so if you want to write your own programs to process data exported from Cardbox External format may be a good choice Cardbox Internal format This is another format that we have defined Unlike Cardbox External format it contains full information about which words are indexed and it can also contain images and objects if you want Cardbox Internal format is good if you want to transfer records from one Cardbox database to another without loss of information as long as the native formats of both databases are identical and although it s less simple than Cardbox External format it s still possible to write programs that read and write it Print to disk This isn t so much a file format as a way of constructing file formats The idea is that if you are faced with a program that wants to import data in a way that doesn t match any of the standard formats you create a Cardbox format that makes your records look exactly right when you view them on the screen Then you print the records not to the printer but to a file Because Cardbox has so many ways of laying out fields and merge blocks you have a lot of freedom in the output you create Only the Professional Edition of Cardbox can record and edit macros but all editions can
31. Basic then you can use this to start Cardbox and communicate with it send it commands search a database retrieve or modify records and so on You can use any language that can drive programs through an Automation Activex interface If you use Microsoft Office you can write Office macros in VBA and these can also communicate with Cardbox in the same way Whether you use an Office VBA macro to send commands to Cardbox or a Cardbox VBScript macro to send commands to Office is largely a matter of taste Do you want the user to start the resulting macro from within Cardbox or Office Do you prefer the development environment of VBA in Office which includes a full debugger or of VBScript in Cardbox which just lets you edit and play macros Windows itself has a scripting interface accessible through the Windows Scripting Host WSH Using WSH you can write a macro in VBScript and give it a filetype vbs then double clicking on the file within Windows will run the macro typically this kind of macro would start Cardbox perform some actions with it and close Cardbox again Note however that some Windows installations disable WSH because it can control anything in Windows which makes it a security risk Finding out more The Macros and Programming manual is the main source of information about macros It explains all the commands used for recording editing and managing macros and how to set up toolbar buttons keyboard shortcut
32. Batch gt Edit to start the batch edit Now you can edit the first record There are a couple of things to remember while you are doing this e When it gets to the later records in your selection Cardbox will repeat all your keystrokes exactly and all your commands e You can t use the mouse except to move to the start of a field or to select a command from the menu or the toolbar Check boxes and radio buttons If you have fields that are displayed as check boxes radio buttons or drop down lists then you can use the mouse on them even when you re setting up a batch edit Moving the cursor within a field When you aren t batch editing you can use any method you like to move within a field When you re setting up a batch edit you have to use the keyboard In addition you also have to give some thought to strategy so that whatever you do with the first record will do the right thing in the other records too 156 Here s an example The record on the left is the one that you can see when you are setting up the batch edit the record on the right is one that appears later on in the selection Security The customer to provide a personal guarantee with a second charge on his Security The advance is to be guaranteed jointly and severally by Mr F G Smith and Mr J T Brown with a second charge on Mr Smith s property property Suppose that you want to add the note Approved by RPB 14 4 92 to the end of the
33. Cardbox you can go back and change your mind afterwards The simplest indexing modes are All which indexes everything in a field and None which indexes nothing More interesting is Manual which lets you mark individual words for indexing as you type them in or you can go back and mark or unmark them later There is also Auto which is rather like Manual backwards everything s indexed unless you tell Cardbox not to index it Marking indexed words If you tell Cardbox to index everything in a field or to index nothing there s no real need for words to look different when they re marked for indexing But if you do want to control indexing manually then it helps if indexed words look different from indexed ones By default Cardbox shows you indexed words in red and unindexed words in black but if you don t like the piebald appearance this gives you can change it In printouts in particular a consistent single colour makes more sense You can turn indexing on and off for a word by tapping the Ctrl key or by right clicking and using the pop up menu You can also use validators to control indexing Validators look at what you have entered into a field and make changes such as indexing based on what they see Validators can implement stoplists lists of common words not to be indexed or they can do the exact opposite indexing certain key words whenever they see them They are especially useful if many different people are going t
34. Help Point 562 tells you how to write a macro that dials a telephone number picked up from a Cardbox field 128 See Help Point 531 See Help Point 519 Retrieving Cardbox data into other programs If a program you are using has its own macro language for example VBA in Microsoft Word you can write a macro in that language to do searches in Cardbox databases and retrieve the results The possibilities are limited by your programming competence and your imagination Virtually every aspect of Cardbox can be controlled in this way and you can add and edit records as well as retrieving them Creating Web pages from Cardbox To create a Web page from Cardbox design a Cardbox format that contains the necessary HTML code together with field references that translate their contents into HTML and then use File gt Export Print to Disk to output the result to a file You can create an HTML page from a single Cardbox record or you can create it from a whole selection of records for example to make a summary report e An alternative strategy is to output the records in XML and either translate the result automatically into HTML or let XML aware browsers view the page directly Help Point 525 gives details Ctrl W Help Point 598 gives an example for the Professional Edition Export and communication 129 Exporting images Before you export an image use the image browse bar p 69 or the image thumbnail to select the ima
35. If that is what you want fine but it s not a very common thing to need usually what you really want to do is to ensure that something definitely is indexed The problem with using Ctrl in a batch edit is that if a word is already indexed in one of the later records that you can t see Ctrl will have the unfortunate effect of unindexing the indexed word not what you want at all This is why the Edit menu contains the command Edit gt Index On This command is superfluous when you re editing by hand but when you re setting up a batch edit it s a lifesaver If a word isn t indexed the command will index it if a word is already indexed the command will do nothing And if you want to make sure that something s definitely unindexed That s easy too use Edit gt Index On to make sure that it s indexed and then Ctrl to unindex it 158 Performing the batch edit When you ve edited your first record use File gt Save or Ctrl S to save it Batch Edit Record 1 of 5534 saved Een eee ee Press Batch or type B to edit the whole of the rest of the selection using the same keystrokes that Cardbox has just recorded Display or D does the same thing except that it displays each record after it has been edited If you re feeling cautious you can go more slowly Press Next or type N Cardbox will edit the record and present you with another message Batch Edit Record 2 of 5534 edited Have a look at
36. If you lose your format file altogether Tools gt Management gt Rebuild gt Format File will scan through the database and create a native format that allows you to see the data in your records This format will require a lot of editing before it s much use you will need to give the fields meaningful names and rearrange their layout based on your knowledge of the data but at least your data will not all have been lost Dealing with an old backup If you don t back up very often you can be faced with a dilemma if something goes wrong You may be faced with a week old or month old backup file on the one hand and on the other hand a corrupted database file that contains the work that has been done in the past week or month Help Point 573 tells you how to deal with this situation it involves a lot of tedious manual work but is better than having to type everything in again but it is far better to avoid the problem by being rigorous about backups Backing up databases on the Cardbox Server Databases on a Cardbox server can be shared among many users and it isn t always easy to be sure that no one is going to use a database when you want to back it up In addition the server may be storing its files somewhere where you have no direct access to them The separate documentation for the Cardbox Server describes how to tell the Server to make a copy of the database file so that it can be backed up but in some cases you won t have the
37. Libraries ccccccceceeeeeeee Cardbox for everything Other business uses Of Cardb0x isrener eenen ea aii Exercises and samples The instant address BOOK issii mnnn esanean The intelligent address book Simple document management sesseseereerrresrsrrsrrsrrrrurnsenerurenrreensens A photograph album isseire tari areenaa airesin apiiieaeairo siradan Bibliographi Sisi ci terete navies a a a aeara Thinking about FiCIAS ceececeeeee eee eeeeeeeeseeeeeseseeeeneeseeenes Human fields and computer fields ccccesceseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeseeeeeeeeeaes When to split fields ee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee When not to split fields Auxiliary fields 0 000 Narrative fields idinn a aaa aniis Part Seven Safety and Security Backup and disaster recovery ssssssnsesnnnnennnnnnnnnnnnnn ennn Boforeyo ak UD saa a mess ree te a ae KA A N What files you need to back Up 00 0 se eseesseseeeeceeeeeeseeeeeeeeeeesenenteeeees Disaster FOCOVENY lt ciscisecincssdisceseetveessocesccupentnensseen cheeses Backing up databases on the Cardbox Server Things that don t harm Cardbox databases 0 ee eee eee eee Contents Passwords and user profiles What auser profile Ontains ttic taieetheed hairs nniednnted How to set up user profiles Security of user profiles ReStricted operations iaiia aisar ieai riaa eaaa aa iaa aias iaei aeia Enry PtiOn iccsceciccecteciceeecec ttc ace
38. Limited Scriventon House Speldhurst Kent TN3 OTU England Contents v PrOlaC ei sssccccs scene cesecveces aeaa a a xiii Acknowledgements n i a eaaa e AE nies XV Part One Orientation Introduction eee 3 Whats GardbOx c enirere eaea eaves elite sie rh iets deena oh pened 3 The history of Cardbox 0 4 Cardbox as a software package About this DOOK sisi ra e aea ae ASS EATE ma ra Aesthee eh aetase eae Getting help sa cates fess aa aaen eea A ideea eaa aai daea aii Commands for opening Helps irssi neiaie itise What the help window contains Help POMS iver aciets pati d dhe tien ds apatite nina a E Reliability and SUPPOFt eccceseeeeeeseeeeeeeseeeeeseseeeeeeeeeeeenes RaDio sea tactecates a a Seaatesac cacao acetsasneemesSartees Getting SUPPO inen tees hat identi niin des apa e Naera Reporting problems s s s Protect yourself against disaster Installing and managing CardboX sscccseeeeseesseeeeseeeeeees The different editions Of Cardbox 2 0 ce eeeeeeeseeeseeneeenereeteeeneeeeeeneaeees Installing Gardbox 2 2 vies tacdes sama EAE E AE R ATA Changing licence details Removing Cardbox from your computer Moving Cardbox from one computer to another Licensing and the Cardbox Server Using Cardbox at work and at home Distributing Cardbox databases nirien nnie Part Two Concepts The concepts of Cardbox Databases and record 05 The current selection
39. a date T Format C dimy mdy ymd V Year C 2 digits 76 4 digits 1976 Default century 1990 1990 2089 T Month Day Noleading zero 4 Leading zero 04 This can look at indexed words only or unindexed words only or all words Validators 207 Editing a validator The bottom half of the Validation tab lets you set all the options for the currently selected validator Every type of validator has its own options Cardbox also displays a confirmation of what you have specified in a panel next to the Validation tab This is how the validator will look to the user if it pops up because an error has been detected Check words List of valid words is shown below uk ab eu Terms must match exactly Getting more information about validators The list below tells you about all the available validators and gives you a brief description of each one For more detailed information on a particular validator or on the validation process in general press the F1 key to see the online help This will tell you how each validator works and exactly what all the options mean Validators that check what is in a field If one of these validators detects something wrong it pops up a warning when the user tries to save the record When you design the validator you can choose whether it is possible to ignore this warning Check words Any words that occur in the field must match your specification The specific
40. a really long format then it may spread over several pages If you specifically want a new page to start in a particular place incorporate a merge block with Start On New Page turned on The merge block can contain text but it doesn t have to its presence alone will ensure that a new page is started Omit spaces after an empty field This option controls how the merge block text closes up after a field that contains no text For an illustration see Help Point 599 Omit text if all fields are blank If you turn this option on and none of the fields mentioned in the merge block have any text in them Cardbox will omit the merge block altogether This is useful if you are mail merging continuous text For instance if you were making a standard letter for mail merging and you had a merge block saying Please contact CONTACT for details of this offer and the CONTACT field happened to be blank you wouldn t want the sentence to say Please contact for details of this offer 198 Pack multi line fields into one paragraph If you turn this option on a multi line field such as an address has all its new line markers turned into spaces so that it becomes one long line If you re producing a summary that contains addresses this can be a good thing but note that Cardbox isn t very clever and doesn t insert commas or anything else between the concatenated lines of the address View The normal way of viewing a merg
41. again until you close Cardbox and re start it For the latest information about dictionary availability see Help Point 507 Spelling checker 149 To add this word to the user dictionary If you press Add to Dictionary Cardbox will add the word to your user dictionary so that it will always be considered correct in the future If you make a mistake and add a word to the dictionary that turns out not to be correct you can always use the command Tools Edit Spelling Dictionary to remove the word from the dictionary To correct this word If you can see the correct spelling in the list of suggestions simply double click on it or click once and then press Change If you press Change All instead of Change Cardbox will change all occurrences of the current misspelling not just the one that it was currently showing you If you can t see the correct spelling in the list type it into the Change To box and then press Change or Change All Spelling and spelling dictionaries We haven t written Cardbox s spelling checker ourselves Instead we are using the Sentry Spelling Checker from Wintertree Software which has a good reputation and is used by many other software products Many language dictionaries are available for this spelling checker At the time this manual was written only the English dictionary was supplied with Cardbox Main dictionary Use Tools gt Options Spelling to tell Cardbox which main language dict
42. alternative formats 189 inserting into formats 189 multi line 245 planning format design 241 purging deleted fields 190 sequence when editing 205 FIL file type 175 Finding and replacing text 145 Finding records See Searching Fixed text in formats 180 199 FMT file type 175 Fonts See Appearance Footings 182 188 Foreign language fonts 43 Format design 177 184 alternate field views 192 appearance 107 191 deleting items 186 extra text 204 fields 189 fixed text 200 format properties 182 204 graphic items 202 headings and footings 188 height 187 lines and boxes 201 merge blocks 195 moving items 185 overlapping items 186 per item appearance 107 planning 213 241 printable area 186 pushbuttons 203 resizing items 185 ruled forms 201 rulers 187 selecting items 185 undoing changes 186 width 187 zooming 184 Format files copying 175 rebuilding 251 Formats 27 177 changing 106 copying 183 creating 183 duplicating 183 editing 183 native and alternative 31 selecting 106 Fuzzy matching 87 G GIF file format 39 Graphic items in formats 181 202 Grid spacing 108 Headings 182 188 Help 8 Help points 9 History of selections 75 Home Edition xiv 13 HTML output 128 196 http prefix 236 Hyperlinks 236 Hyphenated words sorting 101 Image window 70 Images 39 69 adding 160 browsing 69 compression 163 deleting 166 editing 166 exporting 12
43. amp source H Holdup Simkin Personnel 1 7 2003 Word E Meyrick McCracken amp Moore 1 7 2003 Mailshot A WO2 T Smith Pearce Reynolds amp White 1 7 2003 Mailshot A WO2 Tony Riley Knight amp Mahony Electricals 1 7 2003 User N Friis Danish Foods 1 7 2003 Advertisement JID 6 03 B Pope Chester Castle Library 1 7 2003 Dealer B Drummond Esq Drummond Gallery 1 7 2003 User Crown Arts David King Davenant Gallery 1 7 2003 User Anse Kora aco Kan 1901 Koncno 01419 578 252 27 Keewmwmnoe He Sra won aoe Ononenen Cxxnnnn oeenmnononsea 0390 382778 38013735 06554 731890 Aseses Konts Roenes sex sonene 0078 760 SOBGA ous somone 0674 25 24 990 32 sous Anonnonas O00 28 68 198 09 Xanna Cxsune NNA 68004 Nonono Keceane Sraa 250000 ace Kasaane 7713 3700 736 6080 sa 0899P 3442 Ousama 90879 211008 OV 6007152081 06 Moenrew Aone Kaus Keneanouas 2078 0908 4 Monsnonaees Hc 2009 Kaus Oped VVE7H wns TRIPOD Hn OP 29042 We have made the fields blue so you can see where the data come from A real letter would all be in one colour The concepts of Cardbox On the right you can see a sheet of address labels for a mailing The format design is very simple because it only has to tell Cardbox what a single label should look like When you are setting up the printing you can tell Cardbox what size the labels are and how they are laid out on the page Cardbox has knowledge of many of the commonest mailing label layouts but
44. and Cardbox will take you straight to the Item Properties command so that you can read a graphic image from a file or paste it in from the Clipboard Setting graphic item properties To set or change the properties of a graphic double click on it Alternatively select it and then use Edit gt Item Properties or press Enter To put a new image into this graphic item press the Read button to import the image from a file or press the Paste button to paste it in from the Clipboard Display mode Foreground the graphic is displayed like any other format item If Transparent is also set the graphic will let any coloured background show through Background the graphic is displayed behind all other format items any format item that is drawn on top of the graphic will cover part of it up Format items normally have a solid background so that if you put a field on top of a background graphic the field will appear as a solid rectangle You can change this if you want by changing the field s appearance you will see a checkerboard pattern among the available background colours and this gives the field a transparent background so that only the text will be visible on top of the graphic Image size The graphic image that you are using will probably not be the same size as the space available for it This option tells Cardbox what to do about this keep the original size or stretch the graphic to fit the space Store in compre
45. and understand collecting groups of related items together or acting as separators Lines and boxes are the same thing as far as Cardbox is concerned if you draw along a row or a column you get a line if you draw diagonally you get a box Fixed text and lines will appear identically in every record This format is used for data entry Other formats in this database used for searches and reports save space by not including fixed text or lines 1 Dirs cash 9 Light amp Heat 2Bank flow 10 HP amp Leasing 3 Car Exp 11 Cost of Sales 4 Travel 12 Conf Pub Ady A 1 Entart 13 Faas About formats 181 Graphics p 202 A graphic has no meaning as far as Cardbox is concerned When Cardbox displays or prints your records it will include your graphic in the place you drew it in the format Because they have no function graphics are never essential but they are useful To include logos or symbols To reproduce a letterheading To provide a background picture for the format Here is a logo that can be used at the top of a mail merged letter Pushbuttons p 203 Pushbuttons perform an action when you click on them with the mouse The action can be a macro or a separate program command The position of this pushbutton makes it clear that clicking on the button will do something to the adjacent fields Updated 25 11 1999 CT EXPERIENCE EX 33 34 48 19 38 Ati ner 182 Head
46. and use it again later perhaps combining it with others Kept selections can be a way to identify collections of records on a long term basis without needing to edit the records themselves but they have less elegant uses too To take one simple example if you find yourself working through a selection of records and then get interrupted you can save those records as a kept selection and come back to it another time What a kept selection is A kept selection is a list of records It isn t the same thing as the records themselves so deleting it won t do anything at all to the records When you first create a kept selection you give it a name and you decide whether it is to be private or shared e A private kept selection only lasts as long as you have the database open and if you close the database then your private kept selections will evaporate of course the records will be unaffected because a kept selection is only a list If you re sharing a database across a network no one else can see your private kept selections A shared kept selection lasts for ever or until someone explicitly deletes it If you re sharing a database across a network everyone sees the same shared kept selections Managing kept selections The Keep menu The Keep menu is a submenu of the Search menu Open it with the mouse or with Alt S followed by K or even with Alt K If you re likely to be using the Keep menu a lot you can promote it to the m
47. appear sideways on the screen The same sort of thing can happen with cameras but the other way round they naturally take photographs in landscape format so if you turn your camera sideways to do portrait format the picture will appear sideways when it gets into your computer Sideways images are tiring to look at so Cardbox lets you rotate an image after it has received it but before storing it in your database That way you can make sure that everything is upright when it s stored If you use the same rotation setting often you can tell Cardbox to save it as a default that setting will then be applied to all images of the same type unless you override it To save the rotation setting select Save These Settings from the Preprocess popup menu Compressing and storing the image To keep your database a reasonable size Cardbox has to compress the images it contains Cardbox uses different strategies when storing pictures and documents Pictures are continuous tone images For these the most appropriate compression method is JPEG Documents are images with lines or with large areas of solid colour Cardbox uses its own compression method which yields very good quality 164 In many cases Cardbox can decide automatically whether a particular image is a picture or a document For example a JPEG file is always a picture and a GIF file can always be compressed as a document You can also tell Cardbox the image type by right
48. applications If you have a CDROM in the back of this book it s probably the Home Edition The Professional Edition has additional advanced features for use in business or where several different people may be using the same databases Client Home Edition Professional Edition Edition Databases on Read Read write access for Read write your own only databases up to 10 000 access no size computer access records in size read only limit access for larger databases Databases ona Read only or read write access depending on what the server Cardbox server has been set up to allow Advanced Not available Available features Number of Limited to the number specified by the Unlimited users per Cardbox Server licence Cardbox Server Read only access means that you can open a database and view search browse and print records You cannot add edit or delete records make changes to formats or create a new database Read write access lets you do everything including creating and modifying records formats and databases 14 http www cardbox com If you already have Cardbox 2 0 or earlier installed on your computer it will not be harmed by the installation of Cardbox 3 0 Advanced features The following advanced features are part of the Professional Edition only e User profiles with passwords to control who is allowed to open a database and who is allowed to do what with
49. are worried about someone taking a copy of your database and running a search program that tests thousands of possible keys every second Making Cardbox remember the encryption key If you are using a password protected Cardbox workspace File gt Workspace can set this up then whenever Cardbox asks you for an encryption key it will offer to remember the key for you in the future Those keys will then be stored in an encrypted state in the workspace file so security will not be compromised as long as your workspace password isn t easily guessed In addition there is a utility program called keykeep exe in the same folder as the main Cardbox program file cardbox3 exe If you put a shortcut to keykeep exe in your Startup folder so that it runs every time you run Windows you will only ever be asked for an encryption key once the key will then be remembered until you shut down your computer This means that if you are away from your computer for a moment someone can come along and open any database that you have already opened today but if this is not a problem for you then this utility can save you some typing See Restricted Operations p 256 Encryption 259 How to encrypt a database The command Tools gt Management gt Encryption Encrypt lets you encrypt a database This command is restricted and to use it you must have the master password for the database or the access code for your copy of Cardbox This restrictio
50. bottom of the window assuming that whoever designed the format gave it a description To use this format press OK e Double click on the name of the format in the list The native format doesn t have a name You can pick it from the list of formats or you can type a space into the Format Name box that is expecting a format name this will blank out whatever name was already there Thus the quick keyboard shortcut for switching to the native format is Ctrl F Space Enter If user profiles have been set up for this database your user profile may include a default format which is the one that the designer of the user profile thinks you ll be using most often In that case you ll see an extra button labelled My Main Format and pressing the button will take you straight to that format View gt Appearance Ctrl A Ctrl A works only when you are viewing records not editing them Changing the appearance 107 Changing the appearance By appearance Cardbox means the fonts sizes colours backgrounds and line thicknesses that are used to display or print your data The basic appearance is something that you set up when you design each format if you can t be bothered with this Cardbox uses some reasonable defaults but you can override the appearance at any time by using the command View gt Appearance You can also override the appearance for printing only for instance removing background colours The comma
51. box pressing OK and then realising that Match All was off when it should have been on or on when it should have been off Some more examples Search for 28056 28060 50614 50603 28045 28047 28052 28050 I Match all This is what we do when someone comes back from paying in cheques at the bank We open our Sales Ledger database right click on the Invoice Number field and type a command like this one to find all the invoices whose cheques have just been paid in You can see that the Search For box accepts ranges as well as single values Search for fs Ve R IV Match all This is something we use when we need to find a user s record but have nothing more than an abbreviated company name to go on It ll find any record where the field contains a word beginning with S a word beginning with V and a word beginning with R not necessarily in that order Searching the index 85 Boolean combinations You can have more elaborate combinations of search terms than just any OR or all AND by using a few extra symbols A plus sign in front of a term means that that term must occur in any record that Cardbox finds a Boolean AND A minus sign in front of a term means that that term must not occur in any record that Cardbox finds a Boolean AND NOT If you put this in front of a number leave a space between the minus sign and the number or Cardbox will think that you re simply talking about a n
52. built into your copy of Windows Photographs Cardbox is perfect for cataloguing and storing photographs either direct digital snaps or scans of printed photographs One Cardbox user most of whose databases are for trade statistics journal ordering library lending and other serious purposes also has a personal copy of Cardbox at home and reports Taking advantage of the beautiful weather we are having today have been photographing some of the plants in my garden in order to have real live photos in my plant database trying to eliminate those scanned from the labels that came with the plants As for my own photos have a macro that imports them from a Photo CD and another one that automates writing out any combination of photos in the correct order to a folder that already contains Slide Show files The macro finishes by opening Roxio CD Creator Now don t mind when people ask me for copies of my photos and it won t be a chore to load them in the first place My cousins will be pleased Obviously you need the Professional Edition to use Cardbox macros to do all this work but it shows what can be done with macros even by someone who is not a professional programmer and has never written a program before The exercise on page 238 shows you how to create your own database of photo graphs using Cardbox Personal uses of Cardbox 221 Daybook If you have a scanner then you can implement a daybook using Cardbox A
53. context Macros and safety If you are opening a database that was created by someone else and using the macros inside it you have to consider the possibility that the database author was malicious and wrote macros that could harm your computer or reveal sensitive data When you open a database on a Cardbox server you can specify its safety level This tells Cardbox whether it is allowed to run macros from this database and what those macros are allowed to do The default safety level is Untrusted which allows macros to run but won t let them read or write your hard disk or do other potentially harmful things Unless you know that a database contains sophisticated macros that need to be more trusted than this there s no need to alter this safety level There is a spectrum of safety levels from Completely Untrusted to Completely Trusted and you can set safety levels for individual databases or for the server as a whole so that for example you can make your organisation s corporate server Completely Trusted but leave all other servers Untrusted VBA Visual Basic for Applications is closely related to Visual Basic and to VBScript Visual Basic Scripting Edition Macro facilities in Cardbox 267 Programming Cardbox from the outside VBScript is the language that Cardbox records macros in but it is not the only language that you can use to drive Cardbox If you are used to some other language such as Visual
54. database in two different windows to do two different searches or to edit in one window and search in the other To opena new window onto your database use Window gt New Window Switching from one database window to another If you have more than one database open in your Cardbox workspace you can use Ctrl F6 to switch from one database window to the next To move through your database windows hold down the Ctrl key press F6 until you get to the window you want then release Ctrl Alternatively use the Window menu which lists your database windows by name or use the command Window gt Windows 68 Step browsing Step browsing is a specialised technique It is like a cross between searching and browsing Step browsing begins like a search you choose what to search on the index the record data tagged records etc and Cardbox finds the matching records But once it s found the records Cardbox doesn t change your current selection Instead you are left in your original selection and you can browse it much as you d expect except that you are only allowed to land on records that match the search The best mental image we ve found is of lily leaves on a pond a frog crossing the pond can only jump to where there is a leaf To remind you of the fact that you re browsing differently the browse bar looks a little different Record 2740 4 Cancel gt of 5406 To get out of the step browse mode click on the Cancel
55. distributing information in the form of Cardbox databases along with a special read only or electronic publishing version of Cardbox for recipients who didn t already have the program We particularly remember Professor Christopher Spry s Eosinophils A Comprehensive Review and Guide to the Scientific and Medical Literature published by the Oxford University Press in 1988 which allowed its purchasers to obtain an annotated bibliography of the literature on 3 floppy disks it needed nine disks Nowadays CDROMs make this kind of thing a much less heroic undertaking We allow you to include the Client Edition of Cardbox free of charge on your CDROM for anyone who does not already have it Various terms and conditions apply principally to protect our copyrights and ensure that you give people the right program files If you need advice on this please contact us Distribution over the Internet The alternative to physical distribution is to make your data available on a Cardbox Server connected to the Internet This can be one of your own or it can be a server run by someone whose business it is to host other people s databases In this case people who want to search your databases can download the Client Edition free of charge from our Web site If you re interested in doing this use Cardbox to look at database cardbox net and see the databases that are hosted there the command is File gt Open Server You ca
56. don t lose touch either And you can print out selective lists to take with you when you go on holiday A 152 ST 33 ee ee A WHH OW ST LET HAt MOHN SLOOOFORO OROT MOHN SOCOM GAG BEE 227 EEIE DAOC LOCOROCO Fite WAE L106 LLS Hokr GEA ITET 124d MS doo Dron DA koto GTE S20 J DNT gat MOHO SOOMMOOMMON GOT ATAG Sod TT Td noe 2a Mtv Oude MoO Oto THOHN MOHHHON MOOH OTE 4615625 DETST 2 oe aoe Da TE SROMOWOMO AOOHHOHH 22S dG ee CO STI de MATT WA JRO HOMO GEA OT 1 JROCOFOOIMN HOCH CEG ESE ddd JROMOOW E ACOOROCON SOFC Do SOOO AO CeO Ae a FO OHOH MOHON OS JETS ROHOCH ROHN WOORD O Oi Dood HETA TEG STIE Pikk FO ete eo LE 2 E2 106 GS ee Dei OOOO TH 1 E606 OME OOM Td 2 a ee I GT 1S 2 26 1 BB Moco Ae A BAN HOHH BOON PET 4 ee ie Ao JROCOOF JOO FOO TE 11579 Fett Td 1 DE E eo A aE Oa AOON SOON OOOO SS 1541 TE ot OHOO A UWOHHOHHH OG 102 TT 1260 TS i ROO ROHH AO Onk OO RSE EAEE L coco g ote HITA SEA AO MD AAD AD Aa TA BA THOWON IHN CCEE EDA ModE woe IGT Td ee GITO tOr Uig RL ee DE 3 2AL OHOH AHH A O0 4 I SS oe 1TA EHH eo ROMO MOHN Diot S210 koroko ee 151217 You can find this exercise at Help Point 620 Exercises and samples 235 Here is a sample record in the native format of the database It has only five fields Galahad Threepwood Home 8997 0000 fax 8997 0228 Mobile 07866 194461 Class Ref gally blandings co uk 1Z Atherstone Place NWS 9XZ Name the person s name with the surname indexed T
57. for example a command to delete records will be disabled if there s nothing available to delete To see why a command is disabled move the mouse onto it and look at the status bar If you hold the mouse over the disabled command for a second or so a larger window will pop up and give you a more detailed explanation What the help window contains The window that opens onto the help file is quite small to start with but you can resize it if you want The right hand side of the window shows a help article and the left hand side shows one of three navigational tabs Contents Index and Search The Contents tab shows the help file s table of contents To open a section and see the articles it contains double click on it or click once on the sign to its left Contents Index Search Type in the keyword to find The Index tab contains an index of key words and phrases You can double click on an index entry in the list or you can type a keyword and press the Display button If there are several articles indexed under your chosen keyword Help will pop up a list and let you pick the one you want Adding format items Adding images Adding records The Search tab lets you type in any word or phrase Pressing the List Topics button will then find all the articles that contain your search text Help Points As you read through this book you ll see references to Help Point and a number Help Points are help file articl
58. format that you are currently using to view records do Edit gt Format gt Edit If you want to edit a different format use View gt Change Format to switch to it before you start editing When you ve finished editing the format use File gt Save to save your changes Cancelling an edit If you don t like the changes you ve made use File gt Quit Without Saving to discard them and leave the original format untouched 184 View gt x112 View gt x2 View gt 2 View gt 1 View gt Actual Size The format design screen When you start editing a format Cardbox will display the format design screen This has a grid on which you can position the various format items and vertical and horizontal rulers to control the format width position of headings etc Zooming in and out Because editing a format involves a lot of precise movement you may want to zoom in on the display enlarge it so you can see and manipulate things more clearly Conversely if you have a large format and want to see what it looks like as a whole you may want to zoom out and get a reduced view that fits on the screen To zoom in with the keyboard hold down Ctrl and press plus on the numeric keypad With a wheel mouse hold down Ctrl and roll the mouse wheel towards you To zoom out with the keyboard hold down Ctrl and press minus on the numeric keypad With a wheel mouse hold down Ctrl and roll the mouse wheel away f
59. gap between the labels and one label down the page You can then print on plain paper and the printing will come out in two columns Export and communication 123 Export and communication You can do a lot with Cardbox you can search browse view records and print them but sometimes you may need to get other programs involved You may want to use a word processor to produce mail merged output you may want to get your data into a spreadsheet or into another database you may want to write your own program to process or analyse your records or you may want to send faxes and emails from Cardbox This section gives you a guided tour of the things you can do If you read it you should have a good idea of what is possible and the Help Points will show you where to get more information Using the Clipboard People sometimes forget it because it seems so simple but the Clipboard is a good and reliable way of getting data from one program to another To get some text from Cardbox to another program highlight the text in Cardbox use Edit gt Copy Ctrl C and then paste it into the other program most programs use Ctrl V You can copy images as well right click on the image field and pick Copy from the pop up menu See also Copying an image to the Clipboard p 129 Copying all fields Edit gt Copy Record Ctrl Shift C copies a whole record to the Clipboard at once If you paste this into another program
60. it e Validators to check the data being entered and reformat display warnings and enter default values e Data encryption to keep your database permanently encrypted even while it s being used e Macros to automate common and repetitive tasks e Customisation of the user interface keyboard shortcuts menu and toolbars to reduce the amount of time needed to train staff What these additional features have in common is that they are either technically advanced or not needed when the owner of the database is also the only person who uses it and this is why we have left them out of the Home and Client editions Although the other editions cannot set up these advanced features they can use them For example only the Professional Edition can encrypt a database but any edition can open an encrypted database only the Professional Edition can set up user profiles but the other editions will understand them and let you choose which profile to use Upgrades If you buy the Home Edition but later decide that you need the Professional Edition you can upgrade see the Cardbox web site for details Installing Cardbox Installing from a CDROM 1 Insert the CD into your computer 2 Depending on your Windows configuration the Cardbox setup program may start automatically Wait a moment or two to give it time to do this If it doesn t start automatically open the CDROM in Windows Explorer and double click on SETUP EXE Wi
61. looking fonts but you should check on the availability of the fonts you need before embarking on a big project As a simple test try typing the characters you want into Wordpad if they come out right then Cardbox will be able to display them too The Arial Unicode MS font supplied with many Microsoft Office products includes practically all Unicode characters so if you have font problems it may be worth installing it on your system nbd woh nonk l hidh whhwhighun sphkp 44 Tavultesoft http www tavultesoft com The Unicode Consortium http www unicode org A IBC 7 8 9 D 4 5 6 t23 E 0 F Typing Unicode Windows supports many keyboard layouts and allows you to switch dynamically between them One solution if you have a lot of text to type is to install several different layouts and switch from one to the other as necessary Obviously the labels on your physical keys won t change but your fingers will soon learn the feel of say a Polish keyboard even when the key labels don t correspond We have also tried out an add on product called Tavultesoft Keyman which allows you to type in languages that Windows doesn t support and even to design your own keyboard layouts This is especially relevant for scholars working with ancient languages you will probably find that someone has already designed a Keyman layout for the language you re interested in You may know that you ca
62. necessary administrative access to the Server even though you may own the database and so Cardbox provides a simple alternative The command Tools gt Management gt Download lets you download a copy of a database or format file from a Cardbox server to your computer Once you have done this you can back up the file from your computer in the usual way 252 After you ve downloaded a file and backed up the downloaded copy leave the downloaded copy on your computer The next time that you do a download the Download command will be able to compare your copy of the file with the server s copy and just download the changes this will make the whole download process a lot faster e Itis a good idea to give the downloaded copy of your database a different name from the name it has on the server this will help to protect you from opening the downloaded copy by accident when you meant to open the real database Things that don t harm Cardbox databases If you are using a database on a Cardbox server and not on your own computer nothing that goes wrong with your computer can affect the database If your computer crashes the Cardbox server will simply note that you are not connected any more and will carry on as usual If you are using a database on your own computer and your Cardbox program cardbox3 exe crashes your data will probably be safe as long as Windows doesn t collapse as well and bring your whole computer down with it Th
63. of support from us such as macros and programming We also limited the capacity to 10 000 records per database which is more than enough for practically everyone we reckon that if you have more than 10 000 friends or 10 000 books or CDs or even 10 000 photographs to index you should be able to afford the Professional Edition You can find a precise list of the differences between the Home Edition and the Professional Edition on page 13 Our aim has been to produce something that isn t a truncated version of something else but is complete in its own right we hope we ve succeeded We also hope that the Home Edition will make Cardbox more infectious Cardbox has always spread best by personal recommendation and anything that we can do to encourage that process is worth doing Tell your friends to try the Home Edition now that it costs no more than a good dinner for two they have no excuse not to and if it s as good as you and we say it is they ll be very grateful Preface xv How to read this book If you want some inspiration to keep you going start with Part Six p 211 which will show you some of the things that other people have done with Cardbox and will give you ideas for how you might use it yourself It s often easiest to absorb information when you have a definite plan in mind But otherwise this book is meant to be read from beginning to end starting from the basic concepts and carrying on from there
64. or reference numbers Non unique terms Each indexed term in the field must already exist in the database s index If the field is meant to contain specific codes this is a quick and informal way of checking for typing mistakes Length of terms Each term entered in the field must be of a certain length or its length must be within a specified range Number of terms The field must contain a given number of terms or the number of terms must fall within a range You can specify separate limits for words numbers and dates Length of field The field as a whole must be restricted to a certain length Validators that change what is in a field Change case This validator changes the capitalisation of text all capitals all lower case or capital letters at the start of words or capital letters at the start of sentences For how pick lists work while editing a record see Pick Lists p 144 Validators 209 Reformat a date This validator changes all dates into a format that you specify For example you can choose the order in which the day month and year appear and two digit or four digit years Index terms This validator indexes particular terms You specify which terms should be indexed in the same way as you do in the Check Words Check Numbers and Check Dates validators Unindex terms This validator unindexes particular terms This is often called a stoplist Validators that replace what is in a fi
65. part of the design of the database format Validators can e Check what you have entered e Make changes to what you enter e Enter text automatically The Advanced Features manual which comes with the Professional Edition of Cardbox gives full details of the available kinds of validators and how to set them up Here we concentrate on telling you how validators affect the way you edit records Validators that check the text you enter Most validators exist to check the validity of what you put into a field Typically they do nothing until you have moved out of a field and then they check it but you can ask for a validation to happen at any time by doing Edit gt Show Errors When you save a record Cardbox validates all changed fields for you You can validate all fields whether or not they have been changed by using Edit gt Validate All The error warning If Cardbox has found something wrong in the field you ve just left the validation toolbar button changes colour and flashes You can ignore this and carry on typing or you can press the button to ask Cardbox to display the validation error box When you come to save Cardbox will check your record and it will display the validation error box if it has found anything wrong Using validators 153 The validation error box The validation error box is where Cardbox lists all your validators and any errors they have found At the top you will see a list of the validators w
66. records hold down Alt when you press the appropriate arrow key Zooming in and out The zoom control is at the bottom of the image window To zoom in click on the large magnifying glass or hold down the Ctrl key and press plus on the numeric keypad To zoom out click on the small magnifying glass or hold down the Ctrl key and press minus on the numeric keypad If you have a mouse with a wheel you can use the wheel for zooming hold down the Ctrl key and roll the wheel away from you to zoom out or towards you to zoom in Image Size Pixel Count 50 75 v 100 150 200 Custom Fit Width Fit Height Fit In Window Browsing and viewing images 71 The zoom menu For more detailed control of zooming open the Zoom menu by clicking on the white area between the magnifying glass symbols Pixel Count and Image Size There are two ways for Cardbox to measure the amount by which an image is being zoomed In the Pixel Count mode a zoom factor of 100 means that Cardbox displays one pixel on the screen for every pixel in the image In the Image Size mode a zoom factor of 100 means that Cardbox makes one inch of the image take up one screen inch on the screen The size of a screen inch is something that has been decided by the manufacturer of your computer screen a common convention is to have 96 pixels per screen inch which usually makes a screen inch rather more than 2 54 centimetres in size T
67. s no real distinction between the two there s no reason for you not to adapt one of our business examples for your own personal use or expand a personal example to cover a whole company Addresses and contacts This is one of the commonest uses of Cardbox and we even give you two exercises with accompanying sample formats that create address books for you see pages 234 and 235 Because you design the format yourself you can easily include whatever extra information you want You can slant your database towards being a simple address list that you print out for your own use it saves the worry of losing an address book if you know you can print it out again or you can make it more sophisticated so that it can print mailing labels for a mailshot or categorize your contacts for example printable friends who get printed in your paper address list and reference contacts who have to be looked up on the computer Here are a few other ideas When you re going on holiday select the friends you might want to send postcards to and print them out in a very compact small print format Tagging p 93 is an excellent way to identify exactly the people you want to list At Christmas have a couple of fields to record who you re sending cards to and just as important who you have sent cards to so that you know what s happening when you look at the database again next year You can also design a mailing label for
68. sheet and the top of the first label Label height The height of each label Gap down The gap between the bottom of one label and the top of the next See Help Point 527 Paper sizes and label types 121 e Cardbox is fairly intelligent If you leave a measurement blank or type the word auto it will guess or calculate what you mean Suppose that you say there are three labels across the page and there is a left offset of 6mm Cardbox will guess that the sheet is symmetrical insert a 6mm gap on the right hand side and then calculate the width of each label as one third of the remaining space Cardbox displays its guesses next to each auto box so you can see for yourself if the results are sensible e Always keep the sheet upright e in portrait format when you measure it even if you re planning to print on it in landscape format eventually e Often some of these measurements are zero for instance if each label is next to the one below it Gap Down is 0 e Remember that you can use both inches and millimetres see Units of Measurement p 115 e If you really can t make the figures add up and match what your ruler is telling you check that you re using the right paper size If you ve told Cardbox that the sheet is A4 and it s actually 10 x8 you ll never get the sums to work Cancel pick the right paper size from the list and try again Checking your layout To check your label
69. spelling for details see Spelling and Spelling Dictionaries p 149 The format design screen 205 Field sequence When you are editing a record pressing the Tab key takes you to the next field The Field Sequence tab lets you define the order in which the fields will be visited To move a field to a different place in the list select it and then press the up or down arrow buttons below the field list You can move several fields by selecting them all with Ctrl click before pressing the arrows The Field Sequence tab also lists field descriptions so it can be a convenient way for you to review them all and change any that you don t like simply select a field and then retype its description in the box below Overlapping boxes This tab controls a specialised feature that is used for producing ruled forms For full information see Help Point 561 Appearance This tab controls the appearance of the format as a whole See Appearance on page 107 206 Validators can only be set up by the Professional Edition of Cardbox Validators Validators are things you attach to fields when you design the native format When someone adds or edits a record and changes the contents of a field its validators wake up and look at the changed text There are various kinds of validators some check the field to make sure it is correct in other words they validate it others make modifications to it indexing unindexing or
70. taking a hexadecimal dump of a file would reveal readable data The data would not necessarily have much meaning in that form but with a certain degree of hacking expertise a copy of Cardbox for conducting experiments and quite a lot of patience a thief might be able to remove the password protection from a database We have never heard of this being done but if you want your files to be absolutely secure even if they are stolen you should encrypt them What happens if you lose a password Profile passwords cannot be recovered if they are lost but the holder of the master password can use Tools gt Management gt User Profiles to assign a new password to the profile If you lose a master password then we can help You will have to contact us for the exact details but normally we will need both your database file and your format file we will need evidence that you really are the owner of the data and we will charge you quite a lot of money for resetting the master password To avoid all this trouble write down your master password and keep it in a safe place Restricted operations Setting up user profiles and encrypting a database are powerful tools and in the wrong hands they could be dangerous imagine if a disgruntled colleague could stop by your computer and password protect your databases without your permission Cardbox provides two kinds of protection against this If user profiles have been set up for the database then onl
71. text can be in plain text TXT or Rich Text RTF format Pick lists If the mouse pointer has some small parallel lines in its top right hand corner then this means that there is a pick list defined for the current field A pick list lets you insert words by clicking the mouse and selecting them from a list instead of typing them To use a pick list right click in the field that contains the pick list and select the item you want from the menu that pops up If the list is long and you can t see the item you want select Pick from the bottom of the menu and you ll get a scrollable list of all available items If you want to cancel the whole operation just click somewhere else on the screen Keyboard Pop up the pick list by pressing F4 then use the up and down arrow keys to select the item you want and press Enter Return to insert it To cancel the operation without inserting a word press Esc Moving and copying text You can move text within a field or into a different field or record or even into a different Windows program First select the text that you want to move or copy see Selecting Text p 142 Using the Clipboard To copy the selected text to the Clipboard use Edit gt Copy or right click in the selected area and choose Copy from the menu that pops up To copy the selected text to the Clipboard and delete it from its original position use Edit gt Cut or right click in the selected area a
72. that don t need a password so you may not notice anything at all except that some commands aren t available or you may find that you re asked for a password even before you can get into the database If you are more privileged than ordinary users of the database the database owner may give you the name and password of a different user profile in that case you can use the command File gt User Profile to switch to the chosen profile You ll normally have to enter the password every time you open Cardbox and it tries to reopen the database for you but you can make your workspace remember your passwords for you for how to do this and the security implications see page 63 42 Networking You can happily spend all your time creating and using your own databases on your own computer and not bothering about anyone else If that s the case then you can skip the rest of this section but if you use shared databases on a corporate network or public databases on the Internet read on When someone wants a Cardbox database to be accessible to several people he sets up a copy of the Cardbox Server and tell it what databases to share The Cardbox Server is a separate product with a separate manual so we won t cover it further in this book If you look closely at the Open File box you ll see that it has two tabs The My Computer tab lets you open databases on your own computer and the Server tab lets you open databases on other computer
73. that you put into a field and it ll all be visible when you print things like mailing labels If you often have long addresses just make the Address field longer We ve chosen to index just the name of the town since that s what likeliest to be used for searching but you can make your own rules Tel Fax Mobile these are all separate fields so you can decide which of them to include in any particular native format If you have the Professional Edition and the appropriate software you can also connect the telephone number to a phone dialler or use the fax number to send automated faxes Email this has the special caption mailto Cardbox recognises this caption and turns it into a clickable item when you click on it your email program will open with a blank email to the person concerned Web address here the caption is http When you click on this your web browser will open the person s web page if the person has a web page Galahad doesn t Once you have the data in your database you can easily display your records as a summary above left or as mailing labels see left or indeed in any other format you need This supplementary exercise is at Help Point 621 You can find this exercise at Help Point 630 Exercises and samples 237 Adding extra fields to the address book You can add fields to this design if you want to do more sophisticated things with your data This exercise gives yo
74. the records will come out in the order you want Field S would have no other use you wouldn t use it for searching and you d never include it in any printed output You could extend this principle to handle other lexicographical conventions if your sorting rules demand that De Wiart should come after Dewey you could further edit field S to remove all spaces And rather than rely on batch editing you could create a macro that was used during data entry activated by a pushbutton to read the real surname and turn it into a properly reformatted name in field S That was a very specific example and you may never be involved in that degree of sophistication but remember that it costs nothing to create a field in Cardbox and the mere existence of an extra field doesn t make the database any bigger and be aware of auxiliary fields as a possible solution when you re trying to process the same data in several different ways 246 Narrative fields Often you ll want to include some history in your fields A barristers database can be updated with details of the progress of each case a recruiters or negotiator s database may have a narrative of who contacted whom when and what was said Notes 26 2 1997 moving from UK to NL version 1 9 1999 upgrade to 3 users 14 9 1999 from 1 1 01 to 2 0 on CDROM 6 10 1999 Upgrade from 2 0 to 2 0 CDROM unserialised 4 7 2002 from 3 to 4 users 27694 30 7 2002 from 4 to 5 users 27720
75. the area will change Drag the borders outwards top border up or bottom border down to enlarge the area inwards to reduce it Seer See Insert gt Field Ctrl F The Extra Text field is created differently and you don t need to draw it on the screen see page 204 For more about deleted fields see Help Point 538 The format design screen 189 Fields Inserting a field in the native format Inserting a field into the native format effectively creates it in the database 1 When you use the Insert gt Field command the mouse cursor turns into a hollow square Move the mouse to where you want your new field to start press the mouse button hold it down move the mouse to where you want the field to end and release the mouse button Most people drag from the top left to the bottom right of the field but there is no rule about this as long as you go from one place to another on the screen Cardbox will draw a rectangle for you and make the field that shape and size 2 Once you ve released the mouse button the field will appear on the screen and Cardbox will ask you what name you want to give it Field names appear whenever Cardbox shows you a list of fields for searching sorting etc and you can type a field name whenever Cardbox asks you for a field for instance when you are doing a search Something short but meaningful is generally a good choice You can always change the name later if you want 3 C
76. the copy if necessary so that its name will remind you which database this is Renaming files can be done with Windows Explorer in several different ways One of the most reliable is to right click on the file and select Rename from the pop up menu 3 In Cardbox use File gt New Database My Computer locate the new copy you have just made and double click on it or select it and press the Save button Cardbox will see that the format file already exists and will create a corresponding database file Creating databases on a network You aren t confined to files on your own computer if you ve got access to shared drives on your network you can use the My Computer tab to create files on those drives as well But remember that when you open a database using the My Computer tab you get exclusive access to it and no one else can open the database as long as you have it open To create a database so that several people can use it at the same time you have to use the Server tab 176 The Networking and Security manual describes how to set up new databases on a Cardbox server Creating a database on a Cardbox server A database that resides on a Cardbox server can be opened by many people at the same time To create a database on a Cardbox server you need to have the permission of the administrator of that server and in most cases the administrator will need to choose the name of the database for you Use the command File gt
77. the spelling of a particular field or you can activate it so that it watches what you type and highlights possible spelling mistakes as they happen e You can control what dictionaries Cardbox should use for checking your spelling and where it should store your own private user dictionary See Spelling and Spelling Dictionaries p 149 Automatic spelling check When you design your format you can make Cardbox check the spelling of certain fields automatically see Automatic Spelling Check p 204 Even if you haven t done this you can turn on the automatic spelling check with Tools gt Highlight Dubious Spellings you can use the same command to turn off the automatic spelling check if you find it distracting The Cardbox SHA Name status bar will show you whether the automatic spelling check it turned on look for a a vertical red zigzag next to the field name When the automatic spelling check is on Cardbox will put a Indexed Ctrl red zigzag under any words that seem doubtful you can see an example on the left You can then correct the gt problem spelling yourself or you can right click to pop up a menu shown on the right This will try to offer you replacement gt perks spellings and it will also let you ignore the word on this gt Problems occasion ignore the word for the rest of the Cardbox Ignore session or add the word to your private spelling dictionary fea so that it will always be
78. the toolbar Cardbox will show you a list of all the available macros and you can pick the one you want If you re using the Professional Edition the list will have two pages called Play and Manage Choose Play to get the simple all in one list Manage is more useful when you are editing macros To play a macro double click on it or click once and then press the Play button If you want to see the text of a macro to make sure it s the right one before you play it right click on the macro s name and select View from the menu that pops up Toolbar buttons It s possible to design extra buttons into the Cardbox toolbar and these buttons can play a designated macro directly The command for setting up toolbar buttons is Tools gt Toolbar and it s covered in detail in the Macros and Programming manual Format buttons Similarly macro pushbuttons can be built into a format design You can put any picture you like into the buttons and you can put them wherever seems most sensible next to the field they refer to or along one edge of the format You can read more about designing pushbuttons into a format on page 203 Keystrokes A macro can be associated with a keystroke so that pressing the key plays the macro Most keystrokes can be used from simple ones like F7 to complicated ones like Ctrl Shift T The command for setting up keystrokes is Tools gt Keyboard and again the Macros and Programming manual gives all the deta
79. they will give you some useful ideas After the main explanations we take you through other important topics such as security backup and disaster recovery and we give you a taste of some of the advanced features of the Professional Edition such as what macros are and what you can do with them Getting help This book is not the only source of information about Cardbox there is also a help file which contains separate articles about every command in the whole of Cardbox plus step by step guides to specialised topics for example importing data from Excel spreadsheets The help file works like a mini web site articles have links to other articles and it also has a table of contents an index and a search facility This book and the help file are complementary The aim of this book is to tell you everything you need to know in order to understand Cardbox what it does and how to make it do what you want Once you have that basic understanding the help file gives you detailed information and more of the technical background Commands for opening Help F1 Help Wherever you are in Cardbox you can press the F1 key The help file will open and show you a page relevant to where you currently are If you re in the middle of a command it will give you help on that command if you are editing a format it will tell you all about editing formats In addition to responding to F1 some command windows have a Help button of their own
80. this does exactly the same as F1 The Help menu Help gt Contents opens the help file s table of contents Help gt Index opens the help file s index Help gt Search lets you search for a word or phrase in the help file Getting help on menu commands When you open a menu and move your mouse over the various commands watch what happens to the status bar at the bottom of the Cardbox window As you move over a command the status bar will show a brief explanation of what the command does If you want more information press F1 while you still have the mouse over the command You can do the same sort of thing even if you are using the keyboard rather than the mouse To highlight a menu command open the top level menu with a keystroke for example Alt F for the File menu and then use the up and down arrow keys to move through the menu Contents l Index Search SfMenu and keyboard a E Basic concepts Guide for users of earlier i Creating a database Opening a database Closing a database E Workspaces References to Help Points usually appear in the margin Getting help 9 Why is this menu command disabled If a menu command isn t available for some reason Cardbox disables it Disabled commands still appear in the menu but they are shown in grey Commands are usually disabled when the particular conditions they require don t exist
81. thumbnail A tick will show you which images you have selected More information Printing images page 81 Exporting images page 129 Adding images page 160 Searching the database Searching the database The basic search commands Select Select looks in the current selection It creates a new selection retaining only the records that match your Select command This is the commonest search command in Cardbox Exclude Exclude looks in the current selection It creates a new selection leaving out any records that match your Exclude command Exclude is the opposite of Select Instead of telling Cardbox which records you want you tell it which records you don t want Once you ve entered one of these search commands and got the records you want you can do whatever you like with them look through them or edit them or print them or pass them to another program 73 Before you start a simple search always make sure that the status bar says Level 0 which means that Cardbox is showing you every record in the database Another way of putting this is to say that the current selection contains all records If you don t do this your search commands will go towards refining or revising the last search that you did To get to Level 0 do Search gt Clear All Selections or hold down the Ctrl key and press the Undo button on the toolbar Building up searches levels of selection
82. to where you want it to go A small arrow will show you where the image is going to end up when the arrow is in the right place release the mouse button Deleting images While editing a record you can delete an image by right clicking on the image field and selecting Delete from the pop up menu While you are in the image window you can delete an image by clicking on the toolbar button or pressing the Delete key or right clicking anywhere in the image window and selecting Delete from the pop up menu When you ve deleted an image it appears as a big red cross until you save the record You can undelete an image before you save the record by repeating exactly the same instructions as for deletion Once you ve saved a record any images that you deleted in it are lost forever Editing images Cardbox doesn t allow you to edit images directly To edit an image you have to export it to a file edit the file using an image editing program such as Microsoft Paint or Adobe Photoshop and then import the edited file or you could achieve the same sort of transfer by copying and pasting via the Clipboard Only the Professional Edition of Cardbox can do deduplication For more about black and red tags see Tags and Tagging p 93 Deduplication 167 Deduplication If you are running something like a mailing list it is easy to end up with duplicate records especially if several people are contributing to the l
83. turn it off the text belonging to the check box is removed but everything else is left untouched Drop down lists Drop down lists are logically just the same as radio buttons but they save screen space because only the chosen option is visible until you click on the drop down list The choice between radio buttons and drop down lists is a matter of taste radio buttons show every option all the time but they need more room drop down lists don t show every option until you open the list but they are more compact O English I French O Spanish O Latin Oittalian O Greek O Cheque O Bank transfer O Credit card O Standing order The format design screen 193 Specifying the available options Before it can display radio buttons check boxes or a drop down list Cardbox needs to know what the available options are You set the options by pressing the Set button in the Field Properties window Edit gt Item Properties General The simplest choice is to type a list of the possible options English French Spanish Latin Italian Greek With a definition like this when you click on a check box labelled English to turn it on Cardbox will put English into the field or if you are turning off the check box Cardbox will find English in the field and remove it e The sequence in which the options appear in your specification controls the sequence in which they will appear on the screen It has no other meaning so you can cha
84. type to the list The first time you use a label type it won t be in the list Select the paper size that corresponds to the size of the sheet the labels come in then press the button marked Manage Label Types Choose Define New Label Type from the menu that pops up select Use Standard Label Type and pick the type you want from the list e Ifthe list is empty check that you ve chosen the right paper size e If you can t see the label type you want in the list you ll have to define it for yourself Defining your own label type In the Paper Size list choose the paper size that corresponds to the size of the sheet of labels This is important if you get it wrong all your measurements will go wrong Then press the button marked Manage Label Types choose Define New Label Type from the menu that pops up and choose Define Custom Label Type from the resulting command window and then press OK Label type Get a ruler and a sheet of labels and start measuring Here is what the various settings mean Labels across the page The number of labels in each row Left offset The gap between the left hand edge of the sheet and the left hand edge of the first label Label width The width of each label Gap across The gap between the right hand edge of one label and the left hand edge of the next Labels down the page The number of labels in each column Top offset The gap between the top edge of the
85. understand what Cardbox is and you should know without thinking what kind of things it can do and what kind of things it can t After that you ve done the hardest work and everything else is in a sense just filling in the details 24 Databases and records A Cardbox database is a collection of records It is up to you to decide what those records represent They can be physical objects or documents or people or messages events or financial transactions They can even be chapters in a book you re writing If you can make a list of something you can make database records out of it The current selection Record 2849 fi III gt of 26868 Whenever you are using Cardbox you are always looking at a selection of records and you can always browse through that selection using the record scrollbar or the keyboard one step at a time or in great jumps When you first open a database Cardbox doesn t know what you want to see so it shows you every record as a list if the records are small or one record at a time if the records are big Whenever you make a search Cardbox finds the records that match your search and makes them into the new current selection Again you can browse through it to see if you re on the right track perhaps as a preliminary to making an extra search to refine the selection further Most actions printing batch editing data export work on the current selection but selections are more
86. union membership Train journeys Training records Translators data Truck specifications Vacancy database Vehicle registrations Vocabulary database 234 Help Point 600 tells you how to get the database files for each exercise You can find this exercise at Help Point 610 Exercises and samples Now that you ve seen what Cardbox can do and perhaps been inspired to use it for more than the original purposes you had in mind you re practically ready to design databases for yourself Designing databases isn t something that most people do very often and a design once it s been done needs to last a long time so to get you used to this kind of thinking we ve created some exercises for you to follow Each exercise takes a simple and useful database design and takes you through the steps of creating it We ve taken to give you a lot of explanation of exactly why you re doing what you re doing We hate those so called manuals that say nothing but click here press this button for page after page without ever telling you what it all means and what it s all for We don t plan to make the same mistake Quite apart from giving you some more expertise the database designs we ve chosen are useful in their own right and you may find that you can build on them to create exactly the design you want All these exercises with their accompanying explanations are pretty long so we ve put them into Help Points where
87. up to date information about access to mailing lists or forums in which Cardbox users can give each other advice It also tells you how to get support from us if you need it What direct technical support you are entitled to depends on which edition of Cardbox you have whether you re paying a technical support subscription and so on If you have bought your copy of Cardbox from a distributor outside the UK other rules may apply See the documentation that came with your copy of Cardbox for details and if you re still not sure have a look at the web site Reporting problems Recently we praised one of our users for the clarity and completeness of a problem report he sent us It turned out that this kind of reporting was second nature to him because he was a retired test pilot You may not be a test pilot but here is how to report a problem to us so that we don t have to get straight back to you with a request for more information which would be tedious for us and frustrating for you 1 Tell us who you are and what the serial number of your copy of Cardbox is This not only helps us check your entitlement to technical support but also tells us exactly which version of Cardbox you re using 2 Be specific What exactly is happening If a message appeared what exactly did it say If something unexpected happened what was it and how did it differ from what you expected The mailing labels don t print right is far less hel
88. use them Export and communication 127 Communicating with programs directly Exporting data from Cardbox and reading them into another program is reliable and once you ve set it up quite fast but it still seems a bit circuitous Cardbox s macro language is built on Microsofts VBScript and this means that it can talk directly to other programs The possibilities are endless but we ve worked out some of the commoner examples for you Email You may want to e Senda single email to a recipient whose address you ve picked up from a Cardbox field e Send the same email to a whole list of recipients e Use a Cardbox format to create a personalised email for each recipient Help Point 529 tells you how to do this using Outlook Outlook Express Eudora and MAPI compatible email programs or directly through an SMTP server In every case except SMTP Cardbox just puts the generated emails into your program s Outbox and your program is then responsible for the actual transmission Fax You may want to e Send a single fax to a recipient whose number you ve picked up from a Cardbox field e Send the same fax to a whole list of recipients e Use a Cardbox format to create a personalised fax for each recipient Help Point 512 tells you how to do this using WinFax Pro or using the fax engine built into Windows XP Cardbox just creates the faxes and your fax software will then transmit them automatically Telephone dialling
89. we can understand from it is part of the phone number This is where a data search comes in useful Data searches are inherently slower than index searches but often the difference isn t always that noticeable you can expect a data search of a few hundred records to take a fraction of a second Starting a search Right click Select If a field is defined as Index None so that Cardbox knows that it can t contain any indexed words at all you can just move the mouse onto a field and click the right hand mouse button and you ll find yourself in a Data Select command for just that field Select Right click and hold menu Exclude Move the mouse onto a field press the right hand mouse button but don t release it Step Browse for a few moments A menu will pop up If it has a Data submenu open it and choose one of the commands inside it If it hasn t got a Data submenu this means that the field isn t indexed and so Cardbox is going to give you a Data search anyway Exclude shat Step Browse The Data menu The Data menu is a submenu of the Search menu Open it with the mouse or with Alt S followed by D or even with Alt D and pick the search command you want Once the search command has opened you ll need to tell Cardbox which field to search unless you want to search all fields If you re likely to be using the Data menu a lot you can promote it to the main menu bar just to the right of the Se
90. were concerned Cardbox also uses the Windows Registry for its configuration settings which also allows system administrators control the extent to which Cardbox users are allowed to reconfigure their program Cardbox supports Windows Automation which means that any scripting language that you use to control Windows can control Cardbox as well Web and email Any link with a http prefix is automatically underlined and you can open a web page just by clicking on its link Any link with a mailto prefix is also underlined and Appendix 273 you can create a blank email by clicking on the link The underlining does not appear in printed output In addition you can design macros that send an email to a whole batch of recipients or you can pass a list of email addresses to a separate email program such as Outlook The Internet The new client server model means that Cardbox works just as well across the Internet as it does on a local area network You can view Cardbox databases that other people have chosen to make public You can publish your own databases free of charge or for payment You can optionally use an Internet connection to allow your users to access their databases when they are travelling Security All network connections are encrypted using the industry standard OpenSSL with Diffie Hellman key exchange Cardbox optionally allows you to encrypt your databases Cardbox 3 0 uses the new international standar
91. you can read them easily or print them out What we ll do here on paper is sell the exercises to you we ll tell you why each one is useful what it ll teach you and what the resulting database will be like We do recommend that you go through each of these exercises because they give you practical experience of building a new format but if you really don t have the time we give you the database files that would result from each exercise either on the CDROM or as a download The instant address book At the back of your Filofax or some other brand of personal organiser you probably have a large collection of addresses This is quick and easy to maintain but it s also vulnerable there are therapists who make a living counselling people who lose their Filofaxes and feel they ve lost their lives along with them This database is the quickest and simplest address database imaginable Its sole purpose is to let you look up addresses and phone numbers and email addresses quickly and to let you print these addresses out onto Filofax sized paper so you can put them into the back of your personal organiser The good thing about doing this on a computer is that you can back it up so that losing your address book or even your whole computer doesn t mean losing your life Having the database in electronic form has other advantages too You can classify some people as Reference only so that you don t waste paper on them but you
92. you ll see the text of all your fields together This may mean that you get a lot more text than you want but selective deletion after you ve pasted the text can be less work than repeated copy and paste Try this feature if you decide you don t like it you don t have to use it Dynamic Data Exchange DDE DDE has been around for a long time as its snappy 1980s name suggests Microsoft are a bit embarrassed about it because it s so old but the thing about old software is that it works By now there aren t that many programs that don t support DDE and because it s old they all support it in the same way and you re unlikely to have any unpleasant surprises The main way that people use DDE with Cardbox is for a sort of instant one record mail merge Of course Cardbox can do mail merging by itself without any need for a word processor but sometimes people want some special features that they find easier to get in a word processing program If you want to send out a hundred form letters there are other ways of transferring data to the word processor but when you want to send just one DDE can be the answer 124 See Help Point 524 For example if you re using Microsoft Word you can set up DDE links by copying fields from Cardbox and pasting them into Word with Edit gt Paste Special Paste Link What you get in your Word document is then a live link to the Cardbox field the document will reflect the contents of what
93. your database it resembles the Memo field that some other database programs provide Cardbox can show you the Extra Text field on its own or together with the record it s attached to Viewing extra text on its own Use this command to display extra text use it again to return to your normal record display Viewing extra text together with a record Use this command to display the current record together with its extra text A horizontal bar will separate the two components and you can use the mouse to drag this upwards if you want to see more of the extra text or downwards if you want to see more of the main record If you would like to start in this mode as soon as you open a format turn on Format display starts with extra text visible in the format properties see page 204 A note for users of older versions of Cardbox Since Extra Text was first invented the keystroke for it has always been F3 Over time however F3 has become widely accepted in PC software as Find or Find Next and so with Cardbox 3 0 we have decided to follow the same convention We have moved Extra Text to F6 because that is the generally accepted key for switch to the next pane in a multi pane display We apologize for the confusion to your fingers that this will cause at first but we believe that in this case consistency is more important than tradition Opening a new window onto your database Sometimes you may want to see the same
94. 17 3 2004 from 5 to 6 11 6 2004 Sent server licence code for 3 0 Cardbox s indexing makes it easy to do this in a big long field You can index all the relevant dates as well as any other words that you might want to search for later on The example in the picture puts all the notes together in one paragraph but you can equally well have each entry on a separate line You can arrange have the entries with the oldest one first as here or you can always add new entries at the beginning so that you see the most recent one first This field also uses validators to put all dates into a standard format and index them this saves time and thought during data entry L 1 E Part Seven Safety and Security Backup and disaster recovery passwords and user profiles encryption Backup and disaster recovery 249 Backup and disaster recovery Computer systems are fallible Sooner or later something will go wrong Examples of what can go wrong include hardware failures your hard disk becoming unreadable your computer crashing a power failure software failures Windows corrupting your files or simply crashing and operator error deleting your most important database by mistake You should take frequent backup copies of your data so that you can restore your databases if anything does go wrong If you have recent backups and something catastrophic happens to your computer you can laugh go out and buy another computer
95. 205 Rulers format design 187 S Safety levels 58 266 Scanning images 161 Screen shots 12 Scrolling 66 72 184 Search and replace text See Finding and replacing text Search commands 73 Searching 73 76 Boolean search 73 85 check boxes 89 choosing a field 81 91 combining selections 98 100 commands 73 280 Index data searches 90 dates 83 drop down lists 89 fuzzy matching 87 highlight matching terms 75 history of selections 75 index searches 80 kept selections 97 levels of selection 24 73 multiple search terms 84 numbers 83 phrases 83 preview 85 radio buttons 89 ranges 82 record numbers 99 relational 78 tagged records 93 types of search 76 undo one search level 74 unindexed data 90 unique terms 88 wildcards 82 91 words 82 Security See Encryption See User profiles workspaces 63 Select See Search commands Selecting text when editing 142 Selections 24 combining selections 98 100 Sequence fields in a format 205 records See Sorting records Sessions See Workspaces Sorting records 101 cancelling sequence 105 custom sequence 102 multiple fields 102 one field 101 recalculating sequence 103 Spelling checker 147 191 204 Split window See Extra text Status bar 48 Step browsing 68 Support 11 Tag menu 95 Tags 93 red 96 step to records 68 Technical support 11 Telephone dialling 127 Thumbnai
96. 54 06 30 5 2003 D g 8 a 354 13 354 14 354 10 k 5 2003 You can find this exercise at Help Point 650 Exercises and samples 239 Bibliographies This exercise takes you through the process of creating a simple bibliographical database that can handle both books and articles from journals You can use this to print search lists that you can take to the library with you you can add your own comments to each reference and you can print out bibliographies in the right format for inclusion in a paper or a thesis Title Sir Garnet Wolseley Author H M Kochanski Publisher Hambledon Press When 1999 Journal Details of article Library London Library Shelf mark H Army English Keywords Military history army reform Book O Primary biography O Article Secondary O Other Here is what the various fields are and what they mean Title Author the title and author of the work Publisher Where When the publisher and the place and date of publication These fields only apply to books so we ve given them a different background colour to distinguish them from the others Cardbox lets you give any element in a format a different appearance from the others and this can be useful to help you navigate through filling in a big form Journal Details the name of the journal and the exact volume date and pages involved These fields don t apply to books so again we ve given them a different colou
97. 9 image window 70 278 Index pasting 161 preprocessing 163 printing 113 reading from a file 160 rearranging 166 scanning 161 thumbnails 72 viewing 69 Importing data and images See Data transfer Include See Search commands Indexing 34 changing the index mode 92 190 date and time 37 numbers 36 while editing 140 words 36 Indexing modes 34 190 Installing Cardbox 13 Internal DMP file format 126 Italic characters See Appearance J JPEG file format 39 Justification fixed text 200 merge blocks 196 K Keep menu 97 Kept selections 97 L Labels 119 236 Letters standard See Mail merge Levels of selection 24 Licensing 13 and the Cardbox Server 17 home and office use 18 multi user licences 15 Lines and boxes in formats 180 201 List boxes multiple selection 45 Log files 12 Macros 250 263 pausing 265 playing 264 safety 58 266 storing 266 Mailing labels 119 236 Mail merge 29 124 mailto prefix 236 Manual See Indexing modes Matching terms highlighting 75 Measurement units in printing 115 Merge blocks 179 195 Moving text 144 Multi column printing 122 Multi field sorting See Custom sequence Multiple document interface MDI 46 Multiple images 69 Multi user operation See Networking N Native formats 31 Networking 42 None See Indexing modes Numbering records 209 Numbers indexing 36 searching 83 0 OLE Objects 40 Openi
98. ARABIA 1 BELGIUM EGYPT INDE JGERMANY 3 SOUTH AFRICA 1 BENIN EL SALVADOR IREL GIBRALTAR 3 SPAIN 1 Preview and Preview and Count are very similar Preview is simple minded it just searches the database index and reports every index term that matches your Search For request or all index terms if you have left Search For blank Preview and Count is more sophisticated for each index term it finds in the index it checks to see if any records in the current selection match that term If nothing in your current selection matches the term Preview and Count ignores it altogether otherwise it reports the term to you and also tells you how many records matched it Because of the extra work it does Preview and Count is often slower but it gives you more focused information It is particularly useful when you are looking at a field that someone else designed because you can see at a glance which terms appear often and which appear rarely Searching the index 87 Specialised options for index search Fuzzy matching Sometimes you re not sure of the spelling of a word that you re looking for this is especially true of names but it also applies to words that are spelt differently in different countries One option is to use wildcards but they aren t always the best idea because they re often too powerful COLO R will find COLOR and COLOUR but it will also find COLONISER And is it STREATFIELD or STREATFEILD Finding a wildcard
99. Business uses of Cardbox There are as many different business uses of Cardbox as there are businesses There s no way we can illustrate all of the possible applications of Cardbox so we ll concentrate on some of the commonest ones If none of them is an absolutely perfect fit you can easily design your own Customer relationship management At the simplest level Cardbox can be used to maintain a database of names and addresses Mailing labels can then be created for mail shots However many of our users have built more sophisticated customer relationship management applications using Cardbox We ve heard of databases of almost a million records with customers categorized by their fields of interest and their assigned sales staff Here on a less epic scale is the sample Contacts database that we distribute with Cardbox 1 Baa Ms E Bacon Date 13 7 2003 By ALC Ref 389 osition Org sation Hopkins Bookshop Last contact 3 8 2003 Next contact 25 10 2003 Address 37 Lower Market Street Sales Rep Glenys Jones Swansea Products of interest DATABASE County West Glamorgan Area WA fHow heard of products Postcode SA1 OLK MailCode 1 Country Business Retail Bookshop Tel 01792 261955 Fax Transferred to Active 22 7 2003 Contacts history This database design contains enough information to identify who added the customer what the customer s interests are who is responsible for ongoing relation ships when the last contact wa
100. Cardbox window you ll see a little arrow on the right hand edge press it and the remaining buttons will pop up in the form of a menu The bottom of a Cardbox window Level 0 Record1 MIMI gt of 5534 Brecordstagged The level of selection tells you how many selection commands are currently in force see page 24 The browse bar lets you browse through your records see page 65 If your database has images in it there will be a second browse bar so you can browse through the images attached to each record see page 69 The number of tagged records appears if you ve tagged any records for more about tags and tagging see page 93 The name of the current format will appear next if you re using a format other than the native format see page 27 The two status markers have various uses when something appears here click on the marker to get an explanation of what it means In this example the marker is telling you that your link to a remote Cardbox server is encrypted for security Wh ek a gt at a at taal A look at the Cardbox screen 49 Progress of a long running command Sometimes a command can take a long time downloading a large database is one example Cardbox displays a progress bar to tell you what it is doing and give you some idea of how far it has got GEE oros If Cardbox knows how much work remains to be done the blue bar gets gradually longer If it doesn t know a smaller blu
101. Cardbox server on your office computer This is a little harder to set up and costs a little more but it gives by far the best performance You don t need remote access software at all Buy the Cardbox Server and set it up on your office computer You don t need to buy any user licences for the Server because your own copy of Cardbox already has a licence remember that we ve assumed that you already have the Professional Edition of Cardbox e When you want to open a database on your office computer open Cardbox and use File gt Open Server to connect to the Cardbox Server in your office and open the database there The screen response will be very fast e Searches will be fast because the Cardbox Server is running on your office computer directly connected to the hard disk where the database is Security If you use the Cardbox Server all your communications are encrypted using SSL Even if someone intercepted your Internet connection they would not be able to see what you were doing with Cardbox and they would not be able to intercept critical information such as passwords If you use one of the other approaches you are dependent on whatever encryption your remote access software might be providing This may be secure or it may not be secure you ll have to talk to the supplier 20 See Help Point 519 http www cardbox com Distributing Cardbox databases Distribution on CDROM As long ago as 1987 people were
102. Down arrow Alt Left arrow ae Previous image Alt Up arrow Alt Home First image Alt End Last image 70 E View gt Images F12 This difference is because you re more interested in images when the image window is open and so it makes more sense not to require Alt for image browsing A 10 Fa The image window The image window displays an image so that it occupies practically the whole screen For a normal sized document this makes it big enough for you to read the document without having to print it out The image window lets you zoom in or out and browse through images Opening the image window View gt Images opens the image window Alternatively you can right click on the image field and select Full Screen from the pop up menu Closing the image window The same toolbar button that opens the image window will close it and return you to your record display You can also press F12 or you can right click anywhere within the image window and select Full Screen from the pop up menu Browse bars in the image window At the bottom of the image window you ll see the usual browse bars for browsing between images and records They work just as usual but if you are in the habit of using the keyboard for browsing you ll find that the use of the Alt key is reversed e To browse through images press the appropriate arrow key without holding down Alt e To browse through
103. Encryption Remove Cardbox will ask you for the master password or the access code and it will also ask you for the encryption key that is currently in use L E di Part Eight Macros Macro facilities in different versions of Cardbox what macros are playing macros introduction to programming Macro facilities in Cardbox 263 Macro facilities in Cardbox A macro is a sequence of Cardbox actions that you can store and then execute with a single command We call this playing the macro Macros are part of the Professional Edition of Cardbox and they are a large part of what makes that edition so powerful but if you have the Client or Home Edition you can still open a database that has had macros set up for it and you can still play the macros it contains What macros can do The simplest kind of macro is nothing but a sequence of recorded actions and you create it by turning the macro recorder on doing something with Cardbox then stopping the macro recorder and saving the result for future use When you play the macro it repeats your original actions exactly This sort of macro can save you time with tasks that you perform often for instance sorting records into sequence switching to a different format and printing It can be useful in exactly the opposite situation too something that you do so rarely that you always forget how to do it from one occasion to the next Macros and programming Cardbo
104. NFIRMATION PCC HGs ER amp STEWARDSHIP Initiale Tel tost intant Baptisms received into Coz Fiancee s Lorne rs oou oonu or s10 reseval of Confirmation Ofticiant Peter wiiisame on Prep Hose as an jwveniie W Dates Tine Place Membership pint Titl edding 20 00 1996 15 00 Prep 27 May 1996 RED ZONE DO NOT ENTER HERE LEGAL TMFORMATIOM Lives in parish y Div spouse living By Special Licence JOutwide parish Blessing Enter Next of Kin unger Bsic Info Use Funerli 2 Macros Edit if necessary Deen on ER f Title Intis Christian Name s5 Surname Spouse on an postah Felationsdip to beres eureentiy 3 tt deceased had different ress from next of kin BURIAL DETAILS PASTORAL INFORMATION lease edit from Church Records ciant Type Any extra info re grave Deriel noe ASE i asnes Place if not ASE or HW Pisce of burial Ashes RED ZONE DO NOT ENTER HERE Scatter RED ZONE DO NOT ENTER HERE Year Month Day z o a eel TNYORRATICN ADOT ROADS he era Undertaker aid by undertak Mo Of dwellings im this roedi Letter to Bereevment Coordinator Y Trevel Total number of dwellings im parish Letter re beresvesent service y Cashi tses Beresvment Cheque 2 EXTRA INFORMATION church acti tiation Titte Special Wame cities arsson Date inse of nisaioni Christian Nome or bridge Builders Ecclesall Parish Church uses Cardbox extensively This data
105. NGS SHILLING 1 Remove S 2 Insert S Fuzzy matching doesn t work with wildcards or ranges or phrases If you re in any doubt about what a fuzzy match will find use the Preview button to get a list of matching terms Fuzziness makes quite big differences very quickly especially if the words are short A search with a fuzziness of more than 5 is likely to be so fuzzy that it is meaningless Find Unique Terms Only If you turn this option on Cardbox goes through the index according to the Search For specification For each index term it finds it counts how many records in your selection match that term If more than one record matches the term Cardbox ignores it and goes on to the next index term Find Unique Terms is a very specialised option The only real use we know for it is to use it with Exclude to identify index terms that occur more than once in a selection which can be useful if you have a field that is meant to contain something distinctive like a serial number For more details see Help Point 565 For more information see Alternate Field Views on page 32 Searching the index 89 Searching check box fields So far we ve been talking about searching fields that are displaying text because they are the commonest kind of field but it s also possible to set up your format so that fields are displayed as check boxes radio buttons or drop down lists System 13 1 0195 B98 Ome ONT 012000 Exp
106. New Database Server pick the server you want to use and either pick the appropriate filename from the list on the right or type the filename you have been told to type For more details about the process of connecting to a server and picking a file see Open command Server tab on page 57 About formats 177 About formats A format is what gives a Cardbox record its structure When you see a record on the screen the record data determine the content of what you see but the format determines its shape Data without a format are like a body without bones shapeless and not much use The simplest possible database would have just one format that you used equally for data entry searching and record display Sometimes this is all you need For example our password database where we store all the user names and passwords to get us into various web sites is only ever going to be used in one way so it only really needs one format Most databases need more formats than this a spacious one for data entry with plenty of prompts to give guidance to whoever is putting the data in a more austere one for searches a one line format for summaries and formats for creating mailing labels and mail merged letters There is no practical limit to how many formats you can have in a database The native format The first format you create for a database is called the native format It works like any other format but in addition it defines the s
107. The Cardbox book The Cardbox book Martin Kochanski and the Cardbox team Cardbox Software Limited First published in 2004 by Cardbox Software Limited Copyright 2004 Martin Kochanski The moral right of the author has been asserted ISBN 0 9548226 0 9 The Cardbox Book ISBN 0 9548226 3 3 Cardbox Home Edition A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Cardbox and the Cardbox logo are registered trademarks of Cardbox Software Limited An effort has been made to ensure that all terms mentioned in the text that are known to have been claimed as trademarks have been capitalised or designated accordingly However nothing that appears in the text is to be taken as an assertion concerning the existence or validity of any trademark The author and publisher have taken care in the preparation of this book but make no warranty concerning the completeness or accuracy of the information it contains and they accept no responsibility for errors or omissions No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of the use of this book or any of the software that may accompany it All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic mechanical photocopying or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher Printed in the United Kingdom Cardbox Software
108. The thing about fields is that they add meaning to what you put in them Think of a book London could be the name of the author or part of the title or the place of publication or the subject By putting London into one field rather than another you define what it actually means You could have a database with just one field but it would be pretty specialised We ll cover database design later on but basically you use fields to distinguish things that e have different meanings e need to be searched separately e need to be positioned differently e don t always need to be visible at the same time Cardbox lets you have up to 4 000 fields so you really aren t going to run out of them Fields can be as short as one character or big enough to hold several pages of text The one field database To make a database with one field just draw a huge field on the screen and then type text into each record It could be a diary or a notebook rather like the Memo Pad application in your palmtop You can search for records view them print them out it works But pretty soon you ll want to search on the date the note was made on and that has to be a separate field to distinguish this date from other dates that happen to be mentioned in the text And perhaps you ll need a category name as well just like Memo Pad so that s three fields in total So the one field database was OK to start with but having two more fields made
109. WOPrKS PaCOS eceecceeeeeneeceenseeeeenseeeeenseaeseenseeeeeenseeeeeeenseeneeenss Creating separate workspaces Password protectioninccn ecreieis Agreed aaa aarvinsadwaie Browsing through your records Using the brows amp bar siine ae Guia adiasins Using the keyboard The vertical browse bar Scrolling large records Scrolling large fields Viewing Extra Text cuss ia ae E NERE Opening a new window onto your database Switching from one database window to another Step DrOWSING Vacs sai resides e Hoces a a aa aeina EA Ta EEEa Contents Browsing and viewing images Viewing image Sarit a a a e aee a pea The image window More information inoran eae A ar n AT Searching the database asssnssnnnnnennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn nnmnnn The basic search commands Building up searches levels of selection Commands that expand the current selection Undoing search commands Seeing where you are One more commMand c07 aes Pa aie GA aa What you can Search fOr ccescseeeeesteeeeeeseeeeeeenseeeeeeneeeeeeeenes Searching the index P 80 ccicceeccsciceneesedecen sce cence eee eeecneeeenstanceecmeneees Searching through record data p 90 Tags and tagged searches P 93 eececeeseeeseeeereeeeeeeeseeeneseneeeeeeneees Keeping and combining selections p 97 eseese Advanced search commands Relational linking iis o Sis oe eae Wa a ees Searching the index
110. Web page with the most recent playlist for everyone to see 216 Book collections This is a classic use of Cardbox the first ever 8 bit edition of Cardbox in 1982 had a Books database as its main sample Here in honour of that edition is the very first record Author Mark Girouard Title Life in the English Country House Publisher Yale U P Date 1978 Subjects Society architecture history England country houses Here from the 21st century is another example developed by an historian You ll note that the price has been included This is so that if her house burns down the insurance company can receive a complete list of the books and how much they will cost to replace Title Rising 44 Author N Davies Pub Macmillan Date 2003 Type Hard new Cost25 00 1550 Class History Military Where A logical extension of a database like this would be to add a shelfmark so that you can see where each book is Of course this requires quite an investment in time and effort because the database will have to be edited every time a book is re shelved perhaps this would be more suitable for an academic library with a librarian rather than a personal working library Personal uses of Cardbox 217 One final visit to books this time from the point of view of a business The Electric Chariot is a Web based motoring bookshop that was active in the early days of the Internet A customised program built the actual Web page
111. With the cheapness and capacity of modern backup media you can get ten blank CD Rs for the cost of a sandwich there is no excuse for not backing up often We back up to CD RW daily and to CD R twice a week and we keep the CD R backups forever You should plan a similar strategy We cannot give you detailed instructions for making a backup because this depends on your system your hardware and your software We can however tell you which files need to be backed up and where they are located Before you back up You should make sure that all your copies of Cardbox are closed before you do a backup or at least that all the copies of Cardbox that use a particular database are closed before you back up that database If you don t do this the backup may fail or it may omit data that are stored in memory but have not yet been written out to the disk What files you need to back up Databases Each Cardbox database occupies two files The format file filetype fmt contains all the format definitions for the database the database file filetype fil contains all your actual data These files always live together in the same directory or folder If you re not sure of the location of a particular database switch to a Cardbox window that contains it and use Window gt Properties to find out 250 Environment and settings Workspaces macros and spelling dictionaries are all stored in separate files and in order to back them up
112. a AGA a A OS Ai sence ENNA E i 129 Contents ix TOtANNWING nesai i secur 130 Part Four Editing Adding recordS cceeneeeeceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeneeeeeseseeneeseseeenseseeeenenes Adding records by hand Adding records from elsewhere Editing recordS sccccceseeeceeeeneeeeeeseeeeeensneeeeeenseeneeenseeneeensees Doubleclick S Edit Saser oea a E eA aiaa Editing a batch Of records nenasitna aini eriti Deleting recordS sssssnsesnunnennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn nnmnnn All about editing sssssssuunnennunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn nnmnnn na VINA OXUNG iarann eire Eeee a EE E EEEE EAA Moving the cursor between fields Moving the cursor within a field sseesesseeessesrssrrrerreerrnerusenrnsensrnrnernens Selecting toXt snan a i pie opiti Typing and editing 2 Moving and copying text RINGING TCX saaa ea a a A A E aa aT Finding and replacing text i cci ccseveaeeescdeceesseseennedesseceeeHpeenesenspeeveeen ss Spelling checker 2 cccseccestececeneceseeecenseeeeeneeeceeenseesenneee Automatic spelling CHoCk rierien oreas ie keai iniaatas keea Manual spelling check Spelling and spelling dictionaries Editing the user dictionary Using Validators ccceseeeceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeseeeeseeeeeeeseeeeeenseeeeeensees Validators that check the text you enter The validation error BOX ciaren ani Validators that change the text you have entered Validators tha
113. a scroll bar with corrugations This is called the browse bar It tells you which record you re looking at and how many records there are in the current selection Click to go back one record Click to go to the next record hold down to repeat hold down to repeat Double click here to go directly to any chosen record number gt Record 2849 4f MIIL gt of 26868 In a list click to go back one page Ina list click to go to the next page Drag the slider to move through the selection if you drag the slider to the middle of the browse bar you ll be roughly in the middle of the selection 66 Using the keyboard Right arrow Page Down Go forward Next record one page in Down arrow thelist Left arrow Previous record Page Up Go back one Up arrow page in the list Ctrl Home First record ii Home The to Ctrl End Last record sae Ctrl G A specified record number this page Cardbox will ask you which record End The bottom number you want record on Ctrl Z The record you were on just before this page the last big jump Ctrl Home or Ctrl End or the last search command The vertical browse bar If your records are small enough for Cardbox to fit several of them onto a screen for instance if you re viewing them as one line summaries then it will display an extra browse bar on the right hand side of the screen It behaves just like the browse b
114. abase of houses and another of people looking for somewhere to live You could make several searches in the Houses database using relational links to different fields in the People database If you had both databases on the screen at the same time then you could watch the selected Houses records change as you moved from one People record to the next and you could edit a People record and make changes to it to see what Houses records were found as you changed the search criteria For more about relational linking including some suggested applications see Help Point 500 80 Select Exclude Step Browse Data gt Sequence Searching the index Because index searching is the commonest kind of search in Cardbox there are many ways to start an index search You can make an index search look at just one field or at all fields Starting a search Right click Select Move the mouse onto a field click the right hand mouse button and you ll start a Select command for just that field Or an advanced move right click when you re on the record but not on any field and you ll start a Select command for all fields at once Right click and hold menu Move the mouse onto a field press the right hand mouse button but don t release it for a few moments A menu will pop up Choose the command you want and it ll open with the field already chosen for you The Search menu Open the search menu either with the mouse
115. abases even when they aren t connected If they do they ll need to have the Professional Edition If they don t need to be able to make changes while they re not connected they can stick to the free Client Edition and you can make sure that your Cardbox Server has enough capacity on its licence to be able to serve all the laptop users when they do connect to it You could use the Home Edition to provide local editing capabilities for a laptop user but it s not necessarily the best solution because you ll still have to allow for a spare licence on the Cardbox Server when that user chooses to connect to it As you can imagine these simple rules can give rise to a large number of different combinations If you re planning a network have a look at the advice on the Cardbox web site or talk to us or to one of our distributors 18 The concession described here applies only toa single user licence not to multi user licences For advice on how to combine home use with the use of Cardbox on a network at work see the web site at www cardbox com There are many remote access software packages on the market and we don t make recommendations it is up to you to choose what is most suitable for your needs Using Cardbox at work and at home have a computer at work and one at home When take some work home want to be able to use Cardbox there Your licence says Cardbox can only be installed on one computer But I
116. accepting this Agreement you do not become the owner of the Software but you acquire the rights to use the Software in accordance with the Agreement You agree to apply your best efforts to protect the Software from unauthorised use and illegal reproduction or distribution You may only use the Software on a single computer on its temporary replacement or on a subsequent computer If you wish to use the Software on more than one computer you must purchase an additional copy of the Software for each additional computer You may however install the Software for your own personal use on two computers for example one at work and one at home as long as you are able to ensure that no one can use one of these installations while you are using the other You may not either temporarily or permanently transfer or sub license your rights to use the Software under this Agreement without the prior written consent of Cardbox Software You may not use the Software in contravention of the laws that apply where you are using it for example you may not use data encryption in a country where data encryption is illegal it is your responsibility to determine what uses of the Software are or are not legal in your locality The enclosed CDROM is identified by an original Cardbox for Windows label Use this to install the Software on your computer You are entitled to make such security or back up copies of the Software as may be reasonably necessary and you a
117. accident occurs Cardbox is used to identify the type of accident to look up the first measures to control the situation which people must be contacted the severity of the alert and the probable risks The user tells us Cardbox is excellent in situations where seconds count A poisons information bureau has used Cardbox to collate poisoning reports from doctors and the general public collating the resulting information has led to such simple risk reducing actions as changing the shape of the bottles used for surgical spirit denatured alcohol as well as discoveries that can lead to better focused public education for example that among teenagers poisoned by plant substances there are significant sex linked differences in the type of substance encountered Airline safety managers use Cardbox to record and exchange data on safety related incidents on a confidential and anonymous basis as part of their quality assurance process You can read all about relational linking in Help Point 500 Business uses of Cardbox 225 Membership databases The Galpin Society s membership system is an excellent example of several Cardbox databases being used together The main database lists members and the ways of contacting them their current membership status and the publications they have received An auxiliary database identifies all payments on a member s account yi New Galpin fil z A Active Pending Lapsed Cancelled Dead Subs
118. ails of four of them 1 Tag the records you want 2 Use Tag gt Select to select them Without tags you would have had to invent elaborate manual searches that found just the four records you wanted and left out all the others which is ridiculous when you can see at a glance what you want Excluding specific records Let s suppose that you re preparing a big mailing and you ve selected the records of the people you want to write to But you ve talked to one or two of them recently and you don t want to send the usual standard letter to them because you want to write to them personally If you want mailing labels as well as standard letters print out the mailing labels Tag the records of the people who should have personal letters Use Tag gt Exclude to exclude them from the selection Print out standard letters for everyone in the new selection ey ON Use your favourite word processor to write those personal letters Without tags you d have had to design an extra field in your database saying needs a personal letter or has been talked to recently which means more complication and more bureaucracy A shopping basket You re back in the library again This time you want to print a single list of all the journal articles you re looking for in alphabetical order for easy reference but the snag is that each article needs a search of its own and you ve got half a dozen different articles t
119. ain menu bar just to the right of the Search menu To do this use the command Keep gt Promote Menu To create or replace a kept selection Keep gt Keep This Selection saves the current selection as a kept selection You can choose the name of the new selection and whether to make it private or shared then press the Save button If there was already a selection with the name you choose Cardbox replaces it 98 If you close a workspace without explicitly closing any databases all its private kept selections will reappear when you open it again e Ifyou are using a database across a network you may not be allowed to create shared kept selections it depends on what the owner of the database has decided to let you do e You are allowed to use numeric digits as part of the name of a kept selection indeed the name can be entirely numeric 1234 Cardbox doesn t have a separate numeric index for the names of kept selections it just treats a numeric digit in the same way it would treat any ordinary letter To add records to a kept selection This can be a useful thing to do if you re building up one big selection from a lot of smaller ones just like the Shopping Basket example of the uses of tagging Use Keep gt Keep This Selection as before but instead of pressing the Save button press Append to add the currently selected records to the existing kept selection To forget a kept selection Keep gt Clear Kept m
120. ajor version of Cardbox In our archives we still have the very first concept sketch for the very first Cardbox drawn long before Windows was invented That sketch already shows some of the distinctive features that have stayed in the Cardbox family throughout its life especially the concept of indexing every word in a field and of marking which words should be indexed and which shouldn t It has been a constant puzzle to us why other databases don t adopt such a simple feature or indeed some of the other features we ve invented such as tagging p 93 or batch editing p 155 These things are so obvious and so natural that once you ve tried them it is very difficult ever to live without them again We are puzzled why other software manufacturers haven t imitated them but we re also grateful it makes a better market for us What is Cardbox That s a difficult question to answer You can put information into Cardbox you can search it you can get it out again That makes Cardbox a kind of database but if you say database to most people they think of complexity elaborate programming and having to spend hours doing data analysis before you even start To use the same name for something like Cardbox where if you put something in it s in and you can see it and you can find it again to use the same name for something that straightforward seems indecent Perhaps the best thing we can suggest is to look at Part Six of this
121. akes Cardbox forget a kept selection It doesn t matter what records you have selected at the time you use this command When you enter the command a window pops up and you can choose the name of the selection to forget and whether it s private or shared Remember that if you close a database Cardbox forgets all its private kept selections anyway Using kept selections The search commands Keep gt Select Keep gt Select Also Keep gt Exclude Keep gt Exclude Also and Keep gt Include all behave just like their counterparts in an index search except that there are fewer options for instance you don t have to choose the field or the type of search You can use any of these word searches e Single names e Wildcards e Ranges e Lists e Boolean combinations e Preview lists For details of how these searches work look them up under Searching the Index p 80 Advanced search commands 99 Advanced search commands These commands are in Cardbox because a few people have needed them but they are quite specialised Searching by record number Sometimes you may want to tell Cardbox Select the first 30 records from the current selection Searching by record numbers lets you do this When Cardbox tells you where you are in the current selection Record 2849 f MIIL gt of 26868 it s effectively numbering the records for you the first record is record 1 the second record is record 2 and so on The
122. all the difference 26 Ps12 67 Ps120 Ps121 Ps121 1 2 45 6 9 Ps121 1 5 Ps122 Ps122 1 2 Ps123 Ps123 25 78 Ps124 Ps125 Ps126 Ps127 Ps127 1 2 4 5 Ps127 15 Ps129 Ps129 14 78 Ps129 1 6 Ps130 Ps131 1 10 Ps131 1 5 11 14 Ps131 11 14 17 18 Ps131 11 18 Ps131 6 10 Ps133 Ps134 1 12 Ps134 1 6 Ps134 13 21 Ps135 1 3 16 18 21 Ps135 1 9 Ps135 10 15 Ps135 10 26 e Pa1351 1015 73 2 Code Che Name Code MJK Name Code MJK Name Code Che Name Code Che Name Code MJK Name Code Che Name Code MJK Name Code Che Name Code MJK Name Code MJK Name Code MJK Name Code Che Name Code Che Name Code Che Name Code MJK Name Code Che Name Code Che Name Code MJK Name Code MJK Name Code Che Name Code Che Name Code MJK Name Code Che Name Code MJK Name Code MJK Name Code Che Name Code MJK Name Code Che Name Code MJK Name Code MJK Name Code MJK Name Cade Che Name Psalm 120 Psalm 121 Psalm 122 Psalm 123 Psalm 124 Psalm 125 Psalm 126 Psalm 129 Psalm 130 Psalm 131 Psalm 131 Psalm 133 Psalm 134 Psalm 134 Psalm 135 Psalm 135 Psalm 135 The Extra Text field If you think of a Cardbox record as an index card you can think of Extra Text as a sheet of paper stapled to the back of the card Extra Text is what it says it is a lot of text there s no limit attached to a Cardbox r
123. ame column you ll get a vertical line If you start and end in different rows and columns you ll get a box The line or box will appear as soon as you release the mouse buttons Unlike with other items Cardbox doesn t automatically open the Item Properties command for you this is because the properties of lines and boxes are pretty specialised and won t be of interest to most people Setting line or box properties To set or change the properties of a line or box double click on it Alternatively select it and then use Edit gt Item Properties or press Enter Extend vertical lines This is a very specialised property used when you are creating ruled forms see Help Point 561 Appearance You can give a line or box its own colour and line thickness independently of the appearance of the format as a whole For appearances and how to alter them see Appearance p 107 For general rules and caveats relating to individual per item appearances in format design see page 191 202 Insert gt Graphic Ctrl G Graphics Inserting a graphic 1 The mouse cursor turns into a hollow square Move the mouse to where you want the graphic to start press the mouse button hold it down move the mouse to where you want the graphic to end and release the mouse button Cardbox will draw a rectangle for you and make the graphic that shape and size 2 Once you ve released the mouse button a blank graphic will appear on the screen
124. an press Close to return to Cardbox With Quick Scan Cardbox sets scanning resolutions of 200dpi for documents and 150dpi for images These settings are sufficient for normal purposes If you want to use a different resolution use Scan instead of Quick Scan or you can change Cardbox s built in Quick Scan settings by holding down the Shift key as you press the Quick Scan button Using a scanner Scan The Scan button gives you access to the full facilities of your scanner When you press it the scanner s own dialog box pops up Typically this will let you set a wide range of options such as the following e Size and location of the scan area e Resolution e Sharpness e Colour adjustment e Automatic sheet feeding We can t show you what the scanner s dialog box will look like because it varies from one model of scanner to the next and we can t even tell you what features it will include You will have to read the scanner s documentation or just try it and see If you use the Scan button then scanners with automatic document feed will scan a whole batch of documents before returning you to Cardbox but this too depends on exactly how the scanner s manufacturers have written their TWAIN software Using a camera If your camera has removable storage in the form of a card or other device you may be able to take the storage unit out of your camera and plug it into your computer In this case it will appear to Wi
125. and ACC in the field text When you display your data in summary form the short codes will save space e Having labels different from the field text can also be good in a multinational context because you can design formats in English French Spanish and so on while still maintaining one consistent set of codes within the actual database 031 O95 98 Ome Ont 02000 Bd xp For details of how to control appearance see page 107 The concepts of Cardbox 33 Appearance Appearance is shorthand for font and colour and size and boldness and italics and underlining and line thickness and background in other words everything that makes your text look the way it does Word processors give you infinite control over appearance and they will let you make every letter of every word a different colour if you really insist Cardbox is less generous appearance is assigned to fields not to individual characters The only variation within a field is that you can make indexed words look different from unindexed ones and captions can look different again Appearances are assigned when you design your format You can have one appearance for the format as a whole and then if you want you can make exceptions for particular fields and other format items Don t go overboard on this a screen with every field in a different font will look a terrible mess Whatever the appearance that is stored in the format you can override it when you
126. ange data with other programs so for example if you want to use Cardbox to store the data for your corporate accounts you don t have to worry that Cardbox isn t an accounting program and that your accounting software isn t nearly good enough at data handling You store the data in Cardbox and export them to the other program when needed That way each program does what it s best at and you get the job done without having to compromise The other thing that we ve done at the edges of Cardbox is to make it programmable We use Microsofts VBScript as a programming language this is a cousin of Visual Basic and the VBA programming language used by Microsoft Office _Cardbox has a macro facility that lets you record your actions within Introduction 7 Cardbox and play them back later by pressing a single key but you can also expand the scope of the macros to make them into small programs in their own right These programs have full access to Cardbox data and Cardbox commands To take one example if you have a database of people and want to send a bulk fax to some of them customised for each recipient a short macro can take care of formatting each fax and passing it on to your fax program The programmability also works from the outside in for instance if you are used to writing macros in Microsoft Word then you can easily expand your macros to communicate with Cardbox and pick up data from your databases for use in your Word docume
127. anguages English_ Italian_ French German 2004 Commercial Scooterman GRAND ITALIA Storm Creations Martin Jangaard 2003 Television Jean FOOTBALLERS WIVES Shed Productions Lawrence Moody 2002 Short Film Marco Lead SIMPLE MINDS Hazchem Films Benjamin Darras 2001 Short Film Jimmy Porter EXCERPTS FROM LOOK BACK IN ANGER Flo Productions Florian Lippke 2002 Short Film Felix BADINAGE O H Films Oliver Harrison 2002 Short Film Tristan THE BUTCHER Arts Institute Andreas Hafele 2001 Short Film Matt 11TH MAY Arts Institute Sarah McGettigan 2001 Commercial Designer SYNOPTIC 100 Film Niels Thomsen 2001 Radio Sauro NAPLES 44 BBC Radio 4 Jeremy Howe 2001 Stage Crim Lead CRIM Soho Theatre Bryan Oliver I MANCEL EIE Levei 0 Record 9803 4 The 9 800 actors could now be searched instantly the database with pictures was only 97MB and the user could assess at once how many actors remained and whether he was making his search too vague or too specific Contact sheets of photographs could be printed out so that the production company could compare pictures of 24 actors at a time Extra Text was used for the CVs which could vary widely in length Before Cardbox we were peering through a keyhole and we never knew what we might be missing With the Cardbox database we had the whole landscape in front of us and we could select assess and compare actors as much as we wanted Fo
128. ar we ve already described except of course that it s vertical Scrolling large records If a record is too big for the window you re viewing it in you ll see scroll bars at the edges of the window You can use the scroll bars to scroll different parts of your record into view If you have a mouse with a wheel on it you can roll the mouse wheel to scroll the record Use the mouse wheel on its own for vertical scrolling or hold down the Shift key as you roll the wheel in order to scroll horizontally Scrolling large fields Because Cardbox doesn t impose built in limits on the amount of text you can put into a field you can sometimes end up typing more text into a field than the field is able to display If this happens to you you can scroll different parts of the field into view by moving the mouse onto it and using the mouse wheel on its own for vertical scrolling or with the Shift key for horizontal scrolling If you don t have a mouse with a wheel you can move the mouse onto the field depress the left mouse button and drag in the direction of the text you want to see For more about extra text see pages 26 concepts and 204 format design View gt Extra Text F6 5 View gt Split Window Shift F6 For more about opening multiple database windows see page 46 Browsing through your records 67 Viewing Extra Text The Extra Text field is a piece of text that you can optionally attach to each record in
129. arch menu To do this use the command Data gt Promote Menu Chosen the wrong search If you start an Index search and then realise you want a Data one there s no need to cancel just press the Data Search button at the bottom of the Index search box Searching through record data 91 Choosing a field The ways you can choose a field to search are the same for data searches as for index searches see page 81 There s just one refinement when you leave the Field list blank telling Cardbox to search all fields you can decide whether to include the Extra Text field in the search or not I Don t search extra text Entering the search text and using wildcards In the Search For box type the text that you want Cardbox to look for If you want you can use the following wildcard characters The question mark matches exactly one character The asterisk matches any number of characters The space matches one or more spaces You can use any number of these characters and also combine them so for instance SM TH will match SMYTHSON as well as SMITH Search options Match Entire Field as One Unit If this option is turned on Cardbox will look at the field as one indivisible thing so that your search specification has to match the whole field for example searching for THE would find records where the field contained THE and nothing else and searching for THE would find records where the entire field s
130. ardbox then takes you straight to the Item Properties command so that you can set up other attributes of the field such as its indexing mode and its description If you have previously deleted some fields Cardbox reacts slightly differently when you ask it to insert a new field it lists the deleted fields so that you can choose to reinstate one of them or to create an entirely new field Inserting a field in an alternative non native format You can only insert fields into an alternative format if they already exist in the native format When you use Insert gt Field Cardbox shows you a list of fields that you re not already using in this alternative format and you can choose which one you want to insert Drawing the field on the screen is then the same as in the native format Setting field properties If you want to set or change the properties of a field double click on it Alternatively select it and then use Edit gt Item Properties or press Enter Name and description native format only The field name is the name you use when referring to the field for example when searching and sorting The description appears next to the name whenever Cardbox shows you a list of fields so you can use it to make the field more understandable or give a short explanation of what it should contain It s perfectly 190 See Help Point 540 for why we have to allow you to change the field type after creation For more about delete
131. are in the dictionary and also a list of the words for which you chose Ignore All during a spelling check because you may want to copy some of these into the dictionary To copy a word from Ignore All to the dictionary click on it and then press Store or just double click To add a new word to the dictionary type it in the User Dictionary box and then press Add To edit a word in the dictionary click on it and press Edit or double click The word will appear in the User Dictionary box and you can then edit it When you have finished editing press Save Spelling checker 151 To remove a word from the dictionary click on it and press Delete If you have several words to remove you can make things quicker by highlighting them all and then pressing Delete Capitalisation If a word in the user dictionary is in lower case like toggo then Cardbox will treat any capitalisation as being correct so it will accept Toggo as well If a word in the user dictionary starts with a capital letter like Sion then Cardbox will only accept that word with a capital letter so it will report sion as a wrong spelling 152 Only the Professional Edition of Cardbox is able to set up validators see page 206 Once they ve been set up any edition can use them Edit gt Show Errors F2 Edit gt Validate All Shift F2 Using validators Validators watch over the data you enter They are set up as
132. are on any particular computer or its fitness for any particular purpose and you agree that neither Cardbox Software nor its Licensees shall be held liable for any direct incidental or consequential damages or losses arising from the use of the Software The liability of Cardbox Software or its authorised Licensees will in no circumstances exceed the price that you actually paid for the licence to use the software In the event of any dispute arising about the interpretation and enforcement of this Agreement the governing laws will be the laws of England User Registration You are strongly urged to register your copy of Cardbox either as part of the installation process or subsequently see Help Point 567 for instructions Users who are not registered have no access to support services or to any future revisions or updates Your registration details will be kept confidential and will not be disclosed to third parties
133. assword e If you have to reinstall Windows then the remembered password may be lost In that case you will have to enter the password the next time that you open the workspace It s up to you to judge whether this is secure enough for your purposes Lar Licence ji 24 10 1903 Intelligence UK 6 3 11 1983 L amp C Autos Fi 3 11 1983 VAT 8 30 11 1983 Telephone 9 171271983 L amp C Autos 10 1 12 1983 Cash 11 26 12 1983 oil 12 6 1 1984 coal 13 9 1 1984 Wm Cory Boiler Service 14 20 1 1984 Barclaycard 16 9 2 1984 Telephone 17 20 2 1984 Access 18 28 2 1984 Browsing through your records 65 Browsing through your records When you have a selection of records whether it s a selection that results from searches you have made or the Level 0 selection that represents all the records in your database you will want to look through it We call this process browsing Whenever you look at a Cardbox database one record is the current record if you tell Cardbox to edit this is the record that will get edited if you tell Cardbox to delete a record this is the record that will get deleted If the screen is only displaying one record that s the current one if the screen is displaying a list of records Cardbox draws a thin black frame round the current record so you can see which one it is Using the browse bar If you look on the left hand side of the status bar at the bottom of the Cardbox window you ll see what looks like
134. at are in a particular order but may have other words separating them by using special search words three will match any number of words So RED DOG will match dots RED DOG RED BIG DOG and RED BIG FIERCE DOG asterisk will match exactly one word So RED DOG will match RED BIG DOG and RED LITTLE DOG but not RED DOG or RED BIG FIERCE DOG There are more sophisticated options as well for instance you can search for two words that are not more than a certain distance apart 84 Search for fi 2357 Match all Search for GRAND INTERNATIONAL IV Match all Lists You can type several terms words numbers or dates into the Search For box separated by spaces What happens depends on the setting of the Match All option With Match All turned off Cardbox will find records that contain any of the terms you have typed in Boolean terms this means OR With Match All turned on Cardbox will find only those records that contain all the terms you have typed in Boolean terms this means AND By default Cardbox leaves Match All turned off when you start a search so that you have to turn it on manually You can change this default using Tools gt Options Search We strongly recommend that you choose your favourite default setting early on in your use of Cardbox and then never change it because there is nothing more frustrating than typing a lot of terms into the Search For
135. ation can be one of the following A list of valid words that you type directly into the validator As well as individual words this list can contain wildcards as in searching and ranges in the form from to A separate text file outside Cardbox Having the list in a separate file may make it easier to change especially if you are using a separate program to create the list Another Cardbox database The validator looks up each word in the other database and treats it as valid if it is in that database s index in a field whose name you specify 208 Indexed only or unindexed only or all numbers Indexed only or unindexed only or all dates Indexed only or unindexed only or all terms Indexed only or unindexed only or all terms Indexed only or unindexed only or all terms This can look at indexed words only or unindexed words only or all words Check numbers Any numbers that occur in the field must match your specification The way the specifications work is the same as for words Check dates Any dates that occur in the field must match your specification and conform to a specified format The way the specifications work is the same as for words Disallow specific types The field must not contain terms of a specified type word number or date Unique terms Any indexed terms in the field must not already exist in the database s index This is useful for things like serial numbers
136. ats share XML as a basis then it will be possible to translate any format into any other format automatically Web browsers will be able to open any XML document and display it by using a stylesheet written in XSL a language based on XML One XML based format can be translated into another XML based format by using XSLT another language based on XML and so on Cardbox can output data in XML and there is an XML Schema on our web site that should enable any XML aware application to read the results In addition you can write your own XSLT transform that turns Cardbox s XML into another XML based language although writing XSLT is not a trivial task In practice XML is a lot less fully developed than its prophets claim and many applications that claim to support XML actually only support their own restricted subset of XML We won t name names here because software is developing the whole time and what was true when this manual was written may not be true by the time it s printed Our summary is that XML is potentially a very good thing but that you should check carefully that any particular use of XML to transfer data from one program to another will actually work 126 See Help Point 520 See Help Point 528 See Help Point 530 Cardbox External format Dr A Tilney E Dr Tilney PO Finance Director ORGANISATION Pacific Gene ADDRESS 16 St Swithins La London PC EC4 7BU BU Bank TE O171 534 2333 FX O171
137. available methods Importing records from a file Cardbox can import records from files written in several different formats of which the most useful one is Comma Separated CSV Almost any program that handles data will be able to export files in this format for example Microsoft Outlook can export your contact lists and your email folders The general pattern for data transfer is 1 Tell the other program to export its data to a file whose name and location you choose 2 In Cardbox use File gt Import gt From File to import the data and create new Cardbox records Importing records from a database Cardbox can import records directly from some other databases without needing anything to be exported the command is File gt Import gt From Database The requirement is that the other database should be accessible through the ODBC or OLE DB interfaces Microsoft Excel makes its spreadsheets accessible in this form and so does Microsoft Access Importing records from a Cardbox window Sometimes you may want to copy records from one Cardbox database to another Here is how to do this 1 Open the database you want to copy from the source and the database you want to copy to the destination 2 Inthe source window select the records that you want to copy 3 Inthe destination window use the command File gt Import gt From Cardbox Window 136 z Edit gt Edit Record Ctrl E File
138. awings and scanned documents Because they have so much in common we lump them together in Cardbox as one thing images An image is anything that can be displayed on the screen or printed on a printer It comes into Cardbox from a camera or a scanner or simply by being imported from an image file in any of the standard formats BMP JPEG GIF TIFF Cardbox stores images in an image field you can only have one image field in a format but that field can hold as many images as you like so if you want to scan an 80 page document into Cardbox then that s not a problem The one thing Cardbox can t do with images is search inside them If you want to find a picture of a clown with green hair you can t expect Cardbox to look inside each image to find a likely looking patch of green On the other hand there s nothing to stop you having a text field that describes in words what the image contains and then indexing it In that case searching for CLOWN GREEN HAIR will probably find what you re looking for Images can be pretty large lumps of data a picture takes as much space as ten thousand words so Cardbox compresses them to save disk space There are two levels of compression a light one which preserves image quality and a heavier one which makes the image look less good but saves a lot of space You can choose which level to use each time you import an image into Cardbox 40 Only the Professional Edition of Cardbox is ab
139. base follows parishioners through birth marriage and death it notes who needs help and who can offer support This is its native format Colour coding indicates the fields that only certain people are allowed to modify Extensive use is made of macros to make operations easier Scrolling allows you to move to different parts of the format and alternative formats exist to give more restricted compact views as well as for a very wide range of standard letters Using macros the database has also been adapted to store and calculate financial information relating to giving recoverable tax etc How to create a database 173 How to create a database Now that you know how to use a Cardbox database the only remaining thing is to explain how to create one To create a database you have to do three things Create an empty database file you have to decide what it should be called and where it should be stored Define the native format this will tell Cardbox what fields exist and how to lay them out on the screen Format definition is covered in detail starting on page 177 Enter the data type records in by hand or read them in bulk from a file or from another database Sometimes you may want to create a database that is identical in layout to one you already have In that case you can copy the native format or copy all formats without having to design them all over again by hand see page 175 Creating an empty database fi
140. book p 211 where you ll find many examples of Cardbox databases created by us and other people and you ll begin to understand why for so many users Cardbox becomes a way of life The Cardbox Book Why do we call this book a book and not a manual Because we ve seen whats happened to computer manuals Once upon a time you could hope to learn your way around a product just by reading its manual No longer Today manuals are mostly detailed lists of commands and step by step instructions for performing every conceivable operation without any suggestion of what the basic concepts are of what this product is actually about If travel guidebooks resembled these manuals they d spend all their time teaching you how to use the ticket machines in the railway stations and they d never say anything about what being in a country was really like The difference between a book and a manual is that you only see a manual after you ve bought the software and opened the box and then it s too late and you have XIV Preface to read it A book is something you can take off the shelf and glance through and if you don t like it you can put it back Making a book is much harder than making a manual a manual doesn t need to be worth reading a book has to be The Cardbox Book is designed from the beginning to be a book Its aim is to give you an understanding of what Cardbox is all about what it s useful for how it works how i
141. brief summary of what has happened to Cardbox since the beginning 1980 The first versions of Cardbox start running on 8 bit microcomputers running CP M Introduction 5 1982 The first commercial version of Cardbox is published for us by Caxton Software in London 1983 Versions of Cardbox appear for 16 bit computers running MSDOS including the newly released IBM PC Portable Cardbox is developed for the manufacturers of the world s first portable PC the Osborne 1 Cardbox Plus appears Published directly by us like all subsequent versions it has many enhanced features and comes in both 8 bit and 16 bit versions 1984 Networking and multi user versions of Cardbox Plus are launched Pioneering features include invisible file and record locking and the instant mutual update of records between users Epson Computer Corporation bundles Portable Cardbox Plus on a ROM chip in the world s first laptop the Epson PX 8 1986 A lightweight version called Personal Cardbox Plus appears 1988 Version 3 of Cardbox Plus can be programmed using any programming language you want We call this technique coprogramming when Microsoft reinvent the concept a few years later they call it OLE Automation later Windows Automation or just Automation 1990 Version 4 of Cardbox Plus doubles the maximum record size Picture Cardbox is launched This is the first non Windows database to contain built in
142. button Macros that pause themselves A macro can choose to pause for example so that you can tag some records to be used in the next stage of its operations If the macro just pauses you ll see this by the flashing of the Pause button but the macro may also display a message so that you can work out why it s paused Macro Paused Please tag the records you want As well as using the buttons you can press F5 to continue the macro or Esc to cancel it 266 For more about safety levels and trust see Help Point 526 Where macros are stored There are four places where macros can be stored depending on what the macros do and when they need to be accessible Database macros are stored with the database and they aren t visible when you re in any other database If a macro contains commands that make sense only in one database it should be stored as a database macro Related Databases macros refer to a group of databases not just one database They are quite an advanced feature see Help Point 571 for an explanation Workspace macros are associated with one particular workspace and aren t visible when you use a different workspace General macros are visible whenever you use this copy of Cardbox Similar classifications apply to the shortcut methods of playing macros toolbar buttons keystrokes and the Special menu so that the shortcuts can offer only those macros that are actually usable in the current
143. button or press the Esc key The point of step browsing is to be able to look at selected records in the context of their neighbours Some people really need this most people don t So if you can t see a use for step browsing don t bother to think about it Using the browse bar To start a step browse using the browse bar right click on the record number and a menu will pop up giving you a choice of search types to use for the step browse Once you ve chosen the search type the appropriate search command will open see What you can search for p 76 for more details Using the Browse menu The Browse menu is a submenu of the Search menu Open it with the mouse or with Alt S followed by B or even with Alt B If you re likely to be using the Browse menu a lot you can promote it to the main menu bar just to the right of the Search menu To do this use the command Browse gt Promote Menu Browse gt Step to Tagged Records starts a step browse that lands only on tagged records Browse gt Step to Specific Records starts a step browse that lands on records that match an index search When you use this command an index search window will open so that you can specify the index search see Searching the Index p 80 for more details To store images you need to create an image field see Format Design page 189 Eo i Browsing and viewing images 69 Browsing and viewing images For Cardbox an ima
144. ch as addresses you don t have to compromise your Cardbox design You will almost certainly be using comma separated CSV format to transfer data between the programs and Cardbox can automatically split a multi line field into separate CSV fields on output from Cardbox to CSV and join them back together on input Auxiliary fields It can be a useful technique in Cardbox to create a field just to help you with data manipulation or sorting The field will duplicate information that you ve already got in your database but in a subtly different format Here s an example Most English speaking telephone directories treat the prefix Mc as being the same as Mac when sorting names into alphabetical order so that McHugh comes before Mackenzie and they both come before Mbeki Cardbox like all computer programs compares words letter by letter so if you want to have this kind of sorting how do you get Cardbox to do it The answer is to create an extra field let s call it field S that contains the surname modified so as to sort in the right order In this case you d copy the surname into field S then you select all the names beginning with Mc and do a batch edit editing field S to change Mc into Mac but leaving the original name field unchanged Thus McHugh would be McHugh in the name field but MacHugh in field S If you then tell Cardbox to sort records into sequence using field S
145. ch blank space Cardbox should leave between one record and the next Try not to split records across pages or labels start a new page or mailing label if the whole of the record won t fit in the current one Truncate record at end of page or label we don t really recommend using this When printing mailing labels some people like to make sure that an exceptionally long address won t spread onto two labels and this option is designed for them We feel far happier if the long address spreads over two labels because then someone will notice and either stick both labels on the same package or edit the record to make it shorter This option only appears if you have chosen 1 record per page or label Copies of each record sometimes you may want to print more than one copy of each record this applies to mailing labels especially This option only appears if you have chosen 1 record per page label Print labels across the page then down if you have a sheet of mailing labels 3 labels wide and 8 labels deep there are two ways you can print them down the first column then down the second column then down the third column or across the first row across the second row and so on To use the latter method turn this option on 118 For why we don t recommend this see Help Point 559 Appearance Normally you use the command View gt Appearance to set the fonts font sizes and colours that you wa
146. check boxes you can also tell it how to lay them out on the screen Packed layout fits as many items as possible into each line O English Bd French O Latin O Provencal J Spanish O German Table layout arranges the items so that they line up neatly in columns This is more readable but can take up more space O English French O Latin C Proven al Spanish CJ German List layout puts one item on each line O English French O Latin O Provencal Spanish O German Adding and removing options You can add or reshuffle options at any time without affecting the data you have already entered Deleting an option when you are already using it in records is a little more complicated but essentially nothing will happen to your existing data until you edit and save a record that contains that option Help Point 501 tells you what will happen in that case Adding and removing alternate field views You can remove an alternate field view at any time and the field will thereafter appear as plain text You can add an alternate field view whenever you like for the effect that this will have on existing data see Help Point 502 JAD rss Insert gt Merge Block Ctrl M Exactly the same technique can be used to edit fixed text Fixed text in formats is described on page 199 The format design screen 195 Merge blocks Inserting a merge block 1 The mouse cursor turns into a hollow square Mo
147. clicking on the image window and selecting Picture or Document from the pop up menu You don t have to do this very often because Cardbox remembers the last Picture or Document setting separately for each file type and for each source of scanned images Checking your options The image window shows the effect of the options you have set this is because it shows the image after processing not before At the right hand edge of the status bar you ll see the storage size needed by the current image So it s easy to experiment with different settings and see how they affect quality and storage requirements If you say Picture for a document or Document for a photograph it s not the end of the world The image quality may be less good or the image may take more storage but that is all and you can check these things by looking at the image window Altogether disasters are unlikely The Store Compressed option In the pop up menu that you get when you right click on the image window you ll see an option saying Store Compressed For pictures this simply reduces the storage requirement by reducing the quality of the JPEG compression For documents Store Compressed is more radical The image quality will be reduced but for normal typescript the result will still be readable and the storage can be really tiny we ve found around 26KB for a sheet of typed A4 Store Compressed for documents isn t a setting to use if you want the r
148. considered as correct Sometimes the menu has good suggestions sometimes not it depends on the word and on the misspelling Add to Dictionary Manual spelling check You can also make Cardbox check spelling on request with the command Tools gt Check Spelling If you have selected some text Cardbox checks the selected text If you haven t selected any text Cardbox checks from the cursor to the end of the field unless you re already at the end of the field in which case it checks the whole field 148 If there are no spelling mistakes Cardbox displays a tick to tell you that the spelling check has finished The tick fades away after a couple of seconds but you don t have to wait for it to disappear if you move the mouse or press a key the tick will vanish at once If there are some possible spelling mistakes Cardbox will report them fo problem probable problems At the top you can see the word in question with some of the text on either side of it to give you an idea of the context Lower down you will see a list of suggested replacements How good the suggestions are depends very much on the word and how it was misspelt To ignore this word If you know that the word is correct you can press Skip to look for the next spelling error If you press Ignore All Cardbox will store the word in its Ignore All list This means that the word will never be flagged as a dubious spelling
149. cription only Membership List only and Journal only mem Emene Jon 1966 MemberNo 1 Initials TYPES OF PAYMENT C heque B anker s Draft E urocheque L loyd s Credit N otes Cash x Girobank credit Postal Order Mastercard S tanding Order V isa G irobank cheque O Money Order This application makes extensive use of relational linking when you move from one record to the next in the main database the Payments and Subscription windows update themselves to match the new record 226 Actors and casting A casting director had a problem He needed to cast actors for a play but the market leading database of actors was virtually unusable Not only did it demand that searches be put into a rigid and inflexible search form it was also then incredibly slow in its searching To be fair we should say that several years have passed and we are sure that the publishers have now greatly improved their offering So we converted the main Actors database into Cardbox for him 3 Cardbox ACTORS 2 File Edit Search View Tools Window Help aia noge DANIEL D ALESSANDRO OLIVIA BELL LTD 189 Wardour Street Age 26to 35 Mediterranean White London W1F 8ZD Eyes Browm Hair Dark_Brown Phone 020 7439 3270 Sft 9in 10st 5b Fax 020 7439 3485 Location London Accents Italian_ RP_ Arab East_European French German London New_York Russian Spanish Standard_American Skills Guitar_ Bass_Guitar Football L
150. ct a line hold down the Ctrl key and click anywhere in the line Deselecting text To cancel a selection click outside the selected area or press one of the arrow keys Lines and paragraphs are only relevant if your field is more than one line high in the format design You can see whether you re in Insert or Overwrite mode by looking at the Cardbox status bar K Edit gt Undo Ctrl Z Edit gt Undo All Ctrl Shift Z File gt Quit Ctrl Q All about editing 143 Typing and editing Lines and paragraphs When you are typing an address press Enter the Return key at the end of each line so that the next line starts at the left hand edge of the field When you are typing continuous text the field behaves like a miniature word processed document which means that if you type more text than will fit on one line it will word wrap onto the next When you want to end a paragraph and start a new line at the left hand edge press Enter Insert mode and Overwrite mode By default Cardbox works in Insert mode this means that when you type a INS character it is inserted at the cursor position and anything that was to the right of the cursor moves one place to the right to make room for it Because most Windows programs behave like this you will probably find it the natural mode to use If you press the Insert key Cardbox switches into Overwrite mode In OVR Overwrite mode anything you type replace
151. cted item or items move the mouse onto it press the mouse button and keep it pressed as you drag the mouse in the direction you want to go You ll see the items moving When you have got to where you want to go release the mouse button For precise control of movement you can use the keyboard the arrow keys will move your selected item s one row or column at a time Resizing items Select the item you want to resize you can only resize one item at a time Move the mouse onto one of the square sizing handles at the edge of the item and drag it in the direction you want For precise control you can use the keyboard if you hold down the Shift key the arrow keys will enlarge or shrink the selected item You can t resize fixed text because its size is calculated automatically from the text it contains 186 For more about the fate of deleted fields see Help Point 538 Edit gt Undo Ctrl Z Edit gt Redo Ctrl Y VERSION CTA TTT TTT TTT TT TTT Deleting items To delete items from your design select them and then press the Delete key What happens when a field is deleted If you delete a field in an alternative format the field disappears from that format If you delete a field in the native format then that effectively deletes the field from the database This is a dramatic step so Cardbox maintains the field as a half alive ghost until you definitely decide to purge it for ever G
152. d Latvian would be added or removed There is no limit on the number of words you can have and index in a field so there is no limit on the number of check boxes either The word in the field doesn t have to be the same as the word on the check box some recruitment agencies use numeric codes to indicate skills while still keeping readable text on the check boxes We used skills as an example but the problem is quite a common one Whenever you have a number of attributes that either are or are not present consider combining them all into a single field where the presence of a keyword indicates that the attribute applies and its absence means that it doesn t When to break these rules If you re regularly transferring data backwards and forwards between Cardbox and a less flexible program you may feel that you want to adopt the other product s field layout however irrational it may be If that s what you need to do then do it it isn t the most advantageous way of using Cardbox but it ll still work This is the best way of doing things for example if you have a central contacts database in Cardbox and want to transfer data into something like the Palm Address Book whose fields have been decided by Palm and can never be altered Help Point 623 describes the splitting and rejoining of fields Thinking about fields 245 If the only difference between Cardbox and your other programs is the use of multi line fields su
153. d algorithm AES for data encryption File import and export New file import and export wizards make it easy to transfer data into and out of Cardbox and add the following features Direct import from databases or spreadsheets using OLE DB or ODBC Simplified import from comma separated CSV files Export to HTML to create web pages Import and export using XML the new standard for data markup and transfer Data conversion using XSLT Tools The new Deduplicate command lets you identify possible duplicate records in your database The Repair function has been replaced by a new Rebuild command which preserves more information Such as kept selections and in most cases allows other network users to access a database even while it is being rebuilt Commands are provided for making backups of a Cardbox database while people are still using it This is vital in a large network or when 24 hour availability is required 274 Appendix Macros The old macro language which recorded all commands as sequences of keystrokes has been discarded In its place comes Microsoft s Visual Basic Scripting Edition VBScript a powerful and versatile programming language that can drive not just Cardbox but all other major Windows applications Macro organisation has been rethought so that it works seamlessly on a network Macros can be general applicable whenever Cardbox is running or specific to a user a workspace or a database
154. d fields see Help Point 538 For how to re index existing records see Help Point 541 safe to change either of them even after you ve put data into your database Cardbox won t get confused and all commands and all formats will refer to the field under its new name Field type native format only Most fields are text fields but you can also have one image field in your database and as many object fields as you like object fields can only be created by the Professional Edition You should only set the type when you are first creating a field Cardbox does permit you to change the field type after creation but this is something you should never do in practice If you find that you are not allowed to set the field type to Image this is because an image field already exists in the database If you can t see it around the image field may have been deleted but still be hanging around in a ghostly form Indexing mode native format only Cardbox can index any number of words numbers or dates in any field we ll use term as an abbreviation for word number or date Cardbox has four ways of deciding what terms are to be indexed in a given field All Cardbox indexes everything None Cardbox indexes nothing Manual Cardbox doesn t index anything to start with but you can manually tell it to index any term you want see Indexing in the Editing section p 140 Automatic Cardbox indexes ever
155. daybook acts as a central file for all the correspondence you receive You can categorise the letters and give them keywords for indexing and retrieval The original paper can be stored in a box file somewhere in case you ever need it as proof of something but for ordinary use the Cardbox database will be far easier to search in and you can always print out a copy of anything that you need 22 9 2003 105 From William Watkins Trusts Discussion of forthcoming meeting 30 6 2003 107 From John Simler Accounts 2 Covering letter for 2002 03 garden committee annual report a 22 10 2003 109 From VYehicle amp General Insurance Car insurance acknowledgement This is such a useful application of Cardbox that we give you an exercise that creates a simple daybook for you see page 237 You can store your important legal documents like this as well leases and share certificates so that you have a backup copy in case anything is ever lost or destroyed Other uses Here are a few other personal uses of Cardbox that we ve heard of There are sure to be many more Bird watching Trainspotting Family history Christmas cards Concert Photographs Videos amp DVDs Newspaper programmes cuttings Remember that there s no hard and fast distinction between personal and business uses of Cardbox so even if you re an individual who s using Cardbox carry on reading there may be something in the Business section that inspires you 222
156. dbox for Windows from Cardbox Plus for DOS version 3 and above Personal Cardbox Plus and Picture Cardbox Data from all other members of the Cardbox family can be exported from the original Cardbox program and imported into Cardbox 3 0 270 Appendix User interface Some menus have been rearranged for example the contents of File gt Utilities have been moved to Tools or Tools gt Management Some keyboard shortcuts have been reassigned to conform to emerging Windows conventions The most noticeable change is that F3 for Extra Text has been changed to F6 but there are others for example Ctrl A while editing now selects all the text in a field instead of opening View gt Appearance Macros The old Cardbox specific macro language has been superseded by VBScript and all your existing macros will need to be re recorded or rewritten Networking Previous versions of Cardbox shared databases by directly opening the database files with access being synchronized by the CARDBOX SHR control file and by LOK files for each database Cardbox 3 0 uses the Cardbox Server for multi user access this is more efficient and much better for data integrity Because in this case the Cardbox Server requires exclusive access to the database files that it opens you can t have a mixture of Cardbox 2 0 and Cardbox 3 0 Cardbox Server users opening the same database at the same time once you have decided to convert your networ
157. deensteeseedecaneetestetecedecateetescuiue What encryption protects you against Key management eee eee How to encrypt a database Changing encryption keys eee Decrypting a database rsa ania is Ase ieee Part Eight Macros Macro facilities in CardbOX cccessccssseeeeseeesseesesseeeeeeeeees 263 What macros can do How to play a macro What happens when you play a Macro ceeceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeteeseeeeteeeeaees Where macros are Stored ceccceeeeee Programming Cardbox from the outside RINGING Out MONEY sco teed See aia ladle ae ees aides ana setae Appendix REQUIFEMENIS reni atis e eeina E a E a a enn eenean 269 CAPAC hy esa aie AA EE EAT TT 269 Compatibility with other programs sssesssssssesnerseresrerrererrnrrernsrnrrnrnere 269 Compatibility with previous versions Of CardbOX cceeceeeeeeeeees 269 New features in Cardb0x 3 0 00 eeceesceeseeeeseeteeeeseaeeseeeeeaeeseaeeeeaeeetaeeeaes 271 Limited Use Software Licence Agreement e eee eeeeeeretees 282 Preface xiii Preface Cardbox was conceived 25 years ago and it was born in 1982 It has been used by hundreds of thousands of people since then and many of them have become addicts we can tell when they move from one job to another because their new employer has to buy them Cardbox to keep them happy and productive Cardbox 3 0 for Windows which you are looking at now is the eighth m
158. der to put more information into the log If this is necessary we ll tell you exactly how to go about it using the command Tools gt Options Log Protect yourself against disaster Even when your software is perfectly reliable your hardware isn t Back up your data regularly We have a cycle of daily backups onto rewritable CDs and weekly backups onto CD R The weekly backups are kept for ever Given how small CDs are and how cheap they are there is no excuse for you not to do the same When your hard disk crashes and your computer needs to be scrapped you should be able to laugh buy a new computer copy your backups onto it and carry on from where you left off If you ve already got Cardbox installed and you re not sure which edition it is Help gt About Cardbox will tell you Installing and managing Cardbox 13 Installing and managing Cardbox The different editions of Cardbox There are three editions of Cardbox available The Client Edition is available free of charge You can download it from our web site and use it to access Cardbox databases on the Internet it can be distributed on a CDROM together with Cardbox databases for the benefit of users who haven t already got Cardbox see Distributing Cardbox Databases p 20 and on a corporate network the Client Edition can be used to access databases on a Cardbox Server The Home Edition is a straightforward version of Cardbox suitable for most single user
159. design quickly without using up any labels use the button marked Print Sample Page The sample will show the exact area taken up by each label in your design Print it onto a plain sheet of paper then hold the paper up to the light on top of a sheet of labels and make sure that it all matches Laser printers and margins Laser printers can t usually print right up to the edge of the paper some inkjet printers share the same limitation so try to choose labels that don t go right up to the edge of the sheet The trouble with labels that do this is that you risk losing the 1 4 or 7mm or whatever your printer s limitation is from every label and while that isn t much space to lose from a whole large sheet of paper it s a lot to lose from a small label But if you really have to use labels that go all the way to the edge then Cardbox will do its best to make sense of the situation Other printer settings to use with labels In the Records tab of the Printer Settings command you ll probably want to turn on 1 record per label so that each record starts on a new label Truncate record at end of label and Print labels across the page then down are also relevant see page 117 Multi column printing The mailing label mechanism also provides a simple way of printing text in more than one column For example to print in two columns design a fake label type that has two labels across the page with a suitable
160. display to the Clipboard To capture the whole of the screen press the Print Screen key This copies the entire current screen display except the cursor to the Clipboard To capture a single window for example a command window or a message or the Cardbox window as a whole hold down the Alt key as you press Print Screen Windows copies the currently active window display to the Clipboard To send us the captured screen You have to save your capture to a file and send it as an attachment There are various ways of doing this and some are better than others Try not to paste the captured image directly into Outlook because this will store it as a BMP file usually about 2 2MB in size which wastes disk space and makes it slow to sent Word often compresses images when they re stored as part of a document so that the overall Word document can be very much smaller in one test the 2 2MB image was reduced to a 90KB document Otherwise you can open Windows Paint paste the image and use File gt Save As to save it as a GIF file not BMP If you have access to Adobe Acrobat then you can also paste your screen shots into a document and print the document to a PDF file Error logs Cardbox keeps a log of major events that occur while running it and if we are trying to trace the cause of a recalcitrant problem we may have to ask you to send us the error log or even to turn on additional logging options within Cardbox in or
161. diting When you are not editing a record any editing only buttons will appear grey and won t work Description Any description you insert here will be displayed if you hold the mouse over the button Microsoft call these things ToolTips Image size Store in compressed format These options have the same meaning that they do for graphics Action when the button is pressed The button can play a macro run a Windows program or send a DDE command to a program that understands and is waiting for DDE commands For more information on any of these options press F1 and see the online help 204 You can also set this mode in the Field Properties box for each individual field Format properties As well as the various items that you can place within a format layout there are some properties that apply to the format as a whole To set these double click anywhere where there isn t a format item Alternatively use the command Edit gt Format Properties General Page headings Normally the page headings or footings you specify will not appear on the screen but only when you print your records If you turn on Screen Also Shows Page Headings page headings will appear on the screen this will happen as long as the window is tall enough for more than one record to be displayed For more about headings and footings see page 188 Extra Text field The Extra Text field is attached to a record but not part of the main record displa
162. double click on it The order in which the fields appear in the list doesn t matter For more about fuzziness You can set options that control how Cardbox compares two records according to a see Fuzzy Matching particular field To do this click on the field in Fields To Compare The Fuzziness p 87 option says how closely two records have to resemble each other before they are considered identical 0 means there must be an exact match on this field while for example 2 means that there can be two characters difference between the text in this field and the records will still be considered identical Deduplication 169 The Number of Adjacent Records setting controls how many neighbouring records Cardbox will look at when checking for duplicates A higher number will make the deduplication slower but will be better at finding duplicate records even if they are far apart in the sorted sequence o T Part Five Creation How to create a new database what formats contain how to create and edit formats BASIC NAME ADDRESS INFORMATION gt GIFTS AND GOALS Stef F7 transfers TIME amp TALENTS anes ether Inte Essa zas an pessi asasina Ds 3 tivi Ctriers takes on info from ERIT nases Af wed iret Nane Other Nases ED ZONE PLEASE DO NOT MAKE ENTRY HERE ADDRESS AT TIME OF BAPTISE MARRIAGE NB DETAILS OF BRIDE Xian Naser GROOM S ADDRESS AT TINE OF WEDDING OTHER INFORMATION BAPTISM CO
163. e Rotterdam Historical Museum reports that apart from maintaining large image databases Cardbox is also being used by the librarian for the library catalogue the secretary to record correspondence and the curators whenever they are setting up a new exhibition Once you start using Cardbox there is no reason ever to stop Business uses of Cardbox 231 Libraries You ve already seen some uses of Cardbox that fit well in libraries books p 216 and other collections p 230 but of course there is a lot more to libraries than just catalogues Here are a few of the other things that librarians use Cardbox for e Circulation Inter library loans e Orders and payments Photocopies and copyright restriction management e Periodicals management Below you ll see a sample record from a periodicals management database that lets the librarian keep track of subscription status and whether all the required issues of a periodical have arrived It generates automatic claims for missing issues which was formerly an onerous part of the librarian s work The Cardbox user who sent us this example has also set up other databases and tied them together with a macro that daily checks all databases for late orders late loans missing periodical issues etc and generates for each staff member a list of their outstanding queries RURAL EUROPE Agri environment and rural development a 88 Subscription L Newspaper Supplier embroke I C Complimentary
164. e bar moves across from left to right To cancel a long running command click on the button to the right of the progress bar Warning displays within records A pattern made of tiny clock faces tells you that Cardbox is waiting for some data to arrive This will most often happen when you are connected to a Cardbox Server and the link is slow or the server is busy You don t need to do anything As soon as the data have arrived the clocks will disappear and you will see the data instead A hatched pattern indicates that the record you are looking at is deleted You won t normally see this because in most cases when a record is deleted Cardbox instantly removes it from your selection Occasionally this isn t practicable and you ll see the hatched pattern Don t worry this doesn t indicate an error and the deleted record won t appear in any printouts A cross hatched pattern indicates that there is something wrong with the record This is very rare so rare in fact that we had to fake an illustration of it because we couldn t get it to happen If you see this pattern you should rebuild the database or restore it from a backup see page 249 Part Three Search and Retrieval How to open and close Cardbox how to open and close databases browsing searching sorting printing export ay a ZIEL Cardbox Opening and closing Cardbox 53 Opening and closing Cardbox Opening Cardbox How you open Cardbox depe
165. e block is as text but you can also get it displayed as a bar code using one of a number of standard conventions Available bar code formats include Code 39 EAN 13 UPC and the Royal Mail code For more details use the online help select the format you want from the View list press the Set button to set options and then press the F1 key Appearance You can give a merge block its own appearance independently of the appearance of the format as a whole For appearances and how to alter them see Appearance p 107 For general rules and caveats relating to individual per item appearances in format design see page 191 Phone 01234 567890 Fax 01234 098765 Email cardbox cardbox com Address Scriventon House Speldhurst Kent TN3 OTU Address Scriventon House Speldhurst Kent TN3 OTU The format design screen 199 Fixed text Fixed text is text that appears identically in every record irrespective of any data the record may contain It is the equivalent on the computer of having a pre printed form or index card Fixed text is useful for headings reminders instructions and it can sometimes be a good substitute for field captions Fixed text versus field captions A field caption is part of the field and if you move the field then the caption moves too This makes format design easier but it also has a couple of potential problems The first problem is that the caption is exactly as long as it needs to be so that i
166. e through a Cardbox server somewhere The mechanism is a simplified version of what happens when you open a Web page in a Web browser For example what happens when you try to open a web page called http www cardbox net index htm is that the browser locates the computer at www cardbox net connects to the Web server there then asks the Web server to give it index htm With Cardbox the steps are the same but you do them one at a time Open Database m Taam cardbox hmr rotterdam nl database cardbox net hmr cust iaf nl IP Port Assignments localhost www decodersoftware net 3905 Completely trusted Before you start you need to know the name of the server you want to access just as you need to know the name of the folder when you open a file on your own computer You can see a list of servers on the left hand side it starts off containing just our own public database site database cardbox net but you can add or remove server names as you like so that your most frequently used servers are just a mouse click away You probably won t need to have a very long list if your organisation shares Cardbox databases by keeping them on a central server that server s name is the only one you ll need 58 For more about safety levels and trust see Help Point 526 Picking the server Click on the server name in the list or type the server s name into the Server box and press the View button to c
167. ecord Some other databases have a similar concept which they call Memo fields Not everyone finds Extra Text useful or even interesting so if you can t think of a use for Extra Text don t bother with it But when you do need it it can be invaluable It s flexible and of unlimited length whereas Cardbox records usually have a fixed layout and a fixed height for each field Because it s attached to a record you can at a press of the F6 key view the Extra Text on its own or the record on its own or with Shift F6 both together and you can print it separately as well if you want The only thing you can t do with Extra Text is index it although you can still do unindexed searches on it Here s an example of a database used as a text repository Extra Text contains the text and the main record is just a way of finding that content or sorting it into a desired order Leo UR The special obligations of our ministry 30d is constituted of distinct order Ay j tle Although the univer body the Church subsists as an integral whole just as the entire reference book in this way The Extra Text was what he was actually writing while the record s main fields gave Mj headings and a sequence o number when he wanted to ts move sections around he just _ changed its number At the community Is stones into st And again 5ut For opirit so tha all reqene
168. ed word is indexed as if it were a separate word so fer de lance is indexed as FER DE and LANCE and then the whole word without hyphens is indexed again FERDELANCE This sounds a little eccentric but it is the best way of ensuring that the word can be found and that records containing it can also be sorted into the right order For specialised applications you can change all these indexing rules by setting a specific collating sequence for the database Collating sequences are an advanced feature and are part of the Professional Edition only although all editions of Cardbox will understand and obey a database s collating sequence if one has been set Indexing numbers When Cardbox indexes a number it ignores non numeric characters other than decimal points slashes and hyphens Cardbox indexes numbers according to their value which means that 3 3 0 and 3 00 etc are all indexed identically When you view the database index for example when previewing the results of a search you plan to make Cardbox will show you the simplest possible form of the number omitting any trailing zeroes If you have the Professional Edition you can set up a validator that automatically reformats the dates you type in See page 206 See Help Point 522 for details of how these date and time formats work The concepts of Cardbox 37 Date formats and Cardbox There are many different ways of writing dates Even the sequence of t
169. ef a fmm LJ dA 2 Cancel Hee At the top left hand corner of the Appearance window you ll see a schematized picture of how text would look with the settings you have chosen To change the appearance for a particular kind of text you can pick it from the item list or click on it in the picture The Preview button updates the main record display to correspond to the changes you have made so that you see what the new appearance will look like with a real record The changes you make aren t fully applied until you press OK if you press Cancel Cardbox will discard your changes and the display will revert to its original state When you are setting the colour Cardbox will pop up a list of commonly used a colours If you don t see the colour you want among them select the rainbow colour at the bottom of the list and a Windows control will open and let you create any colour you like 110 An overview of printing Printing in Cardbox is very simple 1 Select the records you want see Searching p 76 2 If you want to print them in a different format use View gt Format to select that format see Formats p 106 3 If you want the records to be in a particular sequence select that sequence see Sorting p 101 4 Use File gt Print to print the records Printing one record Sometimes you may want to print just one record This quite often happens when you are printing a form lette
170. egative number Parentheses round a group of terms means that at least one of those terms must occur in any record that Cardbox finds a Boolean OR You can combine these symbols in more or less any way you like For example HISTORY HISTORI INSTITUTE SOCIETY would find records that had INSTITUTE or SOCIETY in them as long as they also had HISTORY HISTORIAN HISTORICAL etc Help Point 532 gives many more details of how these symbols work alone and in combination but don t worry if you find them obscure or complicated there is no obligation to use them You may not be doing this sort of complex search anyway and even if you are you can always build up your search step by step using Select Include and Exclude if you find that clearer Preview lists On the right hand side of the Search command windows you ll find two buttons Preview and Preview and Count They almost do a search but not quite Instead of finding records that match your command the Preview buttons look through the index and find the index terms that match and they present you with a list of them Here are some possible uses e If you ve put a particularly elaborate wildcard into the Search For box you can use Preview to work out if it ll match anything in the index and if it does whether it is finding what you want it to find e If you re not very familiar with the database you re using and you aren t sure what values a fi
171. egrees of access for instance to allow some people to make changes while others can only search the database and not modify it Cardbox gives you this kind of access control by means of user profiles A user profile defines what the user is allowed to do what fields and formats are visible and what commands are allowed User profiles are protected by means of passwords so you can control who has access to your database by controlling who gets which profile name and password Here are a few sample schemes to give you an idea of how the whole thing works Simple password protection one single profile permitted to do anything protected by a password Data publishing two profiles One password protected is permitted to do anything The other without a password is restricted to read only access and cannot see certain administrative fields The second profile can also be made the default profile which means that Cardbox will automatically use it when the database is opened Online data publishing with subscriptions a master profile password protected for use by the publisher One password protected profile for each subscriber specifying what he is allowed to see If the subscription isn t paid you delete the relevant user s profile Internal corporate database a profile for administrators a profile for normal users a profile for managers each with its own password and permissions If a database has us
172. eld Default entry This validator overwrites the field with text that you specify It is useful for a number of purposes It can fill in a field with a default value for example a country code that the user can then override manually if required It can insert the user s initials or the date and time either when the record is created or every time it is changed Automatic numbering This validator puts a unique number into the field when you save it You can control the format of the number and the starting point of the numbering You can use Tools gt Automatic Numbering to specify where the numbering should start Cardbox assigns the number when saving the record this is to avoid complications on a network if several people start adding records at once You can prevent this validator from inserting an automatic number simply by typing something into the field before saving the record Validators and pick lists A pick list allows the user to enter words by picking them from a menu or a list instead of typing them This can save time and it can be less error prone than typing Cardbox automatically creates pick lists from certain validators The validators it uses are Check Words Check Numbers Check Dates and Index Terms Only individual terms make it into the pick list wildcards and ranges don t Part Six Inspiration A gallery of Cardbox databases some exercises to help you get started things to think of when plan
173. eld can contain you can leave Search For blank press Preview and get a list of the indexed terms in that field Remember to set Which Index to Words or Numbers Dates first because Cardbox can t guess which index to search if you haven t typed anything into Search For that would give it a clue 86 For a guide to selecting multiple items from a list see Multiple Selections in List Boxes p 45 Left a Preview list Right Preview and Count e If you want to search for only some of the words in the list use Preview to bring up a list of index terms and then click on the ones you want to use in your search to highlight them e When you ve highlighted all the terms you want press OK and Cardbox will find the matching records This is especially useful if you are looking for misspelt or inappropriate index terms e If you want to process the list of index terms or pass it on to another program use Preview next to the list of terms you ll find buttons for copying the list to the Clipboard or saving it to a file CHANNEL ISLANDS MALTA 1 ANTILLES CHILE GER BELGIUM 46 MEXICO 1 ARGENTINA CHINA GHA CANADA 10 NEPAL 1 ARUBA COLOMBIA GIBF CHANNEL ISLANDS 8 NETHERLANDS 2C AUSTRALIA CROATIA GRE CHILE 2 NORWAY 19 AUSTRIA CYPRUS HAN CHINA 1 PERU 1 BAKU CZECH REPUBLIC Hon JDENMARK 3 PHILIPPINES 1 BARBADOS DENMARK HUN JFALKLAND ISLANDS 2 PORTUGAL 2 BELARUS ECUADOR INDI JFRANCE S SAUDI
174. em you should locate them using Windows Explorer and delete them by hand Moving Cardbox from one computer to another If you have upgraded to a new computer Help Point 564 describes what files and settings to transfer from your old computer to your new one If you re selling or giving away the old computer remember to remove Cardbox from it first so that the new owner can t use your copy of Cardbox Installing and managing Cardbox 17 Licensing and the Cardbox Server If you re not using the Cardbox Server to share databases you don t need to read this section When you share databases between users on a network you run the Cardbox Server The Cardbox Server is licensed according to the number of Client Edition and Home Edition users who are allowed to connect to it simultaneously There is no limit to the number of Professional Edition users who can connect to the Cardbox Server You thus have two opposite choices You can get Professional Edition licences for everyone on your network in which case you can get away with a zero user licence for the Cardbox Server itself or you can give each user the Client Edition of Cardbox which is free and buy a Cardbox Server licence that can handle your maximum expected number of simultaneous users If some users are only intermittently connected to the network server users of laptops for example then it all depends on whether they need to be able to update their dat
175. ements didn t take you far enough In this case the solution is to use Ctrl End to move to the end of the field Try to imagine as you edit the first record what effect your keystrokes would have on a record that looks different from it If you re in any doubt get Cardbox to do the first few records one at a time so that you can see if the result looks reasonable Replacing field contents Here s another pitfall You have selected records for a mailing and you have done the mailing and now you want to fill a Date mailed field with the date You start the batch edit you see that Date mailed is empty so you just type 29 2 2004 You let the batch edit go ahead but because some of the later records in the selection already had a date in them they end up with things like 29 2 20047 1 2004 in the Date mailed field The moral of the story is that you should never assume that a field will always be empty In this case it is easy enough to arm yourself against non blank fields just press Ctrl A before typing the new text this will select the entire contents of the field if there are any and so the text you type will replace the selected text and you won t get these strange looking hybrid dates Indexing When you re editing a record the command you usually use for indexing is Ctrl or Ctrl and this toggles the state of indexing if a word wasn t indexed it is indexed if it was indexed it is unindexed
176. en as you type it so that you can make sure that you are typing what you think you are typing The second time the password appears as a row of asterisks If you don t type the password exactly the same way each time Cardbox will reject the password Manage User Profiles ee Password protected M E E v Add new records v Add records from file v Edit records v Batch edit v Delete records v Batch delete v Store kept selections v Define custom sequence v Print v Dutput to file v Edit native format You will see a window with a list of available profiles on the left If you select one of For detailgd Ins Hons these profiles the right hand side will show you the details of the profile press F1 while the Manage User Profiles To add a new profile press New Wingow isapan To delete a profile select it in the list and press Delete To modify a profile select it in a list and then modify its details on the right hand side When you have finished making changes press OK 256 Security of user profiles If your databases are only being accessed through Cardbox user profiles are secure as secure as the passwords you choose If a disk or CD containing your database files is stolen the thief may conceivably be able to see your data even if they are protected by profiles This is because a profile protected database is not encrypted which means that programming techniques such as
177. en you re building up a really complex search it s possible to get a little lost The History command shows you all the search commands that got you where you are now You can print the list as an audit trail or copy it to the Clipboard If you want you can even make the history pop up automatically every time you do a search Highlight Matches This command is part of the View menu and it represents a mode that you can turn on and off When you turn Highlight Matches on and then enter a search command that looks for a word Cardbox will highlight the word in your record display This can be helpful if you ve got a field with a lot of text in it and you want to see the word in its proper context One more command Exclude Also Exclude Also is almost identical to Exclude The only difference is that it modifies the result of the last Exclude command instead of creating a new level of selection It s unlikely that you ll ever want to use this command we ve included it only for completeness 76 What you can search for Searching the index p 80 The index is what makes Cardbox searches so fast so searching the index is the best and most usual way of searching your database Single words p 82 HISTORICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE Preview lists p 85 CHANNEL ISLANDS CHILE CHINA COLOMBIA CROATIA CYPRUS CZECH REPUBLIC DENMARK ECUADOR EGYPT EL SALVADOR i Ranges p 82 Single numbers and dates p 83 3 8
178. en you type 4 5 6 a validator will turn it into 04 05 2006 Just like the indexing validators these validators only work when you move out of an edited field Validators that enter text automatically These validators fill in fields for you Depending on how they have been set up they may automatically fill in a field or they may wait for you to move into the field and out of it again before they do anything They may replace any text that you have entered or they may confine themselves to filling in fields that you have left blank The text that these validators type into your fields can be fixed text or it can include things like your identity your user name or your initials or the date and time You don t need to do anything about validators of this kind just don t be surprised if something about your record changes automatically Edit gt Batch gt Edit Ctrl B Batch editing 155 Batch editing Batch editing is ordinary editing done automatically Cardbox watches you edit a record and then repeats exactly what you did step by step on subsequent records This is a powerful feature and as far as we know it s unique to Cardbox so when you find yourself with several records to edit take a moment to think whether batch editing will make your task faster Setting up a batch edit First select the records that you want to edit and make sure you re on the first of them Then use the command Edit gt
179. ence lets more than one person use it at the same time for example an 8 user licence allows Cardbox to be used by up to 8 simultaneous users The licence itself should only be installed once not 8 times There are three ways of arranging this Single Cardbox installation Install Cardbox in a shared directory on your file server Whoever wants to use Cardbox can then navigate to CARDBOX3 EXE using Windows Explorer and double click on it Cardbox will start and it will set up appropriate shortcuts on the user s computer to make it simple to start Cardbox in the future Separate Cardbox installations Sometimes it is corporate policy to install software separately on each PC Cardbox can be installed like this but the licence itself still needs to be installed centrally Decide on a shared directory that will hold the licence and use the Licence Location button in Setup s licensing page to point all the separate Cardbox installations to that directory Licence server If some of the intended users are located remotely and only have an Internet connection to your main system you can install the multi user licence on a Cardbox Server and individual copies of Cardbox can then borrow licences as and when they are needed See the Cardbox Server documentation for more details If some of your users need to be able to use Cardbox even when completely disconnected from your corporate network then can t use your multi user lice
180. encrypted data In the United Kingdom it is a criminal offence to fail to reveal an encryption key when ordered to do so and it is also a crime to reveal that you have been asked for a key 258 See Workspaces p 61 Key management When you encrypt a database you give Cardbox a key A key is a string of between 8 and 60 characters chosen by you Cardbox does not store the key so you will have to enter it every time you open the database You should keep the key secret but you should also keep it safe because losing the key effectively means losing your data Write down your encryption key on a piece of paper and put that piece of paper in a safe place with your lawyers or at the bank or with a trusted friend That way you are protected if you forget the key and if you suffer an accident then your data will not be lost forever Choosing a key An encryption key should be something that is not easily guessed by someone else The ideal would be a completely random sequence of letters and numbers The worst encryption key is a word that occurs in a dictionary or a common name or a name that is closely associated with you Use unorthodox spellings or strange capitalisations or combinations of letters and numbers How paranoid you are about this depends on the risk you are protecting yourself against if you are worried about someone typing guessed encryption keys into Cardbox you can be more relaxed about keys than if you
181. ent register Computer maintenance records Concert programmes Desiderata lists Disaster reduction training Drawing records Economic development data Faults reporting Financial services tracking Fleet records Glossaries Health and safety data Heirlooms Hire records Hotel guest cards Housing benefit case management Information databases Inventories Job sheets Legislation databases Local history records Local information Local business support databases Logging hardware and software faults Logistics Mailing lists Maintenance records Manufacturing data Map collections Meetings data Motorway structures Music Nature conservation information Newspaper archives Object catalogues Order tracking Passenger lists Patent databases Personnel management Photographs Pictures Planning decisions analysis Plant databases Population data Prize winners Production analysis records 233 Project management Property database Property management Purchase ordering system Quality control Questionnaire analysis References Regimental associations Safety checks data Sales control and forecasting Service records Ships information Skills database Slides and negatives Song files Sports club player statistics Staff phone directory Statistics Student registers Subscription records Supplier indexes Telephone directories Telephone information for the disabled Theses collection Trade
182. er Settings you can measure in inches millimetres or characters and lines You ll see a control called Unit at the bottom of every tab whatever unit you choose Cardbox will display measurements using that unit If you type a number into a box that asks you for a measurement for example Top Margin in the Margins tab Cardbox will interpret it using whatever unit is currently selected so typing 0 5 will mean 0 5 inches 0 5 millimetres or 0 5 lines depending on the current unit If you don t want to change the current unit but you do want to use a different unit for a particular measurement specify the unit you want directly by typing a letter after the number for example 0 5i means half an inch e You can change units as often as you like this won t alter any measurements you have already entered e f you choose to measure in characters and lines Cardbox uses the character width or line height of whatever font you are currently using 116 Printer and Paper It is almost always best to use the default Windows printer especially if you are designing a format that will be used on a network because then Cardbox can use each computer s default printer which is usually the nearest or most convenient one But if you do want to insist on a specific printer perhaps one that can print in colour then turn off Always Use the Default Windows Printer and pick the printer from the list If there are any specif
183. er and double click on it You re allowed to have several workspaces open at the same time and you can also have the same database open in more than one workspace if that s what you need to do Which workspace am I using If you have several workspaces open at the same time how can you tell which one is which 1 You can find out the filename of your current workspace by using File gt Workspace and seeing what filename it reports 2 You can make each workspace give a different title to your main Cardbox window By default the main window is called Cardbox but you can change the title by using File gt Workspace Properties If you give the main Cardbox window a different title in each workspace for instance Mailing Library Accounts then the workspaces will look different both on the screen and in the Windows task bar so that you can easily tell them apart Protecting your workspace if you make a mistake Suppose that you have a workspace that you use every day with lots of carefully arranged windows in it and then you accidentally close some of those windows If you now close Cardbox your unintentional change will be stored in the workspace There is way round this problem If you hold down the Shift key when you close Cardbox the workspace will be left unchanged in the state it was in when you opened Cardbox and all your mistaken changes will be forgotten To make a file read only r
184. er in the right place for instance if you have sorted books by subject classification and you change GENETICS to PHYLOGENETICS the record will stay in its old place just before GEOLOGY when it should have moved to just before PHYSICS To get the record in its correct place you will have to sort again The Sequence toolbar button will tell you whether you are looking at a sorted display if it looks normal the display is not sorted if the button is depressed the display is sorted To see what sequence is being used move the mouse over the button and leave it there for a few moments without clicking To cancel sorting To cancel a sort and revert to the normal sequence of the database click on the Sequence button on the toolbar Alternatively you can use View gt Sequence No Sequence 106 View gt Change Format Ctrl F Ctrl F works only when you are viewing records not when you are editing them Changing the format A format controls how your records appear on the screen For all except the simplest databases you ll probably have more than one format for data entry and browsing for simple summaries and perhaps even for mail merging and mailing labels View gt Change Format lets you switch to a different format It will show you a list of formats and you can do any of the following e Type the name of the format and press OK Select the format in the list You ll see a description of the format at the
185. er profiles then Cardbox will ask each user for a profile name and password on opening the database There are a couple of exceptions you can designate one profile as the default profile which means that Cardbox will choose it automatically and you can also create profiles that don t have a password If you have a default profile without a password Cardbox won t ask the user for anything on opening the database but will go straight in to using the default profile Once a database is open the user can change from one profile to another at any time by using File gt User Profile 254 See Restricted Operations p 256 What a user profile contains Each user profile has a name and a password The password is optional The profile can be visible or invisible invisible profiles don t appear in the list that Cardbox shows when opening a database or in File gt User Profile One profile can be designated as the default profile Cardbox automatically chooses this when a database is opened for the first time For each field the profile specifies whether the field is read write full access read only the user can view the field but not make changes or invisible the user can t see the field s contents or do searches on the field For each format the profile specifies whether the format is read write read only or invisible It can also specify the default format for the profile this is the format that will be used w
186. erge block is just ordinary text and it can be as long or as short as you like a single line automatically word wrapped as necessary or multiple lines or paragraphs You can add references to fields and other data by pressing the Insert button while you are editing the text and they will appear in the text as special codes A field fieldname The Extra Text field LET The page number Page The record number within the current selection Record The number of records in the current selection Records The date or time Cardbox lets you choose your own format for this Date The print job ID useful for customising printed reports see p 112 ID In addition to these you can type the following codes yourself B Start bold text SB End bold text I I Start end italic text U U Start end underlined text The open curly bracket The closed curly bracket Finally you can insert codes to make the merge block present itself in HTML or XML these are useful if you want Cardbox to create web pages directly Align You can make Cardbox left justify right justify or centre the text in a merge block You can t mix the different kinds of justification in one merge block but you can have several different merge blocks in a format each with its own layout This is useful for multi page output for example an inv
187. es File gt Workspace shows you which workspace you re using at the moment To create a new workspace press New and choose a filename and location for the new workspace file Once you ve created the new file set up Cardbox the way you want it open the databases you want close the databases you don t want and so on and then close it You now have a separate workspace file in the location you ve chosen Workspace 21x File location Properties Password Shortcuts Filename sonal Cardbox Cardbox cbwi New I Make this the default workspace the default workspace is the one that opens automatically when you run Cardbox Coree To delete a workspace that you don t want just use Windows Explorer to find the workspace file its filetype will be cbw and delete it 62 N JE General 2 0 QE Universalis 2 0 gt 2B Passwords gt 22 Office Local R 2a Address Book Workspace shortcuts You can put shortcuts to Cardbox workspaces into the Windows Start menu or onto your desktop You can tell Cardbox to create these shortcuts when you re creating a new workspace or you can do it afterwards using File gt Workspace Shortcuts You can remove shortcuts in the same way Opening a workspace If your Start menu has a shortcut for the workspace use it If you ve got a shortcut for the workspace on your desktop use it Otherwise find the workspace file in Windows Explor
188. es that give you more details on something the book is talking about in many cases they also have links to other parts of the help file To view a help point use the command Help gt Help Points and then type in the number of the help point 10 Reliability and support Reliability Car manufacturers used to be too shy to talk about how well their cars behaved in crashes because it might suggest to their customers that cars sometimes crashed They got over their shyness in the end and it s time that software manufacturers did the same There is nothing inevitable about software bugs We know we can make perfect software if we try the early versions of Cardbox had no bugs at all and we want our users to get the benefit of our software we want it to work for them and to work well Cynics say that a dollar spent on making sure a product works brings less return than a dollar spent on convincing people that it does We aren t economists but from our longer term perspective we can see that a pound spent on proper software development produces rewards forever while a pound spent on marketing is soon forgotten Here s what we are doing to make your computer work better for you when you re using Cardbox e We keep your data safe We have made the Cardbox database engine a separate program from the Cardbox you see on your screen you don t notice this because the engine starts invisibly whenever it s needed The Cardbox engine i
189. escribes various enhancements for instance you can set up the format so that clicking on the email address will open a new email to the person concerned The intelligent address book This database is a bit more work to set up but it does more for you It is more work because it has more fields but the reward of having those extra fields is that it can understand your data a little better As well as viewing records on the screen you can make mailing labels from them or create standard letters You can categorize people not just by their names but by their location This can be the core of a contacts database for personal or business use and you can expand it with extra fields to perform more and more sophisticated selections 236 Name Telephone M G Bodkin 0043 613 223 1200 R O Fish 03741 880122 Richard Little 01892 110345 Aileen Peavey 001 212 555 1212 03741 883742 020 8999 0000 Evangeline Pembury The Hon Galahad Threepwood The Hon Galahad Threepwood 12 Atherstone Place London NW8 amp Z Here is a sample record Name The Hon Galahad Threepwood Address 12 Atherstone Place London NW2 3X2 Tel 020 8999 0000 Fax 020 8999 0228 Mobile 09966 194461 mailto b http co uk Name the person s name with the surname indexed Address the address We ve made this four lines long if you come across an address that s longer type it in anyway because Cardbox doesn t limit the length of text
190. esult to look beautiful but for archival purposes it can be entirely adequate Do try out Store Compressed before you decide on a policy of using it Look out for very thin lines which can sometimes disappear Store Compressed works differently for colour and monochrome scanned documents so if you find it too radical when you try it on monochrome documents try a colour scan instead in case that looks better Deconstructing Figaro Lecture 17 May 5 30 7 00 pm Gresham College 5 30 7 00 pm Following our very successful Zaide event al Gresham College last year we have been invited to return in May lan Page conductor and Artistic Director of the Classical Opera Company will be giving an informal talk illustrated by two of our singers exploring the opening scene of The Marriage of Figaro This event is open to the public and free of charge Mozart in Italy recital 6 July Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art Canonbury Square 6 30 pm drinks concert at 7 30 pm We shall be giving an hour long recital illustrating Mozart s stay in Italy with singers and piano al the Estorick Collection in Islington The event will be open to the public and tickets can be purchased through our office at 25 each which includes wine Mitridate Re Di Ponte concert performance 21 July St John s Smith Square 7 00 pm Mitridate Re di Ponto was the first of the three Mozart s operas commissioned for Italy and it was p
191. ever Cardbox record you re viewing at the time Printing a mail merged document using Word is then just a matter of making sure Cardbox is showing the record you want to print opening the Word document you ve created and printing it See Help Point 521 Exporting data to files You can output selected records to a file for another program to read First select the records you want to write out and then use File gt Export This command gives you various file formats to choose from and lets you set any other appropriate options such as a list of the fields that you want to export You can export the whole of your current selection or just the current record onwards The online help for file export is very detailed so if you need more information on anything just hit F1 Comma separated format CSV shell amp Dimbleby 125 Bart mnt Pharmacies Ltd 4 Duke Street Moderna Ltd 118 Reigate Hill Reigat er Manager Tyme Trading Co Ltd 60 Park Hallward Co Z Maidstone Road Tonbrid GBF Ltd 60 Elton Street Eccleshall Staf Land Search Ltd 138 Flackley Road Sevenosa MacDonnel 6 Co Ltd 53 Cottonmill Lane livan Partner Nicholson Consultancy St Derry amp Mann Ltd 12Z1 Bolt Road Southar lrant Irwin Jones 62Z Milford S rdans Ltd 3 366 Worksory Also sometimes known as comma delimited format this has become a de facto standard on PCs and most programs that can import data can d
192. eview button and Cardbox will show you a list Things you can search for Single words To search for a single word type it into the Search For box and press OK There is nothing else to say about this except that it s the commonest search you ll use Wildcards When you type a word into Search For there are two special characters you can use as wildcards matches exactly one character matches any number of characters This can be useful if you want to capture a number of different spellings or if you aren t sure if a term was being used in the singular or the plural HOUSE versus HOUSES or even if you re lazy and don t want to type the whole of a long and complicated word You can use any number of question marks and asterisks and also combine them so for instance SM TH will match SMYTHSON as well as SMITH The question mark represents one character and there must be a character there to match it so MODE will match MODEM and MODES but not MODE The asterisk represents zero or more characters If it is entered as the only search character it will match any word at all For example you can find records in which no alphabetic text has been indexed in a particular field by using the Exclude command with in the Search For box Ranges of words You can put two words separated by a colon into the Search For box E K finds all indexed words beginning with a letter from E
193. existing text that is you want the records to end up looking like this Security Security The customer to provide a personal guarantee with a second charge on his property Approved by RPB 14 4 92 Here is the right way to do this 1 Move the cursor into the field The advance is to be guaranteed jointly and severally by Mr F G Smith and Mr JT Brown with a second charge on Mr Smith s property Approved by RPB 1474 92 2 Use Ctrl End to move the cursor to the end of the field 3 Type a space followed by the note If you re not very familiar with the keystrokes for moving the cursor you might be tempted to use the arrow keys because they re easy to remember Suppose that you pressed the Down arrow 3 times and the Right arrow 9 times In the first record that would get you exactly where you wanted to be but look at the second record Security The customer to provide a personal guarantee with a second charge on his Security The advance is to be guaranteed jointly and severally by Mr F G Smith and Mr J T Brown wi second charge on Mr Smith s property property You can find a list of cursor movement keys on page 141 Edit gt Index On Ctrl Shift Batch editing 157 You told Cardbox to move down 3 lines and across by 9 characters and this was exactly what it did The first field didn t have much text so your cursor movements got you to the end but in the longer field the same mov
194. eywords for a book or an abstract and you re using a program that indexes fields but not the words within fields then you have to create several keyword fields so that an item with multiple keywords can be properly indexed You have to guess what the maximum likely number of keywords is and provide that many fields Once again this makes searching a nightmare Cardbox can index as many words as you like within a single field so you should create one keyword field and put all your keywords into it The check box problem This is yet another problem that comes from experience from other databases Suppose that you are running a recruitment database and you want to indicate the skills that each candidate has With a traditional database the only way to do this searchably is to have a single Boolean Yes No field for every possible skill This uses up a lot of screen space and a lot of space in the data file and whenever a new skill needs to be added the database format needs to be redesigned If you are used to that kind of database do not replicate its behaviour in Cardbox It is far simpler to have a single Skills field and to fill it with check boxes Each check box has a corresponding keyword in the field for example you could set it up so that if you clicked on the check box marked Japanese the word Japanese would be added to or removed from the field and if you clicked on the check box marked Latvian the wor
195. f you have several fields one below the other the captions will start in the same place but they won t finish in the same place so the actual field data will start in different places on each line This can look messy The second problem with field captions being part of the field is that if you have a multi line field then the caption takes up part of the first line If the field is a solid mass of text this doesn t matter too much but if the field is made of separate lines like an address if looks odd to have the first line of the field data pushed to the right by the caption while the remaining lines all start at the left hand edge The remedy for both problems is the same don t have field captions but align the fields the way you want and then place separate text items next to them If you have to move a field later you ll have to move its text with it but you may find that the improved appearance is worth the inconvenience e Fixed text is only ever one line long if you want something larger use a merge block without any field references instead 200 Insert gt Fixed Text Ctrl T Inserting fixed text The mouse cursor turns into a hollow square Move the mouse to where you want the fixed text to start and click once Cardbox will take you straight to the Item Properties command so that you can type the text You can also edit fixed text directly on the screen see page 195 Setting fixed text properties If
196. g It will work you will be able to search for words and you will be able to print mailing labels and standard letters So when should you split a big field into two There are three main reasons Presentation Suppose that you want to print a summary that just lists people s names With your big name and address field you can t it s all or nothing But if you split the big field into two one field for the name and one for the address you can easily include the name in the report and leave out the address Searching If you search for Kent are you looking for Clark Kent or for the county of Kent If they re all in the same field there s no way for Cardbox to know which is which and it ll have to deliver you all the Kents and let you sort them out So there s another reason for separating name and address Sorting If you want to sort the records into alphabetical order the first question is alphabetical order of what If the name and address are in the same field then Cardbox will always see the name first and will sort on that Splitting them means that you can sort on the address if you want This is tied up with indexing policy we assume that you ll be indexing the surname of the person and the name of the town Moving to an international context you might need to sort by country first and then location within the country and then by name In that case you d better have a separate field for the cou
197. g to the first field that you told it to sort on if they are identical as far as that field is concerned remember that only indexed terms count in the comparison it looks at the next field in your list if they are identical there as well it looks at the next field and the next until it runs out of fields If any records that are identical according to every field that you specified for the custom sequence Cardbox leaves them in their original database order Within each field Cardbox looks at both its indexes p 35 First of all it looks at the word index going in alphabetical order from A to Z words such as 3COM come before A in the alphabet and then at the number date index going in ascending 104 order numerically or chronologically One big difference from the simple sort any records that don t contain any indexed terms at all come at the beginning of the list instead of the end Single field simple sorting or custom sequence It is actually quite meaningful to have just one field specified for a custom sequence This is because a simple sort will only look at the first word of a field while a custom sequence will look at every word thus a custom sequence on a single field will be more accurate than a simple sort on the same field contacis PITE A West Midlands looks at the first indexed word of the field est Glamorgan a West Yorkshire West Glamorgan West Yorkshire West Glamorgan Wes
198. ge Warning Declared record width exceeds available space This is the commonest warning message On modern computers the screen viewed at its most natural resolution is wider than the paper A screen 1024 pixels wide represents about 10 6 inches and a sheet of A4 paper is about 8 2 inches wide so if you design a nice wide format on the screen it ll be too wide to print Cardbox lets you print despite the warning because it s sometimes easiest to have a piece of paper in front of you to help you see what s going on but of course the bits of the format that stick out beyond the edge of the paper won t be visible Ctrl P gt Printing images 113 Here are some things you can do about this e Switch to a format that is narrower and better suited for printing e Edit the current format to make it fit Cardbox can show you the width of the printable area while you re editing the format e Switch to a smaller font which will make the format narrower e Press Settings to tell Cardbox to print in landscape format A sheet of A4 is 11 inches long so landscape format should deal with any format that fits on your screen without scrolling unless your screen is an extra large one e If you can t understand why there isn t enough width press Settings and then open the Page Width tab You ll see a report that takes you step by step through the logic that Cardbox used when it was working out how well the format
199. ge is anything visual a photograph drawing scanned document or fax Images are stored in a special field the image field which you design as part of your format You can have only one image field but that field can contain as many images as you like Viewing images When you look at a record that has an image field in it that field will show you the image that you ve stored in the record If you have stored several images in a record Cardbox starts by showing you the first one If the image field on the screen is smaller than the image Cardbox shrinks the image to fit inside the field With photographs you can often design the format so that the field is big enough for the photograph to be decently visible Scanned documents on the other hand are better viewed on their own in the image window rather than as part of a record because a miniaturised document is too small to read Multiple images and the image browse bar Towards the middle of the status bar at the bottom of the Cardbox window you ll see what looks like an ordinary Cardbox browse bar except that it s shorter and the corrugations are a different shape This is the image browse bar It tells you which image you re looking at and how many images there are in the current record You can drag the slider or click on the arrows to move forward and back through the images Using the keyboard to browse through images Alt Right arrow a Next image Alt
200. ge you want Copying an image to the Clipboard While viewing a record you can copy an image to the Clipboard by right clicking on the image field and selecting Copy from the pop up menu While you are in the image window you can copy an image to the Clipboard by clicking on the toolbar button or pressing Ctrl C or right clicking anywhere in the image window and selecting Copy from the pop up menu Writing an image to a file You can write an image to a file and then open it using an image editing program such as Microsoft Paint or Adobe Photoshop Cardbox writes images in the standard Windows BMP format which all programs can read While viewing a record you can write an image to a file by right clicking on the image field and selecting Save As from the pop up menu While you are in the image window you can write an image to a file by clicking on the toolbar button or pressing Ctrl W or right clicking anywhere in the image window and selecting Save As from the pop up menu Exporting multiple images There is no simple way of exporting several images at a time but it is possible to write a macro to do it giving each image its own filename This can be useful if you need to transfer a large number of images to another program Totalling 23362 380 66 50 If your records contain numerical information you may find yourself wanting to 23363 80 1 4 calculate totals To get the total of all numbers in a g
201. give you an idea of the final layout and it ll all come out right when it s printed File gt Printer Settings c Characters i Inches Inches 1 Lines m Millimetres The Printer Settings command 115 The Printer Settings command The Printer Settings command controls the settings that Cardbox will use when printing It is accessible directly as a menu command or you can call it up from within the File gt Print command by pressing the Settings button Cardbox remembers your printer settings until you change to a different format To make printer settings permanent use File gt Printer Settings while you are editing a format the settings will then be stored as part of the format The Printer Settings command has five tabs 1 Printer and Paper selects the printer the size of paper or labels and the paper source if your printer has specific settings of its own that you want to adjust you can do this here 9 Text Margins says how much space to leave between your records and the edge of the paper 3 Records deals with the way records are laid out on the paper how many records per page the space to leave between records etc 4 Appearance overrides the appearance you have given to your format on the screen 5 Page Width tells you exactly how Cardbox has calculated the width of your records relative to the width of your paper Units of measurement Throughout Print
202. gns and in any case they ll give you some solid practice and make it easier for you to make a good design first time Strategy Finally we give you some hints on strategy These will be especially useful if you ve used other databases before because you may need to unlearn some bad habits Growing a database It s often best to start with a really simple database design and have another look at it when you have been using it for a while perhaps after you ve added 100 records perhaps after you ve been using the database for a few months When you do that sort of audit you ll find new uses for your data and you ll probably find that you need to add a few new fields to help with those uses Since Cardbox makes it so easy to add fields when you need to this isn t at all a difficult process and your database design will end up gradually growing and evolving to suit your needs So if an example seems too simple for you don t worry you can always create a design and grow it to fit your needs And if an example seems unnecessarily complex don t worry either in your own design you can prune away the parts you don t need 214 Personal uses of Cardbox The division between personal and business uses of Cardbox is a bit artificial but it s still useful We think of a personal use as being something that you might use for yourself while a business use is more appropriate for groups of people but since there
203. gree to treat these on the same terms that apply to the original Software under this Agreement and to destroy all such copies in the event of termination of the Agreement You may terminate this Agreement at any time by giving written notice to Cardbox Software and destroying all copies of the Software in your possession Licence Agreement 283 Limited Warranty The Software is supplied encoded on computer media CDROM Should the CDROM prove to be faulty a free replacement may be obtained provided that the defective CDROM is returned within three months of purchase Such free replacement is available only for original media bearing the original label The Software is supplied fully tested in accordance with the specifications implied in the User Manual but in the event of any reproducible errors being detected under normal operating conditions and the Software being modified to correct them registered users will be entitled to a replacement of the defective Software For users who have a current and unexpired technical support subscription this replacement will be free of charge Technical support is provided by electronic mail and through the World Wide Web For the current terms pricing and availability of technical support whether per incident or by subscription see the Cardbox web site at www cardbox com Apart from the Limited Warranty given above no warranty is given or implied as to the performance of the Softw
204. h AUSTRALIA WISE BGI a Me AUSTRIA AUSTRIA AUSTRIA items in between BAKU BAKU BAKU BARBADOS BARBADOS BARBADOS Shift click deselects anything that isn t in the range you re selecting To preserve selections outside the range use Ctrl Shift click instead 46 If you have multiple workspaces open at once each of them works like a separate copy of Cardbox with its own database windows inside it This example comes from the Galpin Society which is dedicated to the study of old musical instruments It uses Cardbox to manage its subscriptions Multiple documents in one program window When you use Windows Paint to open more than one picture you get two copies of Windows Paint each of them with one picture On the other hand if you open more than one email folder in Eudora they will all open inside a single enclosing Eudora window Microsoft Word behaves sometimes one way sometimes the other way depending on which version you ve got and how you ve set it up In Cardbox each database opens in its own window inside the enclosing Cardbox window In case you re not familiar with using windows in this way here are some examples Several database windows visible at a time All the databases within a Cardbox workspace are opened inside one Cardbox window There are two basic ways in which you can lay things out You can have several database windows visible at once wi Cardbox File Edit Search Data Keep Bro
205. have put it Before copying a format file make sure the database isn t currently open in Cardbox How to create a database 175 The files used by a Cardbox database Each Cardbox database lives in two files The format file filetype FMT contains the definitions of all the formats that you have created for this database The database file filetype FIL contains all the actual data If you need to copy a database from one location to another copy both files If you need to back it up back up both files If you need to rename it rename both files If you need to delete it delete both files Creating a database that looks like another database Sometimes you may want to create a database that has all the same formats as a database you already have either because you really want it to have an identical structure or because it s easier to modify the existing formats than to design everything from scratch To do this 1 Make a copy of the format file You probably already know how to copy files using Windows Explorer but in case it isn t something you do very often we find that the easiest way is to select the file press Ctrl C to copy it to the Clipboard then move to the destination folder and press Ctrl V to paste the file The destination folder can be the same as the original folder in that case Windows will give the copy a new name for instance MyDatabase FMT could become Copy Of MyDatabase FMT 2 Rename
206. he components varies day month year month day year and year month day are all used in different parts of the world Because Cardbox databases can be international Cardbox cannot deduce the date sequence from the location where you re using it Instead it looks at the way you typed the date specifically at the character that you used to separate the different parts of the date Here is the 19th of April 1962 Separator Format Example slash day month year 19 4 1962 hyphen month day year 4 19 1962 decimal point year month day 1962 4 19 e The day and the month can be one or two digits long 04 is the same as 4 e Cardbox identifies the date format by looking at the separator so you cannot enter something like 4 19 1962 and expect Cardbox to handle it properly When Cardbox indexes a date it reshuffles it into a number in a standard format All the date formats shown in the example above will be indexed as the same number 1962 0419 This has the advantage that when records are sorted into numerical order this will yield exactly the right date sequence as well As a result of the way that Cardbox indexes dates when you are previewing an indexed search the preview listing will show all your dates as numbers Years and centuries You will have to decide on your own convention for the year Either use 2 digit years throughout 62 or 4 digit years 1962 Now that the
207. he database is unreadable Remembering passwords and keys There is an old saying that people want security as long as they don t have to do anything about it This is as true in computing as in any other field You may feel that you want to protect your data against strangers but having to type a password every time you open your database is just too much work With Cardbox there is a way round this If you password protect your workspace the workspace will remember your passwords and keys for you so that you have only one password to remember the workspace password If you really want you can even get Windows to remember your workspace password for you though in some versions of Windows this may make things less secure against a determined hacker See Workspaces p 61 Workspaces 61 Workspaces Open Cardbox open some databases do some searches and close Cardbox When you open Cardbox again you ll find yourself back exactly where you were same window sizes same databases same selections same everything This is because Cardbox has created a workspace file and used it to store everything about the state of your session If your use of Cardbox is fairly simple you can feel mildly pleased about this feature and never think about workspaces again but if you find yourself using Cardbox for many different things then segregating your activities into different workspaces makes a lot of sense Creating separate workspac
208. he numbers if you need to look up the paper original of something you ve scanned To From whether it s something you ve sent or something you ve received Name this can be the name of the person or the name of the organisation If you want to store both pieces of information you can create an extra field Category this is a drop down list of possible classifications Making it a drop down list saves you having to type the name and also makes certain that you only ever use one of the pre defined classifications If you decide you want an extra one you can easily edit the native format to add it to the list Description we ve made this very brief because its only job is to tell you whether it s worthwhile pressing F12 to look at the document There is nothing to stop you making the field longer and even indexing to make it quickly searchable If you work from multiple locations then you can take this whole project one step further put the database on a Cardbox Server and make it accessible across the Internet and you can read all your papers wherever you happen to be If you have 238 You can find this exercise at Help Point 640 Filn frame 354 16 Sailing Barge Juno climbing the mast a personal assistant you could even get your PA to do all the scanning for you so that reading the day s letters simply means starting Cardbox and having a look at what s been added to your database Even if y
209. he reason why these two zoom modes are different is that not every image is created with the same resolution as your screen it all depends where the image has come from scanner camera fax and how it has been processed If you display a 200 dots per inch fax image at 100 in Pixel Count mode it will be twice the size of the original document and you will have to zoom out to 50 or switch to Image Size mode On the other hand the software inside some digital cameras make bizarre statements about the resolution of the photographs and if this happens then Pixel Count ends up being the most sensible choice Try playing with the various combinations and see what suits you and your images best Choosing zoom factors You can pick your zoom factor from the list that pops up in the zoom menu or you can select Custom to type your own The available zoom factors depend on the capabilities of your display drivers and the version of Windows you are using but a typical range is from 20 5 to 1200 x12 Fit Width will make the image as wide as possible while still fitting inside the width of the window the result may be an image that is too tall for the window and needs to be scrolled vertically Fit Height will make the image as tall as possible while still fitting inside the height of the window the result may be an image that is too wide for the window and needs to be scrolled sideways Fit In Window will make the image as big as poss
210. he tongue has been described This lesion is seen aj most often in the fourth to sixth decades of life and has been shown to have a strong predilection for males The etiology is unknown although trauma has been implicated by several investigators Because of the clinical x You can view the abstract together with the main record as here or in a screen on its own There is nothing to stop you building on this further for example by adding a field that gives your own opinion of the article Quite a few researchers download abstracts from online databases such as Medline because many of them allow the export of data in a form very close to Cardbox s External file transfer format Passwords People who live online rapidly realise that they are accumulating an uncontrollable number of different identities for different sites and services Unless you use the same user name and password for everything a very dangerous thing to do from the point of view of security you end up with total chaos A simple Cardbox database with just a handful of fields will solve the problem 220 You ll have to protect your password database of course In some cases you may be able to rely on physical security by controlling access to your computer and taking great care of any backups you make Otherwise you can encrypt your database if you have the Professional Edition of Cardbox Failing that you ll have to see what encryption and security features are
211. hem up but once they have been set up a database with validators can be used by anyone so it s important for you to know what to expect There are several different kinds of validators but they all behave in a similar way they watch as you are editing a record and as you move off each field they check that field or make changes to it Validators that check things Validators can check that an entry has been made in a particular field they can check the types of terms that have been entered word number date they can control how many of them there are and how long each of them should be they can even restrict entries to certain specific values If there is something wrong with a field a warning button flashes in the toolbar and if you try to save the record a warning message pops up and asks you to correct the problem Validators that change things Validators can automatically index or unindex words for you thus enforcing stoplists or keyword lists and they can also reformat dates so that the date format is consistent throughout the database Validators that type things Validators can automatically type text into a field for you You can use this to put codes in automatically for example the user s initials or to create datestamps to say when a record has been created or edited The concepts of Cardbox 39 Images Not everything you want to store in a database is necessarily text There are also photographs dr
212. hen the database is opened using this profile The profile also specifies whether the user is allowed to perform certain actions including adding records editing records deleting records and editing formats Help Point 516 has a full list of the actions that can be controlled by a user profile The very first profile to be created for a database is called the master profile and we sometimes call its password the master password The master profile is the only one that can be used for certain highly sensitive operations such as setting up user profiles or encrypting databases How to set up user profiles Tools gt Management gt User Profiles lets you manage user profiles If you have already set up user profiles for this database the command will ask you for the master password if you haven t it will ask for the access code for this copy of Cardbox Cardbox has to be cautious at this point to prevent an unauthorised person from preventing access to your data New Profile Xx Profile Name M aster Profile OK Password _Cancel_ Initial contents Default Gopy from curent prone If this is the first time you are setting up user profiles Cardbox will ask you for the password of the master profile The master password is important you should write down a copy of it and keep it in a secure place Passwords and user profiles 255 Cardbox asks for the password twice The first time you can see the password on the scre
213. his makes it easy to search for people by name and also makes it possible to sort the records quickly into alphabetical order If you ever need to search for a first name you can use a Data search to find it Phone numbers one field containing all the person s phone numbers There is no need to have different fields for the different numbers because you ll never want to see them separately Email address this can be cut and pasted into an email application Address this is simply written as continuous text because this database isn t designed for creating mailing labels or mail merged letters Class this can be used for classifying addresses to make selective lists easier For instance you can use Ref to designate addresses that shouldn t be printed out so that your printed address list can be concise and your computer address list can be complete this is perfect for friends you re not really interested in contacting but don t want to lose touch with altogether You can have as many codes in this field as you like for different kinds of classification As well as the native format there s an alternative format that you can use to print out pages ready for insertion into your personal organiser you can see an example on the left The print doesn t have to be this small it s something you decide when you design the format Help Point 610 takes you through every step of designing this database and d
214. host fields can be re created with little or no data loss Undoing a change To undo the last change that you made to the format design use Edit gt Undo Cardbox remembers quite a few changes so you can use this command several times in a row If find that you ve undone too much use Edit gt Redo to restore the changes you didn t mean to undo Overlapping items Format items shouldn t overlap because Cardbox won t know which of them to draw it won t be a disaster if you include them in your format but the result will look strange In the format design overlapping areas are shown by red and white diagonal stripes If you don t notice the overlap Cardbox will warn you about it when you save the format The printable area If you are designing a format to be used for printing it helps to see on the screen how much space you have available Most paper is narrower than most screens and mailing labels are of course much smaller than the screen Cardbox shows you how big the printable area is compared to your format design with a subtle orange and white dotted line This shouldn t irritate or confuse you while you re designing your format but if it does then you can use View gt Printable Area to turn it off The size of the printable area depends on the fonts you are using and also on your printer settings see Appearance p 107 and Printer Settings p 115 Sia SA el Ne The format design scree
215. ible while still fitting entirely within the window with no scrolling 72 Scrolling When you are viewing an image that is larger than the available space you ll see scroll bars next to it You can use the scroll bars to scroll a large image or you can simply place the mouse inside the image hold down the left mouse button and drag the image in the direction you want If you have a mouse with a wheel you can use the wheel to scroll vertically To scroll horizontally hold down the Shift key while you are using the wheel Thumbnail display On the left hand side the image window can display miniature thumbnail versions of your images You can use these to decide which image you want to look at if you have several images attached to a record Thumbnails are more useful for photographs than for scanned documents because at thumbnail size all documents look much the same You can turn thumbnail display on and off by clicking on the button at the a bottom of the image window or by pressing the F4 key or by right clicking anywhere in the image window and selecting Thumbnails from the pop up menu Right clicking also lets you decide the size of thumbnail you want to see small medium or large For some purposes such as printing you may want to select specific images To select or deselect an image hold down the Ctrl key and click on the thumbnail or without using Ctrl click on the top right hand corner of the
216. ic features that need setting for this printer for instance the print quality then the Properties button will take you to the printer s own Properties window where you can set these features The list of paper sizes shows all sizes of paper that Windows has reported as being available for this printer For more details of paper sizes and how to select and define label formats see Paper and Labels on page 119 This tab also lets you choose the source of the paper if your printer can feed paper from more than one tray and whether you want to print in Portrait upright or Landscape horizontal format Text Margins This tab tells Cardbox how much blank space there should be between your records and the edge of the paper Most printers can t print right up to the edge of the paper this applies to many inkjet printers and almost all laser printers If you specify a margin that s closer to the edge than your printer can print Cardbox will automatically widen that margin for you so there s no need to read your printer s manual to find out what the real margins should be Just tell Cardbox the margin you really want and it will get as close to it as your printer s limitations allow Records This tab is a mixture of settings related to the way that records are laid out on the page Variable text width the Extra Text field doesn t have a built in width of its own and you can also design merge blocks s
217. ight click on it and pick Properties from the pop up menu The filetype of the workspace file is cbw If you encrypt a database make sure you keep a separate note of the encryption key locked away somewhere in case you ever have to delete the workspace file Workspaces 63 Preset workspaces There is another way of making sure that a workspace isn t unintentionally changed Create the workspace set it up to be exactly the way you want it and close Cardbox Then use Windows Explorer to make the workspace file read only Now nothing can change its contents and the workspace will come back in the same state every time it s opened Password protection You can give your workspace a password so that it can t be opened by someone who doesn t know the password This is quite useful anyway but the best thing about it is that the workspace can then remember the passwords of password protected user profiles and the encryption keys of any encrypted databases this information is stored in the workspace file in an encrypted format that is unreadable without the workspace password So instead of having to remember and type a lot of codes you only have to remember the password for the workspace To set up or change the password use File gt Workspace Password File location Properties Password Shortcuts Existing password _ New password I Enable password protection _
218. ils Menu items There is an extra menu called Special that appears on the main Cardbox menu bar between the Tools and Window menus and you can put menu commands into this to play specific macros This is a useful place to put macros that aren t used often enough to justify having a pushbutton or a keystroke of their own The command for setting up the Special menu is Tools gt Special Menu El E Macro facilities in Cardbox 265 What happens when you play a macro The progress bar at the bottom of the screen shows that you re running the macro Running rgpro Write WINSER EXT The blue box moves steadily from left to right because Cardbox can t tell in advance how long your macro is going to take If it s appropriately programmed a macro can display a more informative status bar one that grows steadily to indicate how far the macro has got and it can also display different text in the progress bar While a macro is running you can t do anything else You can stop the macro by clicking on the red cross next to the progress bar or by pressing the Stop button in the toolbar Pausing a macro You can pause a macro by pressing the Pause button in the toolbar Once the macro is paused you can enter Cardbox commands if you want The Pause button will stay depressed and it will flash to show that the macro is paused You can continue a paused macro by pressing the Pause button again or you can stop it by pressing the Stop
219. implicity of the fields makes it much easier to enter data into them You don t have to be consistent about the way you type area codes or whether you always put the name of the town into the address On the other hand the Intelligent Address Book exercise p 235 arranges the address in lines so that it will work in a mailing label and it keeps phone numbers and fax numbers separate one field for each so that it s easy for an autodialler or a bulk fax macro to find them You can think of these fields as computer fields It s more effort filling them in because you have to be more aware of what goes where but the benefit is that many more automatic processes become possible The same sort of thing applies to dates You can write dates in many different formats and a human being can understand more of them than a computer can If a date is just for your own information you can write it as 25 March one moment then as 25 3 2004 then as 25 03 04 But if this is a field you ll want to search or sort on you should impose a discipline right from the beginning choosing a date format that the computer can understand and sticking to it The trade off is the same as before you need to put more work in at the beginning but the resulting automation saves a lot of work later on 242 When to split fields In a database of contacts there is nothing to stop you having a single name and address field several lines lon
220. ine high then you can see a lot of them on the screen at once and get a good idea of whether your search is finding the right sort of things 28 There s nothing to stop you using a summary format for data entry as well this is what we do ourselves with our accounting databases where we have an elaborate form that explains everything in detail but we use the one line version a lot because we know what we re doing and we don t need all the captions and explanations 1 Name Dr Scouler Date 1 77 2003 By SFE Ref 40 Position Partner Org sation Leggott Auction House Last contact 22 7 2003 Next contact 15 11 2007 Address 29 31 Tyssen Road Sales Rep Peter Mulliner Huddersfield Products of interest DATABASE County West Yorkshire AreaNM How heard of products Postcode HD2 SBE MailCode 1 Country Name Business Auctioneer Tel 01484 230707 Fax Contacts history This is what the big format on the previous page looks like when it has some data in it The multicoloured appearance is because we ve chosen to use bold red text to indicate the words that have been marked for indexing this is useful when you re entering data so that you know whats indexed and what isn t note that only the surnames of the contact and the sales representative are indexed but it s not compulsory and you normally wouldn t use it when designing a format that s going to be printed out Name Organisation First contact How heard
221. ings and footings p 188 Headings and footings aren t separate items as such they are simply distinct parts of the format design screen and they can contain any format element except a field You can have headings and footings for each page and you can also have continuation headings and footings that appear only if a record has to be split across pages Headings and footings normally apply to printed output only but you can set a format property to make Cardbox show the page heading at the top of your screen display Format properties p 204 There are various facts about a format that don t correspond exactly to a visual item on the format design screen Cardbox refers to these as the format properties They include The Extra Text field e The order in which fields are visited when you are editing a record and press the Tab key to move to the next field e Whether Cardbox should join consecutive records to make the whole page into a ruled form e What dictionaries to use for spelling checks and which fields to check automatically The appearance of the format see Appearance p 107 e The printer settings see Printer Settings p 115 EJE Ei E e Edit gt Format gt New Ctrl Shift N File gt Save Ctrl S Edit gt Format gt Duplicate Ctrl Shift D File gt Save Ctrl S For more about copying formats see Help Point 589 Edit gt Format gt Edit Ctrl Shift E File gt
222. ionary to use lf you want to override this choice for a particular database edit the native format and do Edit gt Format Properties Spelling Quality of dictionaries Nothing in computing is perfect and this applies particularly to spelling dictionaries If you find words are being accepted that should not be accepted in English this applies especially to words that are spelt differently on different sides of the Atlantic please let us know so that we can correct the dictionary in later releases of Cardbox 150 Help Point 558 tells you how to specify the location of the user dictionary User dictionary When the spelling checker comes across a word it doesn t recognise you may decide that this is a valid word and press Add To Dictionary to add it to your own user dictionary this will make Cardbox treat the word as being correctly spelt from now on You can control the location of the user dictionary It can be associated with a specific database or a group of databases or it can be stored on your computer and applied to every database you use Editing the user dictionary To make changes to the spelling dictionary use Tools gt Edit Spelling Dictionary Edit Spelling Dictionary x Words for which you pressed Ignore All User Dictionary Add Gtore gt gt f Sion Edit This list will be emptied _Empty this list automatically when you rae close Cardbox You ll see a list of the words that
223. is is because all the actual database access is done by the Cardbox Engine cbox3eng exe which is a separate program that runs invisibly in the background has no direct contact with you and therefore usually doesn t crash Although we cannot exclude the possibility that some bugs remain in Cardbox the biggest potential cause of database corruption is system crashes and power failures where some data don t get written safely to the hard disk If you do suffer a power failure while adding or editing records in a Cardbox database we recommend that you do Tools gt Management gt Rebuild gt Database just to be on the safe side Only the Professional Edition is able to set up user profiles but any edition of Cardbox can use them once they have been set up For a simpler subscription publishing scheme see Help Point 585 See User Profiles on page 41 for a full description of how profiles work from the user s point of view Passwords and user profiles 253 Passwords and user profiles Normally if you tell Cardbox to open a database it opens it Most of the time this is perfectly satisfactory because either you are the only one with access to your computer or you trust the other people who also have access to it But in a corporate environment and especially if databases are being shared across a network you may want to set up password protection and you may even want to give different classes of users different d
224. ist or parts of it have come from different sources This irritates the recipient you have probably been on the receiving end of this yourself and it wastes resources whenever you do a mailing Tools gt Deduplicate allows you to identify real or potential duplicates so that you can then go through those records inspect them and remove any that you do not want What the Deduplicate command does Cardbox goes through your current selection of records and tries to see if any records appear similar For each group of similar records that it finds Cardbox tags every record in the group with a red tag and it tags all records except the first with a black tag as well This gives you a choice you can use red tags to select all groups of similar records or you can use black tags to select all potential duplicates and delete them Cardbox cannot compare every record to every other because that would take too long on a 45 000 record database it would mean over a thousand million comparisons Instead it looks at records that are close to one another in the current sequence For this reason you would normally sort records into sequence before you try to deduplicate them How to deduplicate a database 1 Decide what fields you will use to define whether two records are duplicates of each other For example in a contacts database you might decide to use the person s name but not the date of last contact 2 Use View gt Sequence to sort
225. ith a symbol next to each one to tell you its status In the picture the validator for field CO has reported an error and the validator for field OS hasn t b ACO Check individual terms OS Check individual terms w This validator has no errors to report Check worde indexed Bisse This validator is reporting an error you are not allowed to override it ae Ment el noan bo This validator is reporting an error you are allowed to override it Terms must match exactly z This validator reported an error but you have overridden it Po Overid sat is This validator has not been used because you have not made any changes to Terms the field If you want to check all fields press Check All 4 bb gt To see why a validator is complaining click on its entry in the list You ll see a Index 7 Go to record y p 9 y description of what the validator is looking for and below that under Terms you will see the term the validator is complaining about The arrows on either side of Terms let you go back and forward through the field Overriding an error Some validators can be overridden A good example is a validator that has a list of valid words and checks your field against its list It may warn you that a word you have entered is not in the list but you may know that that particular word is actually correct and isn t really a misprint at all in that case just turn on the Override check box undernea
226. iven field for all records in the 23364 325 00 56 98 current selection 23365 1559 1 Move the mouse onto the field you want to total 23365 23366 1055 194 63 2 Hold down the right mouse button until a menu pops up 23367 248 75 43 53 3 From the pop up menu select Total 23368 80 14 23369 165 29 98 Cardbox will show you the total for the selected field You can copy this total to the 23370 483 75 Clipboard by pressing Copy 23371 527 50 92 31 23372 60 10 50 23373 375 65 63 23374 2970 519 75 23375 23376 15 2 63 23377 80 85 14 15 23378 462 50 23379 23380 205 35 88 23381 152 50 26 69 23382 300 52 50 23383 605 105 88 23384 60 10 50 23385 23386 530 92 75 23387 80 14 Part Four Editing How to add import edit and delete records detailed editing commands spelling checks and validation batch editing scanning and importing images deduplication EJE Edit gt New Record Ctrl N File gt Save Ctrl S Edit gt Duplicate Ctrl D File gt Save Ctrl S Adding records 133 Adding records For a database to be worth searching it has to have some records in it There are two ways of getting records into a Cardbox database you can type them in one at a time or you can import them in bulk from another file program or database Adding records by hand Adding a blank record Edit gt New Record creates a new blank record for you to type into When you have finished use File
227. k users to Cardbox 3 0 you need to convert them all An advantage of the use of the Cardbox Server is that it is no longer necessary to give shared read write access to any control files or data files which makes network management much easier Database files The database file format is essentially the same The one exception is with image and object files where you need to rebuild the database in Cardbox 3 0 using Tools gt Management gt Rebuild before you can add or make changes to the image or object content If you use Cardbox 3 0 to perform ordinary database operations on a Cardbox 2 0 database adding editing and deleting records the database will remain compatible with Cardbox 2 0 however if you rebuild the database using Cardbox 3 0 Cardbox 2 0 will no longer be able to use it Appendix 271 New features in Cardbox 3 0 Searching You can enter a complete Boolean search with And Or and Not functions in a single command You can search for whole phrases at once or for words in a given sequence or for two words within a certain distance of each other Sorting The custom sequence feature for multi field sorting has been expanded Instead of just one custom sequence you can have as many as you like Document and image processing Cardbox s image handling has been completely revised to keep track of advances in scanner and display technology and a new Image window replaces the old full
228. kind of Cardbox licence you have but whatever the licence you may find yourself using a database that has been given this kind of protection especially if the database is a shared one Profile and password User profiles give different users different levels of access to the same database When you try to open a database that has user profiles you ll see a message asking you for a password Profile Name Master Profile Password a a Cancel Other profiles The exact message will vary depending on how the owner of the database has set things up You may be asked to choose from a list of profiles on the other hand you may find yourself not being asked for a password at all because a default profile has been set up that doesn t require one This is common with databases intended for public access there s a default profile with no password that lets people view the public data but not alter anything and there are other password protected profiles that let the administrators do their work For more information see User Profiles p 41 Encryption Encrypted databases are much less common than password protected ones and you may never come across one Encrypted File 21x Please enter the current encryption key for C My Documents passwords Lok Cancel 60 When you try to open an encrypted database you ll see a message asking you to enter the encryption key Without the encryption key t
229. l images 72 TIFF file format 39 Time indexing 37 Timestamping See Default Entry validator Toolbar 48 Totalling contents of a field 130 U Underlined characters See Appearance Undo one search level 74 Undoing changes in format design 186 in records 143 record deletion 138 Unicode 43 Unindexed data searches 90 Unique terms 88 Units of measurement in printing 115 User dictionaries spelling 149 User profiles 41 59 253 Vv Validators 38 152 191 206 VBScript 263 Viewing extra text 67 images 69 records 65 Index 281 Ww Warning displays 49 Web pages 128 Wildcards 82 91 Workspaces 61 passwords 63 49 49 49 XML output 125 128 196 Zooming format design 184 images 70 X Z 282 Licence agreement If your copy of this book contains a CDROM with Cardbox on it this is the licence agreement that applies Limited Use Software Licence Agreement This is Cardbox Software Limited s Cardbox Software Limited Use Software Licence Agreement the Agreement which will govern your use of the software product the Software contained in the attached CDROM You confirm your acceptance of the Agreement by breaking the seal of the CDROM envelope The copyright and all rights to the Software and its documentation including this book and other related materials are the sole and exclusive property of Cardbox Software By
230. l the records that follow it in the current selection If one of those records is already tagged it stays tagged If you ve just entered a search command you ll be at the beginning of the current selection anyway which means that this command will tag the whole selection Untagging records Tag gt Tag Untag Record untags the current record if it s already tagged All the same toolbar buttons and shortcuts apply Tag gt Untag Rest of Selection untags the current record and all the records that follow it in the current selection Tag gt Clear untags all records in the entire database whether they re part of the current selection or not Searching on tags Tag gt Select Tag gt Select Also Tag gt Exclude Tag gt Exclude Also and Tag gt Include all behave exactly like the indexed search commands of the same name using the taggedness of records as the test of whether a record matches the search command Since there is nothing further for Cardbox to ask you a Search window doesn t pop up Cardbox just performs the command at once 96 Red tags don t interfere with black tags soa record can have tags of both colours attached to it Red tags You ll have noticed that the tags that you normally use look black on the screen Red tags are a new feature in Cardbox 3 0 They ve appeared because some of our users have asked for them but they are likely to be quite a specialised feature so if you can t thi
231. le You can create a database on your own computer or in a shared location on your LAN or on the Internet by using a Cardbox server To create a database on your own computer you need the Home or Professional Edition of Cardbox the Client Edition can t create databases on your computer To create a database on a Cardbox server any edition of Cardbox will work but you need the permission of the server s administrator who may also assign the name of the database for you Creating a database on your own computer Use File gt New Database and select the My Computer tab This looks just like any other Save File box in Windows Create New Database Acrobat Be ABSTRACT FMT Demonstration WA APPLICS FMT EPV Be CONTACTS FMT 22 IMAGES FMT BB TUTORIAL FMT Be VACANCY FMT save cance He e You start by seeing the folder you used last time you opened a database e At the top right hand corner you ll see a Recent Folders button This lets you jump directly to folders you have opened databases in recently e The list of files that you see is a list of files that already exist so you should choose a filename that does not already appear on the list Choose a filename that will remind you what the database is and take care to choose an appropriate folder to put it in How you organize your folders is up to you but there is nothing more irritating than creating a file and then forgetting where you
232. le to set up object fields OLE is a Microsoft term It stands for Object Linking and Embedding Objects Not everything you want to store in a database is necessarily text We ve covered images already Images are just a set of passive pixels but objects are altogether more dynamic Here are some examples of objects e Microsoft Word documents Microsoft Excel spreadsheets e MP3 sound recordings Video clips e Adobe Photoshop images These things all have one thing in common they belong to other programs Cardbox doesn t know what to do with Word documents Excel spreadsheets or Photoshop images Word Excel and Photoshop do The core of OLE is that these objects can live inside Cardbox but work where they are understood An embedded object doesn t need to exist in an ordinary file it lives entirely inside the Cardbox database Here are a couple of examples e A firm of investment analysts indexes company accounting information Cardbox gives the main information about the company but the accounts themselves are stored in Excel spreadsheets that are embedded in each company s Cardbox record e We maintain a daybook database that contains all our incoming and outgoing correspondence Incoming letters are scanned into an image field but we can store outgoing letters as Word documents in an object field this means we can not only read the letters we write but reuse them in other circumstances We could even pu
233. le and Cardbox simply does all the indexing and summarising Here are some of the questions that can be answered by a Cardbox database of this kind e Have we dealt with these people before What is their payment history e When was invoice 99999 issued What was it for Has it been paid e Which invoices were issued last February e Which invoices have not been paid for over 30 days e What is our total turnover in the last VAT quarter How much of our revenue has been paid by cheque and how much by credit card Of the credit card revenue how much was paid directly and how much through our web site You can set up macros that will open the text of an invoice by clicking on a button next to the record and you can perform processes including the checking of bank statements either manually or by running a suitable macro Finally you can export the data from Cardbox and produce a report suitable for passing to your accountants 224 Girls morning glory seeds Boys magic mushrooms Time critical situations Because its search engine is so fast Cardbox is used for telephone help lines and support centres 12 12 2004 Christopher Dawes CRD Business Publishing Unit 5 01273 611182 Ridgeway Business Park 01273 611185 pe nailto c dawes crd bp com O New O Renewal Claim Needs a claim form following a small fire at premises Claim form sent 24 4 2004 For example Cardbox is used at a chemical plant when an
234. lection plus all the records that are in the current selection in the window you picked from the menu If you have just one other window on the database then the menu will only have one item if you haven t got any other windows open on this database Window gt Merge will be disabled Select Exclude Step Browse Data Sequence Sorting 101 Sorting Records in a Cardbox database naturally come in the order in which they were added so that the first record that was put into the database comes first and the one that was added most recently comes last but you can sort the records into any sequence you like view them in their sorted sequence print them or write them to a file When it is sorting Cardbox only pays attention to indexed terms it sorts words in alphabetical order numbers in numerical order and dates in chronological order Special rules apply to hyphenated words the rules make Cardbox sort records into the sequence you d naturally expect but you can see the details at Help Point 517 Simple sorting Simple sorting is easy to specify and it is quite fast It is restricted to just one field and Cardbox only looks at the first indexed term of that field This means that if you have a field that contains several indexed words and you do a simple sort on that field the records will be in alphabetical order as far as the first word is concerned but the second and later words will be ignored Usi
235. letion at once and the record will come back Cardbox only remembers the most recent deletion so if you delete two records by mistake you ll only be able to recover the most recently deleted one For a detailed example see Help Point 508 Deleting records 139 e Edit gt Undo Deletion doesn t work at all if you have deleted a batch of records with Edit gt Batch gt Delete e Ifyou mistakenly delete more than one record or if you only notice the deletion some time later then all you can do is enter the record data all over again Disaster recovery If you have made a lot of mistaken deletions then you can still rescue yourself if you ve been good at keeping regular backups and you have a backup copy of your database that contains the missing records In that case you open the backup and the current database simultaneously find those records in the backup and copy them from there 140 A huge and tremendous A REBT tremendous histc Edit gt Index On Off Ctrl or Ctrl See Appearance p 33 All about editing When you re entering and editing text Cardbox behaves just like any other Windows program you see a flashing cursor a vertical line and anything you type goes where the cursor is You can also select a block of text Selected text appears highlighted and if you type something it will replace the selected text Indexing One thing that makes Cardbox different from other Windows program
236. lse should be able to do the same Moreover you may have confidential information that you only want some people to be able to see while less privileged users only see selected portions of your data The setting up of profiles is an advanced feature of the Professional Edition but you may very well find yourself on the receiving end of a user profile system when you open a database that someone else has created on a network or on the Internet so here is what to expect e A user profile has a name and optionally a password e For each field the profile defines whether you are allowed to edit its contents or indeed whether you re allowed to see it at all e The profile does the same thing for formats so you may only be allowed to see and use a small number of formats Even the native format may be invisible to you e The profile can control the commands you are allowed to use In a public database it ll probably stop you from making any changes at all and it may even stop you from printing anything out In a corporate database it may let you add records but not edit or delete them or add and edit records but not edit formats There are a wide range of possibilities but it is always easy to tell what is happening because any commands that you are not allowed to use will be disabled in your menus and on your toolbar How all this affects you depends very much on how the database owner has set things up It is possible to create profiles
237. lternate field views As well as displaying fields on the screen as text you can display them as radio buttons check boxes and drop down lists These views are appropriate if there are relatively few possible values for a field and they can save space and help with data validation by restricting what a user can enter into the field Underneath the alternate view the field is still a perfectly ordinary Cardbox text field The view reflects the contents of the field and when you select an option using the view Cardbox changes the field text to correspond with your change The advantage of doing things in this way is that you can use different views in different formats You might find for instance that radio buttons are best for data entry but would waste a lot of space in a printed report Radio buttons Radio buttons are used when there are relatively few options and only one of them should be chosen When you click on a radio button Cardbox erases the text of the underlying field completely and replaces it with the text that belongs to the radio button Check boxes O31 095 93 Ome ONT 2000 xp Check boxes let you choose one option or more than one or none at all For example a recruitment database could use check boxes for applicants principal language skills Cardbox s behaviour with check boxes is more sophisticated than with radio buttons When you turn a check box on its corresponding text is added to the field when you
238. m all be the same when printing for instance But on the screen it s quite useful to have indexed text looking different because it helps to know what s indexed and what isn t and if you re creating a summary report with all the captions at the top of their respective columns making the captions bold can help to separate them visually from the actual record data 108 For more technical information see Help Point 572 You can set up different background colours for the different kinds of text These are interpreted as follows Normal the background colour of each field Indexed not used Extra Text the background colour of the Extra Text field Captions the background colour of the format as a whole Lines and boxes You can control the thickness of the lines used to draw lines and boxes in the format Lines and boxes are drawn in the Captions text colour Grid spacing This setting applies to the format as a whole it is quite specialised and you can usually ignore it When you design a format in Cardbox you draw it on a grid of rows and columns and Cardbox takes the size of each row and column from the sizes of the fonts you are using in the format This makes it easy for you to change font sizes because the whole format automatically re sizes itself to match the new font The Grid Spacing slider lets you influence how wide the columns should be The Appearance window Appearance fo
239. m the only person who uses Cardbox so don t see why should get two licences We agree If this is really the situation we don t demand that you buy two copies of Cardbox because it wouldn t be reasonable The key question is this when you re using one computer could someone else be using Cardbox on the other one Can a colleague use your Cardbox at work while you re using Cardbox at home Can your family use your Cardbox at home while you re using Cardbox at work If the answer is Yes or Perhaps then we re talking about two separate Cardbox installations and you need to buy two separate copies of Cardbox one for each place If the answer is No Cardbox will only ever be used in one place at a time then we re effectively talking about a single Cardbox installation that follows you around and the fact that the software is physically stored on two different computers is just a convenience to save you repeatedly installing and uninstalling the program In this case we re happy for you to install Cardbox on both computers Dialling in to the office Suppose you have a computer at work not connected to a network and a computer at home and you ve got the Professional Edition of Cardbox installed on both obeying the licence restrictions we ve just described You re one of those people who dial in to your work computer when you re at home How do you use Cardbox Home computer as a dumb ter
240. mat so that you don t have to write the addresses by hand If you use a Palm you can use Cardbox to store your address list but then export it to the Palm Desktop application from where it gets synchronized to your Palm This can work with other palmtops of course whether they re PalmOS based or PocketPC based and it can also work very well if you have a company wide database since the address list only has to be maintained once You can divide your contacts into printable ones who get printed in your address lists and reference ones who have to be looked up on the computer That way you save paper but don t lose anyone If you have a field for email addresses you can set it up so that a single click on your friend s address will open a blank email ready to be sent in your email program Personal uses of Cardbox 215 Collections and inventories CD collections You can keep a straightforward record of each CD you have in your collection classifying information according to title composer studio etc You can build on this by having a bigger field that holds the track listing for each CD If you index this then you will be able to search easily on tracks as well as whole CDs One Cardbox user has a large database of tracks that he uses to create playlists for a radio programme He then archives the playlists so that it s easy to look up what was played in the past and he also uses Cardbox to create a
241. minal Remote access software such as PCAnywhere Citrix Metaframe or Windows Terminal Services lets you turn your home computer into a keyboard and screen for your office computer everything you type on your keyboard gets typed into the office computer s keyboard and everything the office computer displays on its screen gets displayed on your screen e This is extremely simple to set up e You are using Cardbox on your office computer so everything is familiar It can be irritating over long periods Unless you have a very fast link to the office the screen will behave sluggishly and there can be a noticeable time lag between doing something especially with the mouse and seeing the result Installing and managing Cardbox 19 Office computer as a network disk Some networking WAN software gives you an option to view your entire office computer as if it were just an extra hard disk drive on your home computer to save explanations let s call it drive O e This is simple to set up e When you want to open a database on your office computer use File gt Open My Computer to open the database file in drive O e The screen response will be very fast because Cardbox is running on your home computer e Searches may be slow because all the disk access has to take place over a telephone line to the office e You can t share databases opened in this way as long as you have the database open no one else can open it A
242. n 187 Format width On the horizontal ruler the red markers show the width of your format design and in the design screen the area between those markers is shown in a darker blue If you put format items outside the current width Cardbox will automatically increase the width when you save the format but it won t automatically reduce the width if you delete format items You can widen or narrow a format by dragging the right hand red marker across move the mouse onto the marker let the cursor change shape then drag If you re only planning to use a format on the screen then its width isn t very important but if you re printing Cardbox will check that the format fits inside the area that s available on the paper If you re faced with a format that s too wide and you don t want to do something drastic about it like reducing the font size or printing in landscape format then you can use the red marker to make it narrower of course you ll have to move any format items that stick out beyond the new position of the marker as well or Cardbox will just widen the format for you all over again when you save it You can also make the format wider by dragging the left hand red marker instead of the right hand one This is sometimes useful because it moves the edge of the format without moving any format items and therefore has the effect of giving you some blank columns on the left of the format which can be less work than
243. n access the more exotic Windows characters by typing numeric codes for instance Alt 0 2 4 1 for This isn t something you d want to spend a long time doing but it works well for occasional use Cardbox lets you do the same for Unicode for instance Alt 0 9 6 9 for a lower case Greek omega The Unicode Standard lists codes for all defined Unicode characters Most Unicode character tables use hexadecimal notation for the code values To save you having to do arithmetic Cardbox lets you use these numbers directly If you see a character referred to as U 03C9Q you can type it into Cardbox by holding down the Alt key typing the decimal point on the numeric keypad and then typing 3C 9 before releasing the Alt key After the decimal point and before releasing Alt you can type all the hexadecimal digits without moving your hand from the numeric keypad using the special layout shown on the left Windows 95 98 and Me These versions of Windows have limited Unicode support and this affects what Cardbox can do You can use Unicode databases but Windows can t display or input Unicode in menus and dialog boxes so for instance you can t enter Unicode characters into a search command or have them in validators You can however have Unicode in your database records and if someone else has designed a format that includes Unicode in its text and captions you ll be able to use that too Things you already know about Windows 45
244. n also look on the Cardbox web site for more information Distribution via the Web You can design formats that let Cardbox output your data as web pages in HTML a page can contain a single record or a whole selection of records Using macros you can automate the process of creating these pages so that you can maintain your data in Cardbox and make them available to the outside world as a standard Web site If you want your site to have a search form that responds to live queries a number of vendors offer middleware programs that run on your web server and provide an interface between Web browsers and the Cardbox Server Our Web site will have the latest details Part Two Concepts The basic concepts of Cardbox The concepts of Cardbox 23 The concepts of Cardbox In terms of usability and ease of explanation the best product we ve ever seen is the screwdriver When you use a screwdriver you don t need an instruction manual You know you can use it to open tins of paint stir the paint and also drive in screws or take them out again you also know that you are unlikely to be able to bang in nails with it You know all this without thinking because you have an instinctive feeling for the way the physical world works and what a slender piece of metal is capable of The aim of the Concepts section is to give you the same sort of instinctive feeling about what Cardbox can do Once you ve read it you should have
245. n is because encryption is a potentially destructive operation if an enemy opened your database encrypted it and then threw away the key your data would be lost forever The Encryption command asks you twice for the encryption key you want to use The first time the key will appear on the screen as you type it so that you can see that you ve typed it right The second time the key will appear as a row of asterisks You have to type the key identically both times or Cardbox will reject it Once you ve entered the key twice Cardbox will encrypt the database The encryption process is designed to keep your data safe so if your computer crashes half way through the encryption you will either have a fully encrypted database or one that isn t encrypted at all either way you will still be able to read your data Changing encryption keys Some security experts recommend that you change your encryption keys often others prefer hard to guess keys that are kept unchanged for a long time To re encrypt your database using a different key use Tools gt Management gt Encryption Change Cardbox will ask you for the master password or the access code and it will also ask you for the encryption key that is currently in use this is to prevent a malicious person from changing the key when you are away from your computer Decrypting a database If you decide that you no longer want to keep your data encrypted use Tools gt Management gt
246. n the current appearance Red is often used to indicate indexing but you can use any other colour the example above uses blue When you design a format for use in printing you ll probably choose to make indexed words look identical to unindexed ones All about editing 141 Moving the cursor between fields The easiest way to move onto a field is to click on it with the mouse Since you are mostly using the keyboard when you edit text it may be more convenient to keep your fingers on the keys so there are several keyboard commands you can use Tab Move to the next field Shift Tab Move to the previous field Ctrl G To a specific field a list of fields will pop up F6 To and from the Extra Text field Next field and previous field don t refer to the physical screen layout but to the sequence of fields that you defined when you designed the format of the database see Sequence of fields p 205 Moving the cursor within a field Again clicking with the mouse will always get you where you want to go but there are many keyboard commands that you can use instead They are useful for precise positioning and essential when you are setting up a batch edit Left or right arrow One character to the left or right Ctrl Left Ctrl Right One word to the left or right Up or down arrow Up or down one line Ctrl Up Ctrl Down Back or forward one paragraph
247. nce they need separate individual licences of their own 16 Changing licence details Occasionally you may want to change the Cardbox licence that is stored on your computer This may happen because you decide to upgrade to a higher edition or because you want to install a time limited evaluation licence on top of your existing Cardbox licence To manage your Cardbox licences 1 Open the Add Remove Programs control in the Control Panel Depending on the version of Windows you are using you open the control panel using Start gt Settings gt Control Panel or Start gt Control Panel 2 In Windows XP select Cardbox 3 0 from the list and press the Change button in other versions of Windows double click on Cardbox 3 0 in the list and then press the button marked Manage Licences 3 To adda licence press Add to change or delete a licence click on it and press Change or Delete Removing Cardbox from your computer 1 Open the Add Remove Programs control in the Control Panel Depending on the version of Windows you are using you open the control panel using Start gt Settings gt Control Panel or Start gt Control Panel 2 In Windows XP select Cardbox 3 0 from the list and press the Remove button in other versions of Windows double click on Cardbox 3 0 in the list and then press the button marked Remove Cardbox Removing Cardbox will never delete any of your database files If you want to delete th
248. nd choose Cut from the pop up menu Now move to where you want the copied text to go and use Edit gt Paste See Pasting and Importing Text p 144 Edit gt Find Ctrl F This command has many options and features For full details of what they all do press F1 when the command is open Edit gt Find Next F3 All about editing 145 Using drag and drop Dragging and dropping is a more direct way of moving or copying text but it demands precision with the mouse and if you are trying to move text from one program to another you may find that not all programs support drag and drop properly To move a block of text from one place to another 1 Move the mouse into the selected block of text 2 Depress the left mouse button and hold it down 3 Move drag the mouse to where you want the text to go 4 Release the left mouse button If the mouse pointer appears as a circle with a bar through it the mouse is on something that won t accept dragged and dropped text To copy a block of text from one place to another that is to put text in the new position but leave the original text intact do exactly what you would do when moving it but hold down the Ctrl key throughout Finding text To search for a piece of text use the command Edit gt Find Look at everthing 7 in this field 7 Find what fo Cancel Match Case Accents I Whole words only The Find command finds the text that you specif
249. nd for this is File gt Printer Settings Appearance In addition to all this you can give specific appearances to individual items within a format perhaps a heading in large letters or a field with a bright red background You do this while editing the format with the command Edit gt Item Properties Appearance The View gt Appearance command changes the appearance If you enter it while editing a format the new appearance will become part of the format if you enter it while viewing or editing records it ll apply until the next time you change formats e If you change the appearance while viewing or editing records and then want to get back to the appearance defined in the format use View gt Change Format to reload the format e If you change the appearance while viewing or editing records and then want to store it as part of the current format just edit the format with Edit gt Format gt Edit and then save it Kinds of text A record can contain the following kinds of text Normal unindexed data Indexed indexed data Extra Text data in the Extra Text field which is never indexed Captions anything else including field captions static text items and the parts of a merge block that aren t derived from a field Each of these kinds of text can have its own font size colour and settings for Bold Underline and Italic They don t all have to be different and it s often best to make the
250. nd when you plug the memory card or stick into your computer it appears to Windows as a folder with each photograph being a separate file While editing a record you can read an image from a file by selecting the image field and using Edit gt Insert Object or by right clicking on it and selecting Load From File from the pop up menu While you are in the image window you can read an image from a file by clicking on the toolbar button or pressing Ctrl R or right clicking anywhere in the image window and selecting Load From File from the pop up menu You ll see a conventional Windows Open File box Navigate to the file you want and either double click on it or select it and then press the Open button Cardbox can read files in JPEG GIF TIFF BMP and Kodak PhotoCD formats Scan Image x Source Scan as HP PictureScan 3 0 7 Picture Document C Compressed Document M Monochrome Scan __Cancel_ Adding images 161 Pasting an image from the Clipboard While editing a record you can paste an image from the Clipboard by selecting the image field and using Edit gt Paste or by right clicking on it and selecting Paste from the pop up menu While you are in the image window you can paste an image from the Clipboard by clicking on the toolbar button or pressing Ctrl V or right clicking anywhere in the image window and selecting Paste from the pop up menu The Pa
251. ndow will appear so that you can specify the list of fields to be used for the custom sequence Press F1 if you need help with this window or see Help Point 587 Recalculation Looking through the index in order to build up a custom sequence may take a little time and so to speed things up Cardbox remembers the result of each custom sequence command The idea is that the next time you do a custom sequence on the same fields Cardbox can use the remembered result instead of having to scan the index again This makes things faster But if you ve added or edited some records recently then there s a chance that those changes have affected the order in which some of your records should be sorted so Cardbox displays a warning Because records have been added or edited recently this sequence may not be completely accurate T Recalculate this sequence To make absolutely certain that your sequence is perfectly correct tell Cardbox to recalculate the sequence If you know that the changes you made won t have affected the order that the records come in or if you don t mind a slightly inaccurate sequence tell Cardbox to go ahead without recalculating This will save a little time though it must be said that with smallish databases up to about 10 000 records the difference in speed won t be very noticeable Sorting on a custom sequence the detailed rules When it is sorting records on a custom sequence Cardbox compares records accordin
252. ndows Explorer may report this program name as simply SETUP 3 Follow the on screen instructions Installing from the Internet The same page that lets you download the Cardbox program files will also give you instructions for installing Cardbox after you ve downloaded it Installing and managing Cardbox 15 Inserting licence details During the installation process the setup program will show a Licence Management page that tells you what licence is installed in your copy of Cardbox If you are installing the Client Edition you ll see that Setup already has a Client Serial number 12345678 OK licence built in and you won t have to do anything more Number of users fi Cancel If you are installing the Home or Professional Edition you ll have to enter its licence details into Setup at this stage If you got the software on CDROM the details will Version Fullversion z be on a label stuck to the CD envelope or on a separate piece of paper If you got Signature 12XV 7753 1X08 EX the software by download you will have received the licence details by email Always make sure that you keep a note of your licence details because you will need them if you ever want to re install Cardbox J Time limited licence f To enter the licence press the Add button in the Licence Management page and Expiy dete Ee then enter all the details exactly in the way you were given them Multi user licences A multi user lic
253. ndows as a folder containing files and you can import images from those files just as if they were on your hard disk The commonest alternative is that you can connect your camera to your computer through a USB or FireWire connection and that you ll have a TWAIN interface for the camera In that case follow the instructions for using a scanner Quick Scan Two of the menu options Override Resolution and Override Size are very specialised see Help Point 554 Adding images 163 will often take a photograph there and then while Scan is likelier to allow the importing of photographs that the camera has already taken There are some exceptions though One very early Kodak camera responds to TWAIN and shows you the pictures the camera has taken but it doesn t allow you to send them to your program through TWAIN instead you have to save them to your computer s hard disk and then import them from there We suspect that Kodak and camera manufacturers generally have learnt more about user interfaces since then Preprocessing the image Preprocessing is entirely optional and most of the time you won t need it To preprocess an image first get it into Cardbox then right click on it in the image window and select Preprocess from the pop up menu Rotate Most scanners assume that everything they scan is in portrait format that is taller than it is wide so that if you scan a document that s in landscape format it ll
254. nds on what options you used when you installed it You may have an icon on your desktop or an entry in the Start menu or both If you re a sophisticated user you may even have set up different Cardbox workspaces again either with their own icon or their own Start menu entry You can also open Cardbox just by double clicking on a Cardbox database file when you see it in Windows Explorer If you really can t see what else to do ask Windows to find the file CARDBOX3 EXE and then double click on it If this is the first time that you ve run Cardbox on your computer it will offer to create a desktop icon and a Start menu entry for you Closing Cardbox To close Cardbox use the command File gt Exit or press Alt F4 Shutting down Windows You don t need to close Cardbox before you shut down Windows it will close itself automatically when Windows shuts down 54 File gt Open Ctrl O Opening databases Before you can do anything with a database it has to be open in Cardbox Exactly how you open a database depends on where it is whether its in a file on your computer or whether it s in a shared location on your LAN or on the Internet and accessible through a Cardbox server Although opening a database is logically the first step you ll find yourself doing it remarkably rarely This is because whenever you close Cardbox and then open it again it remembers exactly what you were doing last time and re
255. ne record F The page footing appears at the bottom of each printed page If a record is split between two pages the continuation footing appears at the bottom of the first page just above the page footing if any h and the continuation heading appears at the top of the second page just below the page heading if any To insert a heading or footing Use the command Insert gt Headings Footings and pick the kind of heading or footing you want to create You ll see that the vertical ruler now contains a new row numbered with a prefix letter for instance H1 for the page heading You can now put format items into the new area You can use any format item except a field this is because the headings and footings aren t usually displayed as part of the record and it would be rather difficult for Cardbox to let you type into something that doesn t exist on the screen If you really want to include field data in a heading or footing use a merge block Merge blocks are also the way that you insert special data such as page numbers To resize a heading or footing Click on the relevant area in the vertical ruler H for a page heading F for a page footing etc and it will turn white The thick border at the top or bottom of the white area now works as a resizing border Move the mouse onto the border and the mouse pointer will change to a double headed arrow Press the mouse button and drag the border up or down and the size of
256. ng a database 54 Opening Cardbox 53 Option buttons See Radio buttons Overlapping boxes 205 Index 279 Palm 214 244 Paper sizes 119 Passwords See User profiles workspaces 63 Pauses in macros 265 PDAs 214 244 Phone dialling 127 Photographs See Images Phrase search 83 Pick lists 144 209 Previewing printed output 114 Previewing searches 85 Print command 111 Printable area 186 Printer settings 115 Printing 110 appearance of records 107 118 images 113 labels 119 mailing labels 119 margins 116 121 measurement units 115 multiple columns 122 page orientation 116 page width 118 paper sizes 119 preview 114 print job ID 112 printer settings 115 record layout 116 records 110 Problem reports 11 Programming 263 267 Publishing databases 20 Purging deleted fields 186 Pushbuttons 181 203 R Radio buttons 32 192 searching on 89 Range searches 82 Rebuilding database 251 format file 251 Record numbers searching on 99 Records appearance 107 automatic numbering 209 browsing 65 creating 133 deleted record markers 138 deleting 138 duplicating 133 editing 136 saving 136 sorting 101 step to specific 68 tagging 95 undoing deletion 138 Red tags 96 Registry settings backup 250 Reinstallation 16 Relational searching and linking 78 Repairing See Rebuilding Replace text See Finding and replacing text Reporting problems 11 Ruled forms 201
257. ng the mouse Move the mouse onto a field press the right hand mouse button but don t release it for a few moments A menu will pop up Choose the Sequence command and Cardbox will do a simple sort on your chosen field in ascending order If your selection is already sorted a tick will appear next to the Sequence command to remind you of this and the Sequence command will remove the sequence and leave your records in their natural order you ll have to do the Sequence command a second time on your newly chosen field to sort the selection 102 The Sequence command View gt Sequence brings up a window that gives you three options Field Custom Sequence and No Sequence For simple sorting click on the Field radio button C hlp I Reverse order You can type the name of the field you want to sort on or pick it from the list The way you choose the field is exactly the same as for the Search command p 81 When you ve chosen the field and whether you want to sort it in reverse order then press OK to sort the selection Simple sorting the detailed rules Cardbox has two indexes p 35 one for words and one for numbers and dates When it is sorting records Cardbox first looks at the word index going in alphabetical order from A to Z words such as 3COM come before A in the alphabet and then at the number date index going in ascending order numerically or chronologically Any records that don t contain a
258. ng the requirements of Microsoft Windows many Cardbox settings are stored in the Windows Registry If your backup schedule includes regular Registry backups there is no need to do anything special However many backup software packages do not contain provisions for backing up the Registry and in any case the whole Registry may be inconveniently large Tools gt Management gt Save Cardbox Registry Settings will save all the Registry settings for Cardbox to a file of your choice which you can then back up The file will have the filetype reg and you will be able to restore your settings simply by double clicking on the file in Windows Explorer Backup and disaster recovery 251 Disaster recovery zma lf a database file becomes corrupted you may find that your searches don t find the eee records you expect or that you get error messages or that some records are eee displayed as a pattern of cross hatching In this case if it is not reasonable or possible to go back to a backup copy use Tools gt Management gt Rebuild gt Database This command will scan the database identify all the recoverable records and build a new database containing just those records If a format file becomes corrupted you may find that some formats are not retrievable If you can t go back to a backup copy use Tools gt Management gt Rebuild gt Format File This will create a new format file containing just the formats that are retrievable
259. nge the sequence later on without affecting your existing data Sometimes you may want your field to contain text that isn t exactly the same as what appears on the screen For example suppose you have radio buttons defined like this C Cheque B Bank_transfer CC Credit_card S Standing_order Now if you click on the radio button marked Bank transfer the contents of the field will be replaced with the letter B This kind of approach is very useful if you want to have some formats in which the field appears as pure text summary reports for example where a code will take up much less room than a descriptive phrase e You will see that there is an underline character between Bank and transfer This is so that Cardbox knows that this is a single phrase and that transfer is not intended to be a separate item e This technique is also useful if you change your mind about the name of an option You can preserve your original data intact and just change the way the option is labelled on the screen You can use the same technique to create different formats for speakers of different languages If your list says something like Spanish espafol English ingl s French franc s then the check boxes will appear in Spanish and with the Spanish language listed first but the actual text in the fields will still be in English 194 Layout of radio buttons and check boxes When you tell Cardbox what options to use for radio buttons and
260. ning a Cardbox database us Cardbox My First Database native format 2 miela C ese So Lies eee ee ee 28 a dadabandad at ah dedat et dedo A blank screen waiting for you to design your database Planning your database design 213 Planning your database design Cardbox is powerful and it s quick and easy to learn By now you know fairly well how to search Cardbox databases and add records to them and you even know how to design a database in theory But it s one thing knowing how to use a tool and quite another thing to know what to use it for Thats what this chapter is all about Gallery We start with a gallery of examples of what other people are using Cardbox for Even if you have a pretty good idea of what you want to do with Cardbox it s worth looking through this section because you may find yourself getting some new ideas You don t use your word processor for just one purpose so why restrict yourself to just one use of Cardbox Exercises and samples These are some databases that you can create for yourself with step by step instructions from us but we also give you the final result if you really haven t got time for this The databases themselves can be useful as a basis for your own desi
261. nk of an immediate use for red tags just forget about them Red tags are there so you can tag records in two different ways You may be looking through a selection and tagging for two different purposes or you may be happily using black tags and then the phone rings and you have to do a new search that involves tags as well using red tags means that you can leave the black tags untouched For red tags use the Tag gt Red Tags menu Alt T D This has all the usual commands for setting tags removing tags and doing tagged searches but they all refer to red tags instead of black ones There s also a set of shortcuts for setting and removing red tags on a single record e Hold down the Shift key and press Tab e Move onto the record hold down the Shift key and press the toolbar button e Hold down the Shift key and the Ctrl key together and click on the record There s also one extra command that makes all black tags red and all red tags black Tag gt Red Tags gt Swap Red And Black Tags This can be useful if you want to put your current black tags to one side to deal with an interruption but don t want the fuss of handling red tags directly Earlier versions of Cardbox called private kept selections temporary and shared kept selections permanent Kept selections 97 Kept selections The idea of kept selections is that sometimes when you ve selected some records you want to remember that selection
262. nt About this book Our ambition was to write a computing book that was so interesting you d buy it to read on the train even if you didn t have a computer Perhaps that s an impossible goal but we hope that we ve got a lot closer to it than most computer manuals We start by telling you how to install Cardbox After that we give you a quick overview of the basic concepts of Cardbox Once you re familiar with what indexing fields and formats mean you ll find it easy to understand everything else Then we take you through the main functions of Cardbox First we describe how to use an existing database then how to enter data then how to design formats and finally we tell you how to create and design a completely new database You may feel that we re doing this backwards but there s actually some good logic behind all this The more you know about Cardbox the more you ll know about what it can do and the better prepared you ll be to produce a database design that does the things you want it to do Cardbox is very flexible about letting you change your design even after you ve started entering data but still there s no harm in getting it right first time To give you some more inspiration for your database designs we give you some examples of Cardbox databases most of them adaptations of databases that real people are already using You may find you can adapt one of these designs to your own requirements but in any case
263. nt to use and these apply to both the screen and the printer Cardbox does however give you the option of setting up an appearance specifically for printed output by using the Appearance tab This can be useful if you use a lot of solid background colours in your screen design and you want them all to come out white when you print You are also able to select fonts for printing that are different from the ones you use on the screen but we don t recommend this because it can get really confusing if you decide to change fonts later on Page Width The Page Width tab is for information only It takes you through Cardbox s calculations step by step and it s especially useful if Cardbox is warning you that your layout is too wide for the paper Here is an example Printer resolution is 600 pixels per inch Left margin is 6mm required by the printer Right margin is 6mm required by the printer Paper width is 210mm so width available for printing 198mm 4677 pixels You are using the printer font News Gothic MT 8 Character width average 33 pixels maximum 99 pixels Your chosen width 48 pixels 2mm So width available for printing 97 columns You have designed your format to be 127 columns wide To add extra paper sizes to the list see Help Point 503 For continuous rolls of labels see Help Point 504 Paper sizes and label types 119 Paper sizes and label types The Printer amp Paper page of the Pri
264. nter Settings command lets you select the paper size or label type you want Paper sizes Printer amp Paper contains a list of paper sizes for you to choose from Windows reports this list to Cardbox so it should be accurate for your printer Labels Labels typically come in sheets in either A4 or US Letter size Cardbox thinks of labels as very small pieces of paper Such as 64mm x 34mm and all your formatting is done inside that paper size Then when the time comes to print Cardbox uses what it knows about the label layout to print the text for each label in the right place on the sheet For all this to work Cardbox needs to know how the labels are laid out It has a built in set of definitions for the commonest label types essentially those for which the manufacturers publish the specifications but it is easy to define your own We talk a lot about mailing labels but exactly the same principles apply to sheets of print your own business cards and even to the special Filofax paper that is sold for use in laser printers Picking a label type from the list After you ve used a particular label type once you ll find it in Cardbox s list of paper sizes and you can pick it directly from there Labels are listed just after the sheet size they belong to for example Avery L7160 is 2 x1 labels in an A4 sheet three labels across seven labels down so you ll find it below A4 in the list Adding a label
265. ntry It s never too late What if you ve been building a database with a single big name and address field and then decide that you want to split the field into a name and an address The easiest way of converting your existing data is to use a Batch Edit After you ve created a separate field for the name go to the first record you want to convert do Edit gt Batch gt Edit and then cut and paste the first line of your big field into the new name field Cardbox will then repeat the same actions for every record in the current selection Thinking about fields 243 When not to split fields The form disease The form disease is something you catch from filling in too many official forms or using the Web too much It results in format designs that look like this Mr John OQ Public TEL There s hardly ever a good reason for doing this More primitive databases need to have the surname in a separate field to make it easier to search and sort but Cardbox lets you index any word you like so the more sensible solution is to have a single field for the name and then index just the surname Sometimes the excuse for using lots of tiny fields is that you re trying to use the data to create a salutation for use at the start of a letter the idea is that you d use all fields when you wanted to print the person s full name and just fields 1 and 4 when you wanted to say Dear Mr Public This is good in
266. nuscripts J Originals I Periodicals I Photographs Printed Material CJ Prints amp Programmes 04 08 2002 2002 VIlI 1 Mrs Xooxo Xox Five photographs of Paul Robeson Mrs PR 1 one as the Emperor Jones amp 20 Xxoxxoxoxo Xo0x PR junior all inscribed to Mr amp Mrs Hiawatha Coleridge Taylor together with a Gitt O Purchase Transfer XOX lt OX hand made calendar for 1929 with further photographs of PR 1 and his family x13 9XX 6 Acknowledged Books C Cuttings C Ephemera LD Illustrated Title Pages Manuscripts O originals LJ Periodicals Ed Photographs Printed Material I Prints Programmes 230 Help Point 579 lists Cardbox databases that are publicly available across the Internet www hmr rotterdam nl Catalogues Museums are increasingly building online catalogues of their collections and some of them are already accessible across the Internet using Cardbox De Atlas Van Stolk the Van Stolk Collection is an important Dutch collection of historical prints and drawings The collection is housed by the Rotterdam Historical Museum which maintains several databases including one of political cartoons and one of prints and drawings These contain full accession details and scanned images of the items in the collection FUL ATT MTL DANYVEIS The Thackray Medical Museum does the same thing with one of its collections see page 2 for an illustration Administration Th
267. nvestigation Stolen art and antiques Crime pattern analysis Keyholders Stolen vehicles Law Apart from the obvious uses in criminal cases legal firms also use Cardbox to maintain their case records libraries and registers of wills codicils and deeds One of the barristers who use Cardbox maintains a record of work done in relation to every case indexed by the client s name a case reference number and the date any work was done Setting up a record for each case enables me with minimal effort to keep an eye on progress with current work and provides me with easy access to a wealth of information about completed cases For example can easily check how many pieces of work have been done for each client the expert witnesses have worked with the judge appeared before and when last did a case concerning a specific area of law It also tracks payments for each case as a cross check on the central Chambers system Medicine Apart from the academic uses of Cardbox in medical research it has wider uses in hospitals and medical practices Here are some of them Clinical audits Kidney transplant databases Court cases needing expert witness Patient records declarations Publishing health information Drug registration Sexual health The security features we have built into Cardbox are particularly important in a medical context One British hospital takes privacy a step further the Cardbox database used for the psychiatric
268. ny indexed terms at all come at the end of the list If two records turn out identical as far as the index is concerned Cardbox puts them in the same order that they occur in the database Custom sequence Sorting on a custom sequence is more powerful than simple sorting First of all Cardbox will look at every indexed term in a field not just the first one and secondly you can give Cardbox a list of fields to sort on so that if two records are identical based on the first field it will look at the next field in your list to try and decide which record comes first For instance if you had a database of addresses you could sort your records according to the country and then within each country on the town and then within each country and the town on the name of the person or organisation You can specify ascending or descending order separately for each field in your list Custom sequencing is also different because it has a memory Cardbox remembers the last few custom sequence commands you did so that you can pick them from a list and you don t have to specify the whole list of fields all over again Sorting 103 To set up a custom sequence do View gt Sequence and click on the radio button marked Custom Sequence Custom sequence FORNA x If the sequence you want is one that s been used recently you can pick it from the list Otherwise you ll have to define it to do this press the Define button A new wi
269. o be entering records and they have different ideas about The concepts of Cardbox 35 what ought to be indexed A validator can automate the process of deciding what to index and keep the policy consistent Cardbox has two indexes There are a couple of problems when it comes to indexing numbers because numbers behave differently from words This difference is especially significant when you are trying to search on ranges of values give me numbers between 30 and 40 or when you sort records into alphabetical or numerical order It s easy to see the problem with a couple of simple examples If you are looking for words between ANT and DOG in the alphabet it s obvious that BABY fits within the range On the other hand if you are looking for numbers between 100 and 400 it s equally obvious that 3105 is far outside that range In other words when you compare words you compare one letter at a time but with numbers the longer number is always bigger than the shorter one Cardbox handles this by having two separate indexes for every field The word index handles words and is in alphabetical order and the numeric index handles numbers and dates and is in numerical order ALBANIA 1 ARGENTINA 2 ARUBA 3 AUSTRALIA 8 AUSTRIA 2003 0128 BARBADOS 2003 0204 BELARUS 2003 0207 BELGIUM 2003 0213 BENIN 1370434 BOTSWANA 1370713 BULGARIA 1370996 CAMEROON 1371370 CANADA 1371486 CAPE VERDE 1372590 CHILE 1373771 CHINA 1373935
270. o make the Open Database window bigger To do this drag the resizing handle at the bottom right hand corner outwards 56 Opening files on a network You aren t confined to files on your own computer if you ve got access to shared drives on your network you can use the My Computer tab to open files on those drives as well But remember that when you open a database using the My Computer tab you get exclusive access to it no one else can open the database as long as you have it open To open a database so that several people can use it at the same time you have to use the Server tab This doesn t restrict your own ability to have several copies of Cardbox open at the same time and have the same database open in each of them it only restricts what other people can do while you ve got the database open e There is one important exception to the rule about the My Computer tab If you have a database on a networked drive and use Windows Explorer to make both the database file FIL and its corresponding format file FMT read only then any number of people can use the database at the same time This is because if the files are read only then Cardbox knows the database can t change and so it is safe for several people to have it open at once To make a file read only in Windows Explorer right click on it and select Properties from the pop up menu Open command Server tab Use this tab to open a database that s accessibl
271. o search for 1 Use Tag gt Clear to make sure nothing is tagged 2 Search for the first article and when you ve found it tag it Use Search gt Clear to go back to Level 0 for the next search 3 Search for the second article and when you ve found it tag it Use Search gt Clear 4 If one of your searches gets you several articles and you want to include them all you don t have to wear yourself out hitting the Tab key use Tag gt Tag Rest of Selection instead 5 When you ve tagged everything you need use Tag gt Select to select all the records you ve tagged 6 If you realise you ve included some records you didn t want in the end untag them and then use Tag gt Select again so that you only keep the records that still have tags 7 Sort the selection into sequence and print it out Tag gt Tag Record TAB Tags and tagged searches 95 The details The Tag menu The Tag menu is a submenu of the Search menu Open it with the mouse or with Alt S followed by T or even with Alt T If you re likely to be using the Tag menu a lot you can promote it to the main menu bar just to the right of the Search menu To do this use the command Tag gt Promote Menu Tagging records Tag gt Tag Untag Record tags the current record if it isn t already tagged You can also do this by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking on the record Tag gt Tag Rest of Selection tags the current record and al
272. o so in this format In particular Word can use comma separated files for mail merging and other Microsoft programs can import them including Access Excel and Outlook Most See Help Point 523 Export and communication 125 programs that use address lists can read them in from comma separated files these include email programs and the Palm Desktop Cardbox can import CSV files as well but it s not a good idea to use them for Cardbox to Cardbox transfer because CSV files don t contain any information about which words are indexed XML 171 203 1469 lt f gt lt f id l1 4 32 gt lt x gt Mailshot lt x gt lt f gt lt f id 33 gt lt x KeSfE gt lt id 17 gt lt x gt 30 7 19974 x gt f gt lt f eee ff gt sf id Z1l gt lt x gt 1lO 1 1998 lt x gt lt f gt lt f id S lt xu gt lt f gt lt frecord gt lt record gt lt f id 1 gt Mr G lt x gt S Brittain Hamilton lt x gt amp Partners lt f gt lt f i x gt EC1l1 8VG lt x gt lt f gt lt f id 18 gt lt x gt Exchange Broke 71 342 1990 lt f gt lt f id Z gt lt x gt DATABASE TRANS x gt KMLS lt x gt lt f gt lt f id 15 gt lt x gt LCY lt x gt lt f f id 19 gt lt x gt SFE lt x gt lt f gt lt f id 22 gt Marqaret XML Extensible Markup Language is designed to make it easy for structured data to be shared between different programs XML isn t a file format in itself but a standard way of constructing file formats The idea is that if all form
273. o that they grow in width according to the available space When you re printing you can choose to make these items no wider than the format design itself or you can tell them to occupy the whole width of the paper The second option is usually the best Omit blank lines at the end of records it s quite common to have a record design where the last field occupies a lot of space but doesn t always have very much text in it You then have a choice of making every record the same size so that records without much text have a lot of blank space or of omitting the The Printer Settings command 117 blank lines at the end of each record so that the records fit tightly together but are irregularly spaced because they vary in the amount of text they have Translate underlines into spaces some people use underline characters like any other letter this is part of some old fashioned indexing strategies for indexing a phrase as a single word These people then have the choice of keeping those underlines in the printout so that HYDROGEN_BALLOON appears as HYDROGEN_BALLOON or translating them into spaces to make the text look more natural HYDROGEN BALLOON If you don t use underlines in the middle of words don t worry about this option 1 record per page or label start a new page or mailing label every time you start a new record Gap between records if you re not printing one record per page you can specify how mu
274. ode MJK IF Ps43 18 26 Code MJK IF Ps43 2 9 Code MJK ID Ps44 Code MJK ID Ps44 10 12 16 Code Che Tags and tagged searches 93 Tags and tagged searches Tags are so simple that it s hard to explain them They re also so useful that we find it hard to understand why every database program doesn t have them but so far Cardbox is the only one If you do any database searching at all it s worth reading this section to see if tags will make your life easier Let s start with a definition A tag is a temporary mark that you can make on the record you re ae looking at Tags don t alter the content of a record they don t kee change how the record looks when it s printed and if you re on a network other users of the database won t be able to see your tags Tagging is easy To tag or untag a record move onto it and press the Tab key or just hold down the Ctrl key and click on the record So what are tags for Just as you can search on indexed words so you can search on tags And that s it The point of tags is that they form a quick and informal way of fine tuning your searches or of putting complex searches together Here are a few examples Fine tuning a search You ve been searching a library database and your search has come up with a dozen records that match the criteria you entered You want to print out the books you want but you can see just from glancing at the list that you only really want det
275. oice with a covering letter The format design screen 197 Automatic height By its nature a merge block may have widely varying amounts of text and so you will often want to let it grow or shrink as necessary to accommodate its contents If you want to do this turn on Automatic Height Cardbox is fairly intelligent when you do this if you have other items in your format that are located below your Automatic Height merge block Cardbox will push them down or pull them up to fit with the change in the size of the merge block If you browse through records with Automatic Height set you ll notice that they change greatly in shape depending on the data that they contain This has two consequences for Cardbox the first is that if a format has an Automatic Height merge block Cardbox will only ever display one record per screen even if the records are short and you d expect there to be room for more than one The other consequence is that because Automatic Height makes the layout so variable formats with Automatic Height merge blocks don t allow you to edit records editing something that is constantly changing shape would be confusing for both you and Cardbox Automatic width A merge block is normally as wide as you draw it If you set Automatic Width the merge block can grow if there s nothing in the way to be as wide as the format or even when you re printing as wide as the paper Start on new page If you are printing out
276. on View The normal way of viewing a field is as text what you type is what you see For some fields that represent restricted options there are more graphical approaches that may be easier to use The View option lets you choose between radio buttons check boxes and drop down lists Once you ve chosen one of these views the Set button will let you specify what options should be available See Alternate Field Views p 192 Appearance You can give a field its own appearance independently of the appearance of the format as a whole For appearances and how to alter them see Appearance p 107 If you give an appearance to an individual field it won t change if you later change the appearance of the format as a whole it will remain unchanged unless you edit the format and change it explicitly Also if you give a field a font much larger than the font for the format as a whole the format s grid layout won t be altered but the field may end up taking up more than one row of the grid Validation Validators can do a number of useful things Enter default data automatically Check your data for validity Automatically index or unindex certain terms Reformat dates so that they all use the same standard format For full details see Validators p 206 192 O Client O Home Professional O Server Company Accounts Company Accounts General Pension Fund Personal Trusts A
277. onnect to it At the bottom left Cardbox will display some technical information about the server or an error message if it can t connect Picking a file Once you ve connected to a server you ll see on the right hand side a list of the databases it is offering Click on the database you want and press the Open button or just double click on the database name in the list A Cardbox server can be set up so that some of its databases aren t shown in the list This is sometimes done for security if you don t know the database s name you can t ask for it although of course it isn t a foolproof security precaution all by itself If you have to open a database that doesn t appear in the list ask someone what its name is and type the name into the Databases box then press the Open button Safety levels Macros are sequences of Cardbox commands that can be activated by a keystroke or by a pushbutton on the screen They are very convenient and some database authors take care to provide many macros to simplify your use of their data But a macro is essentially a mini program written in Microsoft s VBScript and so if you re opening a database that was created by someone else you have to protect yourself against the possibility that the database author was malicious and wrote macros that could harm your computer or reveal sensitive data The default safety level is Untrusted which allows macros to run but won t let them
278. opens all your databases for you automatically See Workspaces p 61 File gt Open is the main command that you use for opening databases It brings up a screen with three tabs My Computer Server and Recently Used File gt Recent Databases takes you straight to the Recently Used tab which shows you the 20 databases that you have opened most recently File gt 1 File gt 2 take you instantly to one of the four most recently opened databases If you d like more than four databases to be listed here use the command Tools gt Options Menus to set a different number Another way of opening a database If you double click on a Cardbox database file filetype FIL in Windows Explorer Cardbox will open the database Cardbox doesn t already have to be running when you do this it ll start automatically Open command My Computer tab Use this tab to open a database that s in a file somewhere on your computer The My Computer tab looks just like any other Open File box in Windows so you ll be familiar with it before you start Be VACANCY FIL Oren Cancel He e You start by seeing the folder you used last time you opened a database e At the top right hand corner you ll see a Recent Folders button This lets you jump directly to folders you have opened databases in recently e If you have a lot of databases with long names Windows will spread them out and you ll probably want t
279. or with Alt S and pick the search command you want Once the search command has opened you ll need to tell Cardbox which field to search unless you want to search all fields The toolbar Select and Exclude are the commonest commands so they have toolbar buttons of their own Searching the index 81 Choosing a field to search If you used a right click to start a search command Cardbox noticed where you clicked and so you can skip this section unless you change your mind about which field to search Field to search all fields leave this blank X You can type the name of the field you want or you can leave the Field control untouched if you want to search all fields You can open the drop down list by clicking on the arrow and pick the field you want from the list Field to search all fields leave this blank X OS Old serial number if upgrade Search DE Dealer RG Date registered AC Access code iON Date access code sent A TERMARK Watermark for EPY SUB Subscription control HO Notes pee HA Name Next to the box with the field name you ll see a hook If you click on this the search box will disappear temporarily and you ll be back looking at your records again The cursor will have changed into a hook Click on the field you want to search and Cardbox will bring back the search box with the name of the field filled in 82 If you re not sure what words your wildcard will match press the Pr
280. ority Codes Authority Codes PIN numbers for the phone system and security system Checks for duplicate PINs generates issue letters to notify PINs to users Stored Calls archive of all calls made from the exchange about 500 000 records Paint register of all colours used in all buildings including paint codes and formulae and where the paint was applied Chemicals register of all chemicals held with macros to calculate gross holdings Keys register of the current master key system 1 500 records Meters list of all gas water and electricity meters Email allocates usernames and passwords to all new students and staff and issues notification letters accordingly School Reports teacher entry formats and final report formats for the primary school Trees register of all trees on the campus condition work required etc Work Done Album photographic records of all work done eg underground computer network cabling linked to Autosketch plans Warranties register of purchases with warranty details and photographs Business uses of Cardbox Other business uses of Cardbox Advertisers details Aerial images Alumni Architectural references Artists Assets registers Building maintenance records Burial registers Calibration records Car pass management Careers information Catalogues Civil engineering data Classic cars Client callouts Competitor research Computer equipm
281. ormat to include a print job ID see Merge Blocks page 196 If you have done this then whatever you type into the ID box here will be printed as the print job ID e Not many people use this feature but if you regularly make searches and print them out then including a unique ID at the top or bottom of the page can help remind you what the search was or who you did it for Checking your design If you want to make quite sure that the printout looks the way you want it and that you ve got the right records in the right format you have several options e You can press Print 1 Record and see what just one record looks like e You can turn on Pause Between Pages and then press OK After printing each page Cardbox will wait for you to tell it whether to carry on with the next page e You can press Preview to get the screen to display a preview of the printed page see page 114 Choosing a different printer or paper The Print command tells you which printer you re currently using If you want to use a different printer or size of paper press Settings and you ll be in Printer Settings see page 115 Errors and warnings Errors and warnings appear at the bottom of the Print command window with a bright yellow background so that you can t miss them If you want to know what a particular message means press the F1 key and look at the on line help which gives an explanation of each possible messa
282. ou have alternative formats for printing out bibliographies of books and of articles a summary format to take to a library and a one line format that is useful when you want to view a lot of records at once while searching Help Point 650 describes how to create all these and how to use them Thinking about fields 241 Thinking about fields As you can see from the examples a lot of the effort in designing a Cardbox database goes into deciding how to divide a record into fields Although it s easy to add and delete fields even after you ve created a database and started putting records into it it s better to get things more or less right from the start Human fields and computer fields This is an aspect of field design that you ought to consider when you are setting up your own database We might call some fields in a database human fields because their function is to tell you something and as far as the computer is concerned they are just a piece of text to be displayed or printed in the right location A good example would be the Instant Address Book exercise p 234 where the address and the phone numbers are both just intended to be looked at or printed out in a list The addresses aren t in a suitable format for turning into a mailing label and the phone numbers can t be used to make phone calls or send faxes automatically at the press of a button But then that s not what this database was meant for and the extreme s
283. ou haven t got a scanner it s still worth going through this exercise because Cardbox is still an excellent way of classifying and finding papers even if you have to open a physical file to read the original documents In this case you d probably make the Description field longer so you can be quite sure that the document is the one you want before you dig it out A photograph album If you have prints you can use a scanner to scan them in to Cardbox in that case the image in Cardbox is only a scan of the original print and you should keep the originals filed away because they will be of better quality If your photographs are from a digital camera PDA or mobile phone you ll be able to import them directly into Cardbox probably without loss of quality if they are in JPEG format You can index your photographs number the frames and add keywords and dates You can search for and select photographs You can print individual ones at full size or you can tag the ones you are interested in and print them out as a contact sheet If you want to have reprints made for your friends you can administer this easily by having an extra field to hold the friends initials Other visual things can be handled in the same way You could take photographs of your most treasured possessions so as to be able to give them to the police or your insurers if anything happens 01 02 03 003 04 5 2003 354 07 354 08 30 5 2003 30 5 2003 H 354 05 3
284. out in the same way You can have as many alternative formats as you like 32 For detailed information on how to set up alternate field views see page 192 Company Accounts Company Accounts General Pension Fund Personal Trusts Alternate field views The normal way of viewing a field is as text You type it in and later on you look at it or print it out But for fields that represent a restricted set of options there are more graphical approaches that may be easier to use An alternate field view is like a filter that i inserts itself between the text and what you O Client O Home actually see Underneath it all the field still Professional O Server contains ordinary text but on the surface what you see is a Set of radio buttons or check boxes or a drop down list For data entry this is good because you don t have to type you can just click Because the field view does the typing for you you can be sure that it doesn t make any spelling mistakes Not every format has to have the same view of the field It s often a good idea to use an alternate view to make things easier for data entry but switch to ordinary text when it comes to summaries or printed reports The labels shown in the alternate views don t have to be identical to the real text of the underlying field You can use long explanatory labels Business Insurance Company Accounts in the view but short codes such as INS
285. pful than the second column of labels is 14 too far to the left 3 Remember that we can t see what you are doing Don t be afraid to describe every detail of what you did every keystroke and every mouse click 4 If something is going wrong does it go wrong every time you try it Or only sometimes Are you able to give us enough information for us to be able to reproduce the problem for ourselves 5 Did it start happening recently If you installed a new version of Internet Explorer last week and your Cardbox screen layout has started to look a little strange since then we have a good idea of where to search for the cause of the problem This is not a fictional example some Windows fonts have bugs in them and Internet Explorer sometimes installs new fonts in the past we ve had to reprogram Cardbox to work round bugs like that Not every problem that is reported to us is a bug In fact most problems aren t The more clearly you report the problem the better we will be able to explain to you what is going on and what you should do to make things happen the way you want 12 Windows Paint can be found in the Accessories section of the Start menu Screen shots Windows is a graphical environment and if your problem is that the screen looks funny then a snapshot of what you re actually seeing is often the best way of telling us what is going on To capture the screen The first step is to copy the screen
286. r Library Shelfmark finding the things you want to read is a time consuming part of academic research and these fields help to organise it and make sure that you don t waste time by losing references Keywords how thorough you want to be about developing a set of keywords and applying them consistently depends on the kind of project you are doing and how you are approaching it We ve given you one smallish Keywords field but of course the size of the field is up to you and you can add other fields if you like The keywords don t need to appear on any printed bibliography they are for your use only 240 Book Article Other note that this is just a single Cardbox field displayed as a set of radio buttons to make it clear what the options are and to make sure you only choose one of them This field is searchable so you can search or print out just one kind of material if you choose Primary Secondary serious research often requires you to distinguish between primary and secondary sources If you don t need this field then you can leave it out of the design Extra text although we haven t printed it here this is a good place to use the Extra Text field You can use it to contain your comments on the contents or even the usefulness of the book or article and you can view each record on its own or together with its Extra Text Alternative formats Alternative formats come into their own in this database Y
287. r In that case it s even easier 1 View the record you want in the format you want 2 Use File gt Print and press the button marked Print One Record Other options Behind the scenes there are a lot of options you can set when you are printing including the paper size layout margins and fonts Most of the time it s enough to set these options once and store them as part of your format For details of what options are available and what they do see Printer Settings p 115 The Print command File gt Print Ctrl P I Dont print Choosing what to print You can print all the records you have selected or you can go part of the way into the selection and print everything from the current record onwards You can also print just the current record by pressing the Print 1 Record button If your records have an Extra Text field you can print the record without Extra Text or Extra Text on its own or the record including Extra Text Faster printing Some printers are quite slow at printing graphics If you have image fields in your database you can tell Cardbox to save time by not printing them and if you have graphic elements in your formats pictures letterheads logos etc you have the option of telling Cardbox not to print them 112 Previous versions of Cardbox would not let you print if the format was too wide The print job ID optional It is possible to design your f
288. r Next S for Save N S N S you ll now have edited four records and Cardbox will be asking you if you want to move on to the fifth and then Q for Quit to terminate the batch edit Once you get the hang of it this is simple and very fast and the only danger is that your fingers could run away with themselves and repeat the N S sequence too many times 160 To store images you need to create an image field see Format Design page 189 Adding images When you re adding a new record that has an image field or editing an existing one you can add new images to it There are three steps involved 1 Get the image into Cardbox 2 Tell Cardbox how to preprocess it for instance by rotating or resizing it This step is optional 3 Tell Cardbox whether the image is a picture or a document and how you want it to be compressed This step is often automatic Getting the image into Cardbox To start with you have to be editing a record either an existing record or a newly created one Importing from an existing image file e You may have some image files that have been saved by other programs or sent to you as attachments Many fax to email gateways send you your faxes as files attached to an email e Some photographic processors give you your pictures as files on a CDROM as well as giving you prints e Some digital cameras store pictures in removable memory that you can then plug into your computer a
289. r the first time we were in full control of the casting process Business uses of Cardbox 227 Scientific research Numerous research agencies use Cardbox For example Bangor University undertook some research into Indian crop cultivars We chose Cardbox for its simplicity and user friendliness and because its use is very intuitive Development practitioners in KRIBHCO and other organisations who are not information specialists will be involved in keeping the database updated and will answer queries A day s training programme is usually sufficient to enable users to design new databases and formats conduct complex searches and print out records The database is being distributed on CD ROM with an automatic installation procedure Academics are experts in their own discipline but not usually computer experts With Cardbox it s easy for them to set up databases that can be searched by other academics who are active in the same field without having to get any computer departments involved 228 Security Many police forces and defence services worldwide use Cardbox Department stores have used Cardbox to record details of shoplifters which are then shared among local shops Here are some other security applications we ve heard about Accident investigations Domestic violence Research into stop and Aliens register Emergency control room search policies Burglar alarms Evidence gathering Security passes Child abuse Fraud i
290. rch and you also tell it what text to look for In a relational search you don t specify the search text directly but you tell Cardbox where to get the search text for itself it will look in a window that you specify and in a particular field within the current record in that window As you can see in the illustration above you can tell Cardbox in detail how to extract search terms from your chosen field Window gt Update F9 What you can search for 79 Relational links Once you ve made a relational search it remains live Using the sample search in the illustration if you switch to the window called Sledger and move to a different record the contents of the field IN will be different So Cardbox will redo the relational search in Winser using search terms extracted from the new contents of that field This effectively creates a link between the two windows which lasts until you explicitly cancel the search using Search gt Undo If you were editing a record in Sledger then much the same thing would happen any changes you made to IN would make the search different and Cardbox would redo the search in Winser each time It would be very inefficient to do this every time you pressed a key so in this case you have to use Window gt Update to tell Cardbox to redo the relational search You can have more than one relational search active at the same time For example suppose that you have one dat
291. read or write your hard disk or do other potentially harmful things Unless you know that a database contains sophisticated macros that need to be more trusted than this there s no need to alter this safety level There is a spectrum of safety levels from Completely Untrusted to Completely Trusted and you can set safety levels for individual databases or for the server as a whole so that for example you can make your organisation s corporate server Completely Trusted but leave all other servers Untrusted Open command Recently Used tab Cardbox remembers the last 20 databases you opened and the Recently Used tab lets you open one of them just by double clicking on it You can sort the list into order by name location or recency of use by clicking on the appropriate heading To remove a confidential or embarrassing database name from the list click once on it and then press the Remove button The coloured blob helps to protect you against typing mistakes its colour changes depending on the password you ve entered so if it looks unfamiliar then you ve got something wrong There are so few possible colours that the coloured blobs don t give anything away even if an enemy films the screen while you re typing Opening databases 59 Security messages when opening a database Cardbox databases can be protected with passwords and they can even be encrypted Whether you are able to set these features up depends on the
292. records of its own staff exists on only one computer and that computer is kept in a locked room and deliberately not connected to the rest of the hospital s network Business uses of Cardbox 229 Museums Acquisitions Not the least problem facing museums that build massive archives is tracking the source of the items in their collections Here is the Cardbox solution which makes it easy to search for particular classes of material identify what each collection contains and even contact the original donors if necessary Date Acc No Source Description 24 06 2002 2002 Vi 1 Mrs XX Xoox 22 programmes 4 Xoxo oxox Xox Gift O Purchase Transfer XOXOXXOXO London 1936 61 incl QH 21 4 1936 Bustabo RAH 29 9 1948 R Strauss amp Xowoxoxo XX8 IXO 2 10 1949 Gigli Acknowledged Books O Cuttings O Ephemera Illustrated Title Pages Manuscripts O Originals L Periodicals I Photographs Printed Material L Prints I Programmes 23 08 2002 2002 VIlI 2 Mr Oxoxx Xoxxox A collection of programmes cuttings books and opera periodicals including xox Git Purchase Transfer XooxXoox ROH 6 1870 87 c 450 modern QH 17 some fragmentary St J s H 15 same 77 Oxxax Xoxxoroxox Xox fragmentary RAH 3 1895 98 Grosvenor Gallery 28 6 1882 SWT 146 WH Acknowledged xoxox 29 3 1938 smoking concerts 30 amp much provincial amp foreign opera x8 OXX Books El Cuttings C Ephemera LI Illustrated Title Pages Ma
293. reformatting dates and there are even validators that replace the field text altogether which is useful for things like timestamping Validators typically wake up when the user moves off a field or saves the record but it is also possible to activate them manually see Using Validators p 152 How to add and modify validators You must already be editing the native format Double click on a field or select it and then use Edit gt Item Properties Then select the Validation tab To add a validator press Add and select the validator you want from the menu that pops up The new validator will appear in the list and the bottom half of the Validation tab will let you edit it To modify an existing validator select it from the list and use the bottom half of the Validation tab to make the changes you want To delete a validator select it from the list and press Delete this is the Delete button in the Validation tab not the Delete key on the keyboard Moving validators around in the list You don t often have more than one validator attached to a field and if you do it usually doesn t matter which order they come in But if you have several validators making changes to a field then the order they are in may make a difference To change the position of a validator in the list select it and then use the up and down arrow buttons just below the list to move the validator up and down in the list Reformat
294. remicred at the Teatro Regio Ducale Milan in 1770 No other Mozart opera has so many different versions sketches and variants of the individual numbers as the singers were initially distrustful of the young composer and believed their experience to be greater than his they insisted on numerous re writes The original manuscript has not survived and it is impossible to identify an absolutely original version but we shall be reinstating several of Mozart s original settings including a stunningly beautiful duet at the close of Act 2 Two of the arias are being completed by the renowned scholar and leading Mozart expert Stanley Sadie Cast includes Tom Randle Cora Burggraaf and Rebecca Bottone Monochrome Document scans actual size Above left with Store Compressed above right without Store Compressed In this case the whole A4 document of which only a part can be seen here took 50KB with Store Compressed and 100KB without it Below right an enlarged detail showing the difference in quality Gresham Note you can always get higher quality scans if you need them just by increasing the resolution in dots per inch 166 For more guidance see Help Point 514 Rearranging and deleting images Rearranging images If you ve got several images attached to a record you can rearrange the order they come in if you open the Thumbnail view see Thumbnails p 72 Click on the thumbnail that you want to move and drag it
295. rom you To unzoom the format use View gt Actual Size Scrolling If the format design is too large for the window you ll see scroll bars You can use the scroll bars to scroll to the area of the design that interests you but you have a couple of alternatives that may be more convenient You can scroll vertically by dragging the vertical ruler up and down If you have a wheel mouse you can also scroll vertically by rolling the mouse wheel You can scroll horizontally by dragging the horizontal ruler sideways If you have a wheel mouse you can also scroll horizontally by holding down Shift and rolling the mouse wheel The format design screen 185 Selecting items Before you can manipulate a format item you need to select it The simplest thing is to click on the item you want to select If you want to select more than one item there are two ways of doing this e Click on the first item you want to select and then hold down the Ctrl key as you click on each of the others If you select an item by mistake you can Ctrl click on it again to deselect it e Click on the format background and hold the mouse button down As you drag the mouse diagonally a rectangle will appear when you release the mouse any format item that is inside the rectangle or intersects it will be selected If you want to select all items use Edit gt Select All To deselect all items click on the format background Moving items To move a sele
296. rums London 1944 G McCourt Remember Butler London 1967 D R Morris The Washing ofthe Spears New York 1965 A Preston ed In Relief of Gordon London 1967 L Strachey Eminent Yictorians London 1918 Cardbox is so flexible that you can create one database of books and articles and divide them into primary and secondary sources and then create an alphabetical list that can then be read into a word processing package and edited further Personal uses of Cardbox 219 Abstracts Researchers also use Cardbox to keep databases of abstracts There are two main approaches One is to store everything in the main record and have a big field for the abstract with the keywords indexed the other shown here is to have all the reference information in the main record and the abstract itself in the Extra Text field Authors Zulian_M Bellome_J DeBoom_G_W Source J Am Dent Assoc 1987 Jan 79 80 P 0002 8177 Title Multiple linear ulcers on the dorsum of the tongue in a patient with Address Oral and Maxillofacial Sur Waldenstrom s macroglobulinemia Medical Center Kansas City MO Journal Book J_Am_Dent_Assoc Year 1987 Volume 114 First page ae last page 80 iced 87110257 Refere Book 2010 Keywords case_report diagnosis_differential Soete NI _pa human macroglobulinemia_MJ_pa male middle_age tongue_diseases_MJ_pa ulcer_ pa Abstract author directly in al gt n unusual clinical presentation of an eosinophilic ulcer of t
297. s and the Special menu It also describes all the commands that a macro can use This manual comes as part of the Professional Edition of Cardbox Help gt Macros and Programming gives you a large amount of reference information It assumes a knowledge of VBScript but also lists some published books that will help you learn the language Appendix 269 Requirements Operating system Microsoft Windows 95 or later Windows 98 Windows Me Microsoft Windows NT 4 0 or later including Windows 2000 Windows XP Memory 32MB RAM Disk space 12MB for the Cardbox program files Capacity Number of records per database 16 000 000 or 10 000 for the Home Edition Size of database file 1TB 1 024GB unless the operating system imposes a lower limit for example Windows 95 98 Me restrict files to 2GB in size Number of fields per record 4 096 Size of fields no practical limit Number of images per record no practical limit Compatibility with other programs Cardbox can import and export data in CSV comma separated variables format Cardbox can import data from many databases using the OLE DB interface Cardbox can export data in XML Cardbox can share data using DDE and COM ActiveX Automation Compatibility with previous versions of Cardbox Installing Cardbox 3 0 does not harm an existing installation of Cardbox 2 0 or earlier Cardbox 3 0 can directly open databases from all previous versions of Car
298. s but the core of the data was stored in Cardbox Author Upietz Title WORLD SPORTSCAR RACING 1994 Description A review of 1994 with the cooperation of Eurosport TY Price 34 95 2 3 98 88 Code Catalogue pages motorsport_formula_racing Picture Author Craft Title ANATOMY amp DEVELOPMENT OF THE STOCK CAR Description A well illustrated book that describes the history of Stock Car Price 17 95 Racing and the development of technology within it There are detailed 89 Code Catalogue pages technical_competition Picture Author Hewett Brown Title MONACO GP PORTRAIT OF A PAGEANT Description A well produced Ad format book covering the history of the Price 14 95 famous race around the streets of the principality 90 Code Catalogue pages motorsport_formula_racing Picture Insurance inventories Once you have become convinced of the necessity of giving evidence to insurers there is no need to stop at printed books Any artefact is worth recording and with digital cameras being so cheap there is no reason not to photograph everything while you re about it 064 00052654C AR August Strindberg DE The yellow autumn picture ME oil on canvas SI 54 x 35 cm DA signed 1901 TY landscape 218 Recipes When we heard that a prominent Oxford philosopher was a keen user of Cardbox we thought we could dazzle everyone by raising the intellectual tone of this book However Oxford philosophers turn out to have human interests
299. s p 195 A merge block contains text mixed with field references When Cardbox comes to display or print a merge block it fills in the field references with the actual contents of the field and word wraps the result as if it were a single piece of continuous text You can put the whole of a standard letter into a single merge block at the other extreme you can have a merge block that contains nothing but field references to join fields together to make a suitable address for a mailing label Even a merge block containing a single field has its uses because merge blocks can grow and shrink according to the text they contain while fields have a fixed size and position on the screen As well as field references a merge block can contain several other kinds of data including the page number the record number within the current selection and the date SNE A AVAILABILITY AY 1 WEEK NOTICE LAST CONTACT LD 1 2002 CT 22 03 2004 MJDS K COMPUTER SYSTEMS CS AUTHOR 1 TITLE I PUBLISHER WHERE WHEN E Childers War and the Arme Blanche Edward Arnold London 1910 180 Fixed text p 199 Fixed text in a format is just text it has no meaning as far as Cardbox is concerned Cardbox displays or prints it in the location you specify and that s all Fixed text is useful for headings hints and reminders Lines and boxes p 201 Lines and boxes can make a format easier to read
300. s see The Traditional Windows Alternative p 134 Edit gt Batch gt Edit Ctrl B Editing records 137 Editing a batch of records Very often you will find that you need to make similar changes to a whole batch of records for example in a mailing list you may want to update a date last sent field after you ve sent a mailing Batch editing is a unique feature of Cardbox that lets you do this sort of thing easily Once you ve got used to it you ll find batch editing indispensable The Edit gt Batch gt Edit command starts you editing the current record but unlike the ordinary Edit Record commana it also starts recording all the editing actions that you take When you save the record Cardbox will go to the next record and play back all the actions it s recorded A special control pops up that lets you decide how the batch edit works you can tell Cardbox to pause after each record so that you can decide when you want it to stop editing or you can tell Cardbox to go straight ahead and edit the whole of the current selection automatically without pausing The editing actions can be as simple or as complicated as you like you can index a word or you can erase a field and replace its contents or you can do some major reshuffling of data For some examples of what you can do with batch editing and what you have to bear in mind when planning it see Batch Editing p 155 138 Edit gt Delete Record Edit
301. s so you can make them hold anything people s contact details books abstracts photographs biographies CVs of job applicants personal records lists of stolen antiques museum catalogues contracts and official documentation confidential accident reports poisoning incidents Databases don t just store textual information they can also contain images photographs drawings scanned documents and in the Professional Edition objects Such as spreadsheets or word processed documents Throughout this book we ll give you examples of Cardbox databases and stories of how people are using them We hope they ll give you ideas and inspiration Cardbox databases can be as small or as large as you like the limit is 16 000 000 records for the Professional Edition or 10 000 records for the Home Edition The records can be as simple or as complex as you like You can have a number of databases open at the same time You can store your databases on your own computer or you can share them across a network or even across the Internet With the Professional Edition you can set up security so that no one can access your data without the right password and you can set up different levels of security so that some people are allowed to view records while others can edit and update them The security mechanisms also apply to fields within a record you can stop certain people from altering particular fields or even from seeing them at all You don
302. s to open a database you need to know the name of the server and the name of the database In a corporate network your system administrator will tell you the name of your server indeed it may be in your list already and if you re opening an Internet database the owner s web site will tell you the server name For some more information see Opening Databases p 57 And that s really all you need to know Everything else behaves just as it does when you re using your own databases Cardbox coordinates everything If someone else changes a record and saves it while you re looking at it it ll change on your screen as well If two people try to edit a record at the same time Cardbox lets one of them do it and tells the other to try again later The Cardbox web site tells you more about the Cardbox Server and how to get hold of it The Cardbox Server comes with a separate manual that gives you detailed information about setting up the server and sharing databases See Help Point 544 for how to set up a Cardbox database in Unicode If you really need Cardbox to support a right to left or complex script please let us know For more about fonts see Help Point 545 Wedzony oso u Hav Gotroubl ye kai axAeicas atroA olny GAAG yiya piEas T Kai iooou voroi TrubicBal The concepts of Cardbox 43 Unicode Here are all the characters that you can type into your computer using the standard Windows character set
303. s a small program it has a well defined function and it doesn t go wrong It s the part of Cardbox that has changed least over the years and old software is the safest software Even if something goes wrong with the rest of Windows and makes the visible Cardbox program crash your data will be unharmed e If despite all this anything ever does go wrong with your data for instance if there is a power cut just as your computer is writing something to the disk there are functions in Cardbox that let you rebuild your database e Weare still aiming for zero bugs so we take bugs very seriously Whenever someone reports a problem we hope it is our fault because if it s our fault then we can correct it But if it turns out that the trouble is caused by a printer driver or an anti virus program or Windows itself we ll do our best to identify the bug explain it to you and we ll reprogram Cardbox to avoid the bug even if it isn t our fault Bugs are rare When we looked through our database of users to see who might have interesting stories for us we realised that most of them were people who d installed Cardbox without trouble and never had any need for support after that It s very likely that this will be your experience too http www cardbox com Reliability and support 11 Getting support The Cardbox web site is the first place to go for support It has articles answering the commonest questions and it gives you
304. s and when the next contact should be The Contacts History field can contain a narrative of contacts so far and because Cardbox lets you index as many words as you like you can index the date of each successive contact and thus answer very simply questions such as who did Gary talk to in the last week of October To calculate a total for all records in the current selection hold down the right mouse button over your chosen field and when the menu appears select Total Business uses of Cardbox 223 Obvious additions to this database include an email address which can be used for direct contact or using the Professional Edition can be used with macros to send bulk emails just as the fax number can be used to send bulk faxes Invoices Cardbox is not an accountancy package Nevertheless it is often used for invoicing and account management because most of what gets classified as accountancy is in fact database management and Cardbox is such a flexible database Date Invoice Net VAT Total Paid Name VAT Control 2 4 2003 12345 6529 45 1142 65 7672 10 17 5 2003 ABC Publishing 1 03 Cheque There are two main ways in which you can use Cardbox for things like invoices One is to keep all the necessary information in the Cardbox database and then use mail merging to generate the actual printed invoice The other way is what we have shown here where the invoice itself is stored in a separate word processing fi
305. s aren t a waste On the contrary they are what attracted other people to the package so there were enough of you out there for you all to share the cost of development between you they are what made it cheap enough for you all to buy As you read this book if you come across a feature or a command that you can t imagine you d want to use just glance at it skip over it and go on to the next thing After a couple of months of using Cardbox you should come back to the book and look at the bits you skipped just in case you ve discovered the need for something that at first sight seemed irrelevant But if nothing new jumps out at you on the second reading don t worry your own personal mini Cardbox is doing what you want it to do and it s doing it well To help you with the business of deciding what to read we ll try to tell you which features we think are important especially if like batch editing you may not instantly see why they make such a difference and equally we ll tell you which features are very specialised indispensable to anyone who needs them but of no interest to anyone else Going beyond the edge An important question about packaged software is what happens at its edges You may have specialised requirements that aren t covered by the standard package and you may need to go just one step beyond it what happens then With Cardbox we ve done two things about this First of all it s easy to exch
306. s in a new file The same thing applies to images and to other things that you can open and edit in Windows Accordingly Cardbox supports this as well you can edit a record and then by using File gt Save As New instead of File gt Save you can save the changed record as a new record in the database leaving the original record untouched This works perfectly from the computer s point of view but we strongly recommend that you don t use it because you are a human being If you re anything like us then you won t always remember when you get to the point of saving a record whether you re meant to use Save or Save As New and if your fingers are anything like ours they ll sometimes type the Save command for you before you have time to think so that you risk having your original record overwritten instead of creating a new one To avoid such mistakes please get into the habit of using Duplicate Record File gt Import For full details of the available file formats and options see Help Point 534 For more about importing from ODBC and Excel see Help Point 535 You can control which fields get transferred see Help Point 536 Adding records 135 Adding records from elsewhere If the data that you want to put into Cardbox already exist somewhere on your computer it seems rather a waste to have to type them all in by hand so Cardbox gives you a number of ways of importing records in bulk Here is a summary of the
307. s is indexing it lets you mark individual words in a field as needing to be indexed for fast retrieval You set the indexing mode for each field when you design the database format Two of the modes affect how you edit Manual allows you to index individual words and Auto indexes everything automatically but lets you remove the indexing from individual words You can turn indexing on and off like this Keyboard Make sure the cursor is on the word this is always true while you re typing the word if you re going back to alter the indexing on a previously typed word simply move the cursor onto it Tap the Ctrl key Don t hold it down just press it and release it quickly e If Windows has been set up in Accessibility mode to allow someone with a disability to use it you may find that tapping the Ctrl key doesn t do anything Windows stores the Ctrl keystroke and applies it to the next letter you type In that case use Ctrl to turn indexing on and off Mouse Right click on the word A menu will pop up select Indexed from the menu _transposition ofthe ulnar nerve transposition of the ulnar nerve ile surgery fe Indexed Ctrl hi le surgery for an anteror circulation author to calculate the relative wc thor to calculate the relative workli If you have selected a block of text then the indexing or unindexing will apply to all words in the block Words will look different when you index them depending o
308. s the data just before they are written to the disk If someone stops by your desk at lunchtime and copies your database files to a hard disk in his pocket you are safe If someone steals your backup CDROMs you are safe An attacker with sophisticated technical skills who has direct access to your computer may be able to install a program that subverts its operation and sees the data that you are retrieving this is not a trivial task and the considerable investment required would only be justified in cases of high level industrial espionage or criminal investigation If a forensic expert removes your computer s hard disk for analysis then he may be able to see odd decrypted fragments that Windows has written to temporary work areas on the disk A complete database cannot be retrieved in this way but it is conceivable that enough fragments might be present to give a clue as to the nature of the data on your computer Only the database file is encrypted the format file is not The format file contains no data records but it does contain all the formats you are using so for example if you are running an extortion business and use formats to create standard letters to your victims those will not be encrypted and will be physically readable although setting up user profiles would offer you limited protection see page 41 Encryption and the law In some countries it is illegal to encrypt data Other countries have restrictions on the use of
309. s what is already there instead of pushing it to the right To get back into Insert mode just press the Insert key again Deleting errors Backspace Deletes the character to the left of the cursor usually this is the last character you typed Ctrl Backspace Deletes the whole word to the left of the cursor Delete Deletes the character to the right of the cursor Ctrl Delete Deletes the word to the right of the cursor Undoing changes Edit gt Undo undoes the last change you made Edit gt Undo All undoes all changes in the current field and restores it to the state it was in when you started editing File gt Quit Without Saving undoes all changes in the whole record and cancels the edit 144 Edit gt Paste Ctrl V Edit gt Insert Object i Pick lists are designed when you set up a format See Pick Lists p 209 Edit gt Copy Ctrl C Edit gt Cut Ctrl X Pasting and importing text Edit gt Paste inserts text that you have previously copied to the Clipboard from Cardbox or another program The Paste command also appears in the menu that you get when you right click on your field e f you copied text to the Clipboard using Cardbox s command Edit gt Copy Record Ctrl Shift C then the Paste command will paste only the text that came from the same field as the field you re currently in To insert text from a text file use Edit gt Insert Object The
310. se are the numbers that Cardbox lets you do searches on These numbers aren t really properties of the records themselves if you make a different selection record 31 from the old selection may be record 2 in the new selection or it may not appear in the new selection at all How to do a record number search To start a record number search use the command Search gt Select or Search gt Exclude Then open the drop down list at the bottom of the Search window and choose the following option Howto search Search on record position first record 1 second 2 Now you can enter one of the following values in the Search For box Format Example Matches A number 31 Just record 31 Number colon number 10 20 Records 10 to 20 inclusive Number colon 100 Record 100 onwards Colon number 250 Records 1 to 50 inclusive 100 Combining selections from different windows Cardbox lets you open the same database in several windows Some people take advantage of this feature and use it to do separate searches in both windows If you do this and then you want to combine the selections from both windows into one do Window gt Merge This will bring up a menu that lists the windows that are available choose the window you want Window gt Merge behaves rather like an Include command It takes the current selection in the current window and creates a new selection consisting of all the records in that se
311. several workspaces open at atime Databases are not restricted if you need to you can have the same database open in several workspaces User interface When Cardbox for Windows first came out the Windows boom was just beginning We have watched how Windows conventions have evolved and we have observed how people actually use Cardbox Here are some of the results of our research Menus have been rearranged to make them more intuitive and renamed to conform to current Windows practices for example Tools Options replaces File Utilities Configure Cardbox Right clicking the mouse calls up context sensitive menus both when searching and when editing Carefully designed Wizards take you through inherently complex operations such as file import The format design process has been revised and simplified at the same time as making it more powerful Keyboard shortcuts have been reassigned to match other Windows programs Customisation You can now customise the toolbar adding or rearranging buttons as well as reassigning keystrokes and adding menu items You can apply customisations to your computer as a whole or to individual projects databases and formats so that for example a toolbar button is only visible in the database to which it applies Windows integration Cardbox 3 0 is a fully 32 bit program which means an end to the bugs that crept in to Windows XP s support for 16 bit programs especially where long filenames
312. so begin at the beginning go on till you come to the end then stop Acknowledgements At this point in a book it s usual to see a list of names of all the people the author wants to thank The trouble with a project that s lasted more than twenty years is that this would be rather a long list and very boring for the reader So very many thanks to everyone who ought to be thanked you know who you are Thanks also to our users without whom we d have had a quieter life but whose requests and feedback have made Cardbox into the powerful program you see today You know who you are as well Finally we d like to thank specifically those people who allowed their databases or their stories to be included in this book including Shaun Seager at Action Technical Services Daniel D Alessandro Sonia Elso Galano at INIA Chile Augustine Ford Alan Humphries at the Thackray Medical Museum John Huskisson at Winifred West Schools Paul Smith at the University of Wales Bangor Professor Christopher Spry Charles Welling at Atlas Van Stolk and The Reverend Canon Dr Peter Williams at Ecclesall Parish Church We also thank all the other Cardbox users who responded to our requests for user stories The information they gave us was a great help aL ger i Part One Orientation What Cardbox is and what it does how to use this book installation and licensing The John F Wilkinson Collection of pharmaceutical ceramics
313. ssed format Leave this option turned on because it makes the format smaller and faster to load Only turn this option off if you want to keep compatibility with Cardbox 2 0 which doesn t understand compressed graphic items Insert gt Pushbutton Ctrl B The format design screen 203 Pushbuttons Inserting a pushbutton 1 The mouse cursor turns into a hollow square Move the mouse to where you want the pushbutton to start press the mouse button hold it down move the mouse to where you want the pushbutton to end and release the mouse button Cardbox will draw a rectangle for you and make the pushbutton that shape and size 2 Once you ve released the mouse button a blank pushbutton will appear on the screen and Cardbox will take you straight to the Item Properties command so that you can set the properties of the new item including what should happen when the button is pressed Setting pushbutton properties To set or change the properties of a pushbutton double click on it Alternatively select it and then use Edit gt Item Properties or press Enter To put a new image into this pushbutton press the Read button to import the image from a file or press the Paste button to paste it in from the Clipboard Enable button when You can choose whether the button should be usable when you are viewing records when you are editing records or both This is because some actions only make sense when editing or when not e
314. stantly surprised by the uses that our users put Cardbox to If you come across a relational database snob who looks down on you for using Cardbox don t be embarrassed Experts like relational databases because relational databases make more work for experts They are complex structures that contain interrelated tables of distinct entities Designing a relational database is not a trivial task You need to analyse exactly what every data element is and how it is being used and you need to check how these things will interact or might interact in the future In the hands of an expert a simple library card index can get fragmented into separate tables for author publisher edition and so on and at the end of it all you still won t be able to search for titles with particular words in them unless the designer goes away and creates another couple of tables Something that takes half an hour to design in Cardbox can take a week with a relational database The history of Cardbox The Cardbox for Windows you are reading about now is a distant descendant of the very first Cardbox which was published in 1982 Cardbox has evolved a long way since then but always with the same team behind it Our goals are the same now as they were then simplicity speed power but of course with computers 1 000 times faster and disks 10 000 times larger Cardbox today can provide features that were unimaginable twenty years ago Here s a very
315. ste command is enabled only when there is an image in the Clipboard Using a scanner Cardbox can receive images from any scanner that uses the industry standard TWAIN interface While editing a record you can scan an image by right clicking on the image field and selecting Scan from the pop up menu While you are in the image window you can scan an image by clicking on the toolbar button or pressing Ctrl N or right clicking anywhere in the image window and selecting Scan from the pop up menu If you have more than one TWAIN device for example a scanner and a camera then choose which one you want to use Source This option helps Cardbox to negotiate the correct scanning mode and resolution with the scanner Scan As Picture is a continuous tone image such as a photograph Document is a printed or handwritten document or a line drawing Compressed Document tells Cardbox that this document will be stored in Compressed format see p 140 If Cardbox knows this at the time that the document is scanned it can choose the most appropriate settings Set this option if you want the scanner to ignore any colour when scanning the image Monochrome 162 Using a scanner Quick Scan If you press the Quick Scan button the scanner will start at once It will scan one page and then you will be returned to the Scan Image window You can then change the paper and press Quick Scan again or you c
316. support for compressed images 1991 Cardbox Plus for VAX VMS appears 1994 Cardbox for Windows appears 1996 Version 1 1 of Cardbox for Windows 1999 Version 2 0 of Cardbox for Windows 2004 Version 3 0 of Cardbox for Windows appears It includes a completely new client server architecture for networks and the Internet As you can see we re in this for the long term We engineer our software solidly so that it ll go on working for ever and whenever we have to expand the database format to handle bigger records or more records or images and objects we make sure that your old databases stay readable If you have a Cardbox database on a 5 floppy disk from the mid 1980s then you may have difficulty finding a computer that can read disks of that size but once you ve read the disk Cardbox can convert your data to the latest format so that nothing is lost The macro recorder is a feature of the Professional Edition Cardbox as a software package Finding your way through the features A software package is a conjuring trick that gives you tens of thousands of man hours worth of programming for the price of an hour or two s consultancy The trick works because enough people have similar enough needs to make the economics worthwhile Inevitably this means that there are features that you don t want to use perhaps even features you can t imagine anyone else wanting Don t worry those unwanted feature
317. sword e f your logon account becomes inaccessible or has to be deleted and re created the remembered password may be lost In that case you will have to enter the workspace password the next time that you open the workspace The storage of the password is only as secure as the relevant Windows security systems We didn t write them We have no reason to believe that Microsoft have made any mistakes in their implementation of these systems but to make your own assessment of how secure your password will be look up Windows Data Protection on the Microsoft web site On Windows 95 98 and Me there is no built in protection of secret data We ve done our best to get round this deficiency but if you choose to remember the workspace password in these versions of Windows e Anyone who uses your computer will be able to open the workspace without being asked for its password e Anyone who takes a copy of your workspace file and tries to use it on a different computer will be asked for the workspace password It follows that there is no security threat if you make a backup copy of your workspace file and it is then stolen e Someone who takes a copy of your workspace file and is also able to spend some time at your computer extracting technical information from the Windows Registry and has enough technical expertise to know what to look for may be able later to open your workspace file on his own computer without being asked for its p
318. t gt Paste Ctrl V Edit gt Edit Record Ctrl E File gt Save As New An alternative method of duplicating a record If there are only a few fields that you want to carry over from the original record to the new one Edit gt Duplicate Record can be overkill whatever time you save by not having to retype the fields you lose by having to erase all the fields you don t want In this case there s an alternative Before you create the new record move onto the one whose contents you want and do Edit gt Copy Record Nothing will appear to happen but actually the whole of the current record will have been copied into the Windows clipboard Now use Edit gt New Record to create a blank record and start filling the record in as usual Whenever you come to a field that you want to be identical to the original record use Edit gt Paste When the clipboard was filled using Edit gt Copy Record Paste is little more intelligent than usual it looks at which field you re in and pastes the original contents of that particular field So for example if you use Paste in a field called ADDRESS then you ll get the text from the original ADDRESS field if you use it in a field called KEYWORDS you ll get the text from the original KEYWORDS The traditional Windows alternative In Windows the traditional way of creating a document based on another one has been to edit the document and then to use File gt Save As to save your change
319. t Midlands West Midlands West Midlands West Sussex West Midlands West Yorkshire West Midlands West Midlands West Midlands West Yorkshire West Midlands West Sussex West Midlands West Midlands West Midlands West Yorkshire West Midlands West Sussex West Sussex West Yorkshire West Sussex West Glamorgan West Sussex West Glamorgan West Sussex West Glamorgan West Sussex West Sussex West Yorkshire West Midlands West Yorkshire West Yorkshire West Yorkshire West Midlands West Yorkshire West Midlands West Yorkshire West Midlands West Yorkshire West Midlands West Yorkshire West Yorkshire West Yorkshire Simple sorting Custom sequence looks at all the indexed words Sorting 105 After sorting Once Cardbox has sorted your records you can view them in the sorted order or print them or write them to a file If you were looking at the results of a search command when you asked Cardbox to perform the sort that is if you were not at Level 0 then Cardbox will not forget the chosen order until you undo that search command any search commands that you enter within the current one will automatically show their results in the order you have chosen If you add a new record while the records are sorted it will appear at the end of the list to put it in its correct place you will have to sort again If you edit a record while the records are sorted it will not change position even if the changes you made mean that the record is no long
320. t enter text automatically Batch editing cceecceceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeseeeseeeenneeseeesneeseeesnenseeesnes Setting Ue Datch edit saarea n e RAE A Performing the batch editse iieri eccuorsuveresia Adding IMAGES eceeneececeeeee eee neeeee se seeeeesesesneeseseeenseseeenenens Getting the image into Cardbox eee eee eee eects terest eeeeeeeeee Preprocessing the imag 6 Compressing and storing the image Contents Rearranging and deleting images Regarranging IMAGES 6 5 secedsssesedensses decsedaetcesesesetsocescuodcestarscbeecevdenncecshtert Deleting images Editing mago Sk eiii ea an a ani a aa ae ve eee Deduplication csecccceeeeeceeeeneeeeeeeseeeseeeeneeseeeseeseeeseeeseeeenes How to deduplicate a database eeeseeeeeeeieeeeeesrerrerreereerresnn Part Five Creation How to create a database csscsseeesceessseeensneeeeeenes 173 Creating an empty database file ee eee eee eeeeseeeeeeseeeeneeeneeeeees 173 About formats ccceseee cece scence en scence enseeeeeeenseeeeeenseeeenenseenenes 177 The things a format Can CONtAIN siirettiin anerian 177 How to edit or create a fOrimat scccceseeeceeeseeeseeeeeeeeeeeeees 183 The format design SCECN ceseeeeeeeeeeeeeeseeeeseseeeeeeneeeeenes 184 Headings and footings anina inead asie aaa 188 Field Sie in e a aA a a a eea Eta Teeter Alternate field views Merge blocks
321. t the daybook on our Internet server and access it from anywhere in the world Some warnings OLE is a way of linking programs with other programs We didn t write those other programs and we can t guarantee how well they will work with embedded objects If they don t work well it s not our fault Try out the actual software before you embark on any big projects An OLE object is useless without a program that understands how to make it work This is an important thing to remember on a network You may store an Excel spreadsheet inside your Cardbox record but it if you view it from a computer that doesn t have Excel you will be able to see the record but you won t be able to open the spreadsheet Make sure that everyone who should be able to open your objects has software that will let them do so Only the Professional Edition is able to set up user profiles but any edition of Cardbox can use them once they have been set up See Passwords and User Profiles p 253 The concepts of Cardbox 41 User profiles Your copy of Cardbox lets you do anything you like to the databases you create This is only fair since it s your copy of Cardbox and your data But as soon as someone else is involved if you re using their data or they re using yours it is better to be a little less trusting You may be able to redesign your formats edit records delete records and so on but it doesn t follow that everyone e
322. t thinks We reckon that once you ve got these things under your belt the mere step by step details are easy Either they ll be obvious already and you won t have to think about them or you can press a key and look them up in the Help But the understanding has to come first and that s what this book is for Our goal has been to make something so interesting and so clear that you d buy it to read on the train even if you didn t own a computer Perhaps that s impossible but we ve had fun trying and the result is a lot closer to the ideal than any other computer book we ve ever seen Cardbox Home Edition If the thing you re holding in your hands says Cardbox Home Edition you re looking at a slightly different kind of animal This is no longer just a book that tells you how to use Cardbox it actually is Cardbox itself and you ll find the software on a CDROM at the back of the book ready to load into your computer As you might expect from its name the Home Edition of Cardbox has fewer features than the Professional Edition and it costs quite a bit less To design the Home Edition we went carefully through the Professional Edition and removed features that were relevant only when several people were sharing a database eg profiles and passwords or when the user of the database wasn t the designer of the database eg validators or that needed quite a bit of expertise from the database designer and quite a lot
323. tarted with the three letters T H E When Match Entire Field as One Unit is turned on the asterisk is a wildcard that matches any character at all even a space If this option is turned off Cardbox will match parts of the field words or groups of words as well as the field as a whole for example searching for THE would find records where the field contained the word THE somewhere within it but contained other words too and searching for THE would find records where the field contained at least one word starting with T H E When Match Entire Field as One Unit is turned off the asterisk matches any character except a space This is to maintain the concept of searching for words within a field If you search for B G then you want to find fields containing the words BIG and BORING but you don t as a rule want to confuse matters by being given THE BUS WAS GOING FAST as well just because one word started with B anda later one finished in the same field happened to finish with G 92 Match Punctuation If this is turned off Cardbox ignores punctuation marks when matching your search text against a record If it s turned on Cardbox treats punctuation marks just like any other letter Match Case If this is turned off Cardbox ignores the case of letters when matching so that LTD will match Ltd If it s turned on there won t be a match because some of the letters are in a different case
324. th the validator description You decide which validators can be overridden and which ones can t when you design the format for your database If the validator was designed not to be over ridden the Override check box will be disabled When you are saving a record the error box will have one more button marked Save Record You can use this to make Cardbox save the record at once it s effectively the same as saying Override for every validator 154 Correcting an error If you can easily see what was wrong with the term your validator is complaining about you can edit it directly in the Terms box If you want to index or unindex the term use the Index checkbox just beneath it If you prefer to edit your record directly press Go To Record or Close and you ll be taken to the place in the record where the error has been detected The difference between the two buttons is that Go To Record leaves the error box visible on the screen and Close closes it Validators that change the text you have entered Validators can be set up to unindex certain words stoplists or to index them keyword lists Either way the process is completely automatic and you don t need to do anything about it it happens when you move out of a field you ve been editing or when you save a record Validators can also be set up to put dates into a standard format There are many variants of this but to take one example you might find that wh
325. than a shorthand for the records that Cardbox has found for you they are entities in their own right When you ve made a selection you can give it a name and store it for later use you can cancel the search and do another one and come back to your stored selection later on or you can even combine selections together Levels of selection Every time you perform a search command it acts on whatever is in your current selection This means that if you enter two searches in a row then you ll only find the records that fit them both Combining searches in this way is a good way of building up complex Boolean searches The status bar has a Level indicator that shows how many combined searches you ve made level3 means that you ve combined 3 searches and level 0 means that you haven t done any searches at all and you re looking at the whole database The concepts of Cardbox 25 Fields Fields are subdivisions of records You design how records are divided into fields when you design your database and you can add or remove fields later on if the design evolves or you change your mind about it this is very easy and it won t cause any upheaval to the records that you ve already got in your database In a database of people you might have fields for name address telephone number date of last or next contact In a database of books you might have fields for author title publisher subject keywords shelfmark and so on
326. that matches both of them is a tedious effort In cases like this fuzzy matching is the solution In fuzzy matching Cardbox finds index terms that almost match what you put in the Search For box Effectively it plays the sort of game that children play when they try to transform one word into another one step at a time It keeps the score like this Remove a letter Insert a letter _Replace a letter by another one What you put into the Fuzzy Match box is the maximum score that you are prepared to allow in other words the maximum difference between the word that Cardbox finds in its index and the word that you specified in Search For There is one extra refinement often you re certain of the first few letters in a word and it s later that doubt sets in You can save Cardbox some work by telling it that the first few letters aren t fuzzy and must be matched exactly that way it won t have to look through so much of the index For example if you put 3 2 in the Fuzzy Match box you are telling Cardbox that the first three letters must match exactly and the rest of the word is allowed a fuzziness of 2 88 Here to continue the game is a set of words that are only 2 steps apart in a fuzzy match Search string EM Col altare mi tatare Changes that make the strings match SMITH SMYTHE 1 Replace by Y 2 Add E JONES JOHNS 1 Insert H 2 Remove E WATSON WATERSON 1 Insert E 2 Insert R HILLI
327. the database into order using those fields The aim of this exercise is to make a sequence in which similar records are close together If you are sorting on just one field you will probably get better results if you create a custom sequence using just that field rather than using a simple single field sort this is because the custom sequence will look at every indexed word in the field rather than just the first one 3 Use Tools gt Deduplicate and tell Cardbox which fields to look at 4 Cardbox will select the records that appear to be duplicates of each other 168 5 If you are confident that all the duplicates really are duplicates just use Tag gt Select to select the black tagged records followed by Edit gt Batch gt Delete to delete them 6 If you are not quite sure if everything that Cardbox has found really is a duplicate for example if you have been comparing records by name and two different people might genuinely have the same name then browse through the records and tag or untag them as appropriate before selecting and deleting the tagged records Specifying the deduplication Deduplicate ID ID CODE MJK etc v CODE MJK etc NAME Name if omitted v NAME Name if omitted same as HEADINGHeading COMMENTS not used by the com On the right is a list of the fields that Cardbox will use when comparing records To add a field to the list select it in Available Fields and press Add or just
328. the edited record If you like what you see press Save or type S and Cardbox will save the record and offer you the choice of Next Batch Display Quit again You can alternate Save and Next until you re sure that the editing is working the way you want it and then press Batch to let Cardbox edit the rest of the selection fast If you realise that some more editing needs to be done press Edit or type E any editing you do now will be added to the keystrokes that Cardbox has already memorised If you want to leave this record untouched and go on to the next one press Skip or type K Cardbox will abandon the changes it has made to this record and move forward to edit the next record in the selection Batch editing 159 If you want to abandon the batch edit altogether press Quit or type Q Cardbox will abandon the changes it has made to this record and stop the batch edit Batch editing a handful of records The official use of batch editing is to edit the whole of a selection or the whole of it starting from a certain point Officially if you want to edit a few records in the middle of a selection you should select them and then batch edit the whole of that smaller selection For small selections there is a good and lazy alternative using step by step batch editing Suppose you want to edit four consecutive records in an identical way Move onto the first one and set up the batch edit Save the record then type N fo
329. theory but it never really works Problem names include Sir Percy Blakeney Sir Percy Lee Kuan Yew Mr Lee and Salvador Dali Domenech Mr Dali If you really want personal salutations have one field for the name and one for Dear and fill in both fields yourself a human being can handle the subtleties much better than a computer The line disease The line disease is something you catch from using database programs that can t cope with fields more than one line long So you get ADDRESS LINE 1 Chadwick House ADDRESS LINE 2 Cley next the Sea ADDRESS LINE 3 near Holt ADDRESS LINE 4 Norfolk ADDRESS LINE 5 instead of having a single field for the whole address This makes form design more complicated and it makes editing more difficult if you need to insert an extra line at the beginning of the address you ll have to move line 4 to line 5 line 3 to line 4 and so on instead of just typing a new line Worst of all it also makes searching more difficult because if you re searching for a word in the address you won t know which line it s in and you ll have to search each of the five separate fields Make the address into one big multi line field and you ll save yourself a lot of trouble 244 Help Point 622 gives an example of output to the Palm Address Book The keyword problem This is also caught from other database programs If you need to have k
330. tion and loan status Given a suitable barcode reader and a bit of programming you d have the core of a library automation system Helkama a 148850 Title Mr Dear Jerry Born 19 67 Jerry Fisher SURNAME SN FIRST NAMES FN AVAILABILITY AY Fisher Jeremy 4 WEEK NOTICE ADDRESS AD LAST CONTACT LD 3 Lily Walk Eq Updated 25 14 2002 CT 22 03 2004 MJDS Moreton in Marsh EXPERIENCE EX COMPUTER SYSTEMS CS Gloucestershire GL56 90P Telephone Nos HOME NH 01207 380102 ay VK NV MOB NM Visa Valid Oma Oworking OHoliday CONO Nat Ins No STAFF SE SiK J CV Received F SALURT SA QUALS QU Obegree Pd Chart Apren NOTES NO PER CONT PC SOURCE SO Contact History DATE DA EE 19 03 2004 Un Show CV to POSITION PO Underwater constructor y PRESENT EMPLOYMENT CO Potter Engineering TRANSPORT TR yes RADIUS RA PREVIOUS EMPLOYMENT PS 19 03 2004 UnknownlD 17 47 Finally here is an epic format This is the nerve centre of a recruitment agency that deals with over 25 000 candidates Each record contains a candidate s details CV qualifications references and a complete history of every conversation interview and job offer The designer has filled the format with pushbuttons for every conceivable purpose making a note of a conversation planning the date of the next contact dialling a telephone number offering a job This format scrolls thro
331. too and he is not the only one The following example comes from an agricultural institute in Chile whose main business databases are bibliographies related to crop management and animal husbandry Entrada_de_lechuga_con_camarones_a_la_crema Entrada mariscos 6 personas Tiempo de preparaci n aprox 20 min 1 lechuga grande lavada y cortada en trozos grandes 1 2 kg de colitas de camarones 6 cucharadas colmadas de crema 160g 3 4 tarro grande 1 cucharada de whisky o pisco 2 cucharadas colmadas de mayonesa 2 cucharadas de ketchup Sal pimienta 1 Cueza las colitas de camarones en agua hirviendo 3 a 4 minutos y p lelas 2 Mezcle la crema nestle con la mayonesa el licor y el ketchup Sazone con sal y pimienta 3 Mezcle la lechuga con los camarones y ba e con la salsa en el momento de servir One of the glories of Cardbox is how infectious it is you start using it for one main purpose and then you discover others and still others Bibliographies One of the most irritating tasks that any academic researcher faces is maintaining a list of references It s irritating because it s a distraction from the main job but it still has to be done right There is nothing that terrifies a Ph D student more than finding an absolutely crucial quotation in the finished thesis but having no idea at all where it came from W S Hamer The British Army Civil Military Relations Oxford 1970 lan Hamilton Listening forthe D
332. tructure of the database as a whole to create a field in the database you create it in the native format The things a format can contain When you start designing a new format you are faced with a big blank screen The things you can place on this screen are Fields e Merge blocks e Fixed text e Lines and boxes e Graphics e Pushbuttons e Headings and footings Fields p 189 A field holds data It is the fundamental unit of a Cardbox database A field can be as big or as small as you like just one character or many lines long The size of a field on the screen does not limit the amount of text that the field can contain but for most purposes it is better to have some reasonable relationship between the two because scrolling within a field can be awkward To find out what fields exist in a database Cardbox looks in the native format so although a field doesn t need to occur in every single format in the database some formats may not even have any fields at all every field must always occur in the native format Name Anthony Alcott Position Org sation Alcott Associates Address 8 Gresham Road Bexhill on Sea County East Sussex ra SS Postcode TN39 6DT MailCode 1 Country This merge block pulls together the text of two fields to display a candidate s name Merge blocks can also control the appearance of the fields they use here by adding italics About formats 179 Merge block
333. ts of the paper that cannot be printed Most printers especially laser printers can t print closer than 14 7mm to the edge of the paper e Images aren t shown in the preview instead you get a box of the exact size that the image will be when printed e f you re previewing a sheet of mailing labels you can move the mouse over each label and Cardbox will highlight the exact area occupied by that label Accuracy of preview Your printer can print 300 600 or even 1200 dots per inch Your screen typically works at 96 dots per inch You can see the difference between printed output and the screen display in this sample This difference can make the previewed output look a little strange Let s take an example Suppose you re using 10 point type On a 600 dots per inch printer this will be 83 pixels high On the screen that equates to 13 3 pixels on the screen and since you can t have a fraction of a pixel Windows has to choose either a 13 pixel high font for the preview which will be slightly too small or a 14 pixel one which will be quite a bit too large Either way the words will end up the wrong height and the wrong width as well either too short or too long Cardbox makes up for this by positioning the start of every word exactly where it would be when the page is printed but this means that the words may end up jostling each other or having wide gaps between them Don t worry the preview is only meant to
334. u one example adding a couple of fields to control the sending of Christmas cards We ve chosen Christmas cards as an example because they re a chore that most people can relate to but of course selective mailings are an important part of almost any commercial activity Simple document management This database stores all your incoming correspondence so that you don t have to wade through piles of paper when you want to find a letter or document The key to this exercise is that you scan the letters you receive into your Cardbox database and you use Cardbox fields to assign categories and keywords so that you can find the documents again You can read the documents on the screen or you can print them out Most of the time you won t need to look at the paper originals ever again but if you do want to keep some of them they may be official documents that prove something important that s easy too You give each document a number when you put it into Cardbox and then you can put all the pieces of paper you want to keep into a single binder in numerical order When the binder gets full you just start another binder You can see a picture of this database on page 221 There are six fields apart from the scanned document Date so you can select correspondence by date or sort it into chronological order Number a reference number If you have the Professional Edition then Cardbox can assign numbers for you automatically You use t
335. ugh many screens and half a dozen different formats also activated by pushbuttons zoom in on different stages of the recruitment process A vast array of standard letters covers CV updating job offers and interview results The concepts of Cardbox 31 Native and alternative formats The very first format you create for a Cardbox database is called the native format and it s special Most formats tell Cardbox where to draw your fields but before it can even do this Cardbox needs to know something more fundamental what fields exist The native format answers this question if a field is in the native format it exists in the database If it isn t it doesn t Drawing a field in the native format causes it to exist in the database Deleting a field from the native format destroys the field itself and all its data The native format also tells Cardbox more about each field e What it contains text images or objects e How itis to be indexed every word nothing at all or under user control e Its name e A short description Apart from this special role the native format is a format like any other In really simple databases the native format may be the only format you need Alternative formats Any format other than the native format is called an alternative format It can use any field that exists in the native format but it doesn t have to use them all and the fields don t have to be the same size or laid
336. ve the mouse to where you want the merge block to start press the mouse button hold it down move the mouse to where you want the merge block to end and release the mouse button Cardbox will draw a rectangle for you and make the merge block that shape and size 2 Once you ve released the mouse button the merge block will appear on the screen and Cardbox will take you straight to the Item Properties command so that you can set up other attributes of the merge block including the text it contains Editing the text of a merge block The easiest way of editing the text of a merge block is to do it in Item Properties see below but you can also edit the text directly within the format design window To do this use one of the following methods e Select the merge block and then do Edit gt Edit Text Directly Ctrl E e Right click on it and select Edit Text Directly from the menu that pops up Hold down the Alt key and double click on the merge block When you ve edited the text click outside the merge block to confirm the changes if you don t like what you ve done click outside the merge block and then do Edit gt Undo Ctrl Z to undo the changes 196 For HTML and XML output see Help Point 518 Setting merge block properties To set or change the properties of a merge block double click on it Alternatively select it and then use Edit gt Item Properties or press Enter The merge text The text of a m
337. w steps are easy Start at Level 0 select the sex to get to Level 1 select the age to get to Level 2 select the location to get to Level 3 Select RAT and you re at Level 4 You might be tempted to include SNAKE at this point but if you did you d get absolutely everyone who kept snakes even 40 year old Scotsmen But if you use Select Also it ll look back at your Level 3 selection girls between 8 and 12 in London find SNAKE among those and add them to the Level 4 selection you ve already got RAT which gives you exactly what you wanted In this simple example you could have got away without using either Include or Select Also because Cardbox lets you search for both RAT and SNAKE in one single command but in more complicated cases where you really do need those commands this example helps to explain the difference between them Undoing search commands Undo One Level Undo goes back one level of selection from Level 3 to Level 2 or from Level 1 to Level 0 For basic search commands this is similar to undoing the last command Clear All Selections Clear undoes all selections at once and gets you back to Level 0 where all the records in your database are visible and ready to be searched You can also use the toolbar to do this by holding down the Ctrl key as you click on the Undo button Search gt History View gt Highlight Matches Searching the database 75 Seeing where you are History of Selections Wh
338. would fit on the paper there is an example on p 118 Printing images When you print a record that contains an image field the image field will be printed along with everything else unless you specifically tell Cardbox not to print any images Faster printing p 81 But you can also print images on their own without the record This is useful if you have large images such as scanned documents or more than one image in a record While viewing a record you can print an image by right clicking on the image field and selecting Print from the pop up menu While you are in the image window you can print an image by clicking on the Print button in the toolbar or pressing Ctrl P or right clicking anywhere in the image window and then selecting Print from the pop up menu Printing options You can choose to print all images just the current image or all images that you selected by clicking on their thumbnails Cardbox prints one image on each page and shrinks large images so that they fit inside the paper It will automatically rotate an image before printing it if this will make it fit better 114 File gt Print Preview The Print Preview command The Print Preview command lets you see how the printed output will look You can look at the preview in two ways either the whole page can be shrunk to fit your screen or you can see a part of the printed page at its full size e Acoloured margin shows you the par
339. wse Tag Relational View Window Macros Help Eisial ail fe eea Gd Bi ee eb Yt New Galpin fil TYPES OF PAYMENT C heque B anker s Draft E urocheque Lloyd s Credit N otes Cash X Girobank credit P ostal Order M astercard S tanding Order V isa G irobank cheque O Money Order 1 payments fil evel Record 1 lt i gt ont In this case each window can be moved and resized in any way you want and you can see several databases at the same time MEEI This database indexes trade cards of musical instrument makers from the collection of Tony Bingham for a future illustrated book One database window at a time If you maximise one of the database windows then it grows to fill the whole Cardbox window and the result looks something like this CARD DETATT re eee Bote p aA GEST T O S SERA I M Roe for Add Artist dvor Engraver of Cord fe n This means that you can only see one database window at a time but on the other hand you have enough space to see far more of it People sometimes get confused by the fact that there are two sets of window control tools at the top right hand corner of the Cardbox window The top set think of it as the outer set minimises maximises or closes Cardbox as a whole The bottom set the inner set controls the database window inside Cardbox and lets you minimise resize or close just that window leaving the rest of Cardbox unaffected If
340. x stores its macros in VBScript a programming language developed by Microsoft This means that each macro is essentially a mini program and it can do a lot more than just blindly repeat a sequence of actions that you ve recorded into it You can edit your macros to make them more intelligent they can loop through a collection of records they can perform calculations they can pick up text from a field and use it in a command Taking this one step further you don t need to record a macro at all you can create it from scratch in Cardbox s macro editor Your macros can interact with other programs not just Cardbox all major Windows applications have a programming interface that is accessible through VBScript and so do many parts of Windows itself Your macros can open web pages send emails send faxes open and modify Word documents you are limited only by your imagination and by the abilities of the applications that your macros talk to Cardbox also lets you do the same thing in reverse for example Microsoft Office macros can talk to Cardbox and do searches in its databases see page 267 264 Tools gt Play F5 Change Format Close Cardbox S Detach amp Display Field amp Display one field S EditandS ave amp Eudora multiple The Special menu won t appear on the screen unless it has some macros in it How to play a macro The simplest way of playing a macro is to press the Play button on
341. y Pressing F6 will switch between the main record and the extra text Extra Text is useful for unstructured text associated with the record but not everyone needs it if you can t think of a use for it ignore its existence To make the Extra Text visible turn on Format Contains Extra Text To make Cardbox automatically show Extra Text just below the main record when you first use this format turn on Format Display Starts With Extra Text Visible As with any other field you can t put Extra Text into a format unless it already exists in the native format If the native format doesn t contain Extra Text the Extra Text options will be greyed out and disabled in any alternative format Description Whatever you type into this box will be shown in the View gt Change Format window when you click on the name of this format Of course you should try to make the format s function self evident from its name but in case it isn t try to describe its characteristics or purpose briefly here for the benefit of someone who isn t sure what the format is for In a few months time that someone may be you Spelling This tab lets you choose which fields will automatically underline misspelt words you can turn this feature on and off by pressing Shift F7 while you are editing a record but it makes life easier if Cardbox starts out in the mode you want This tab also lets you choose which dictionaries Cardbox should use when it checks
342. y or tells you that it can t be found It can look in the current field or in all fields It selects highlights the text that it finds so that you can replace it simply by typing if that is what you want to do If you don t want to replace the text deselect it by clicking somewhere else or pressing the left or right arrow key To search for another occurrence of the text press F3 When the search gets to the end of the field or of the record it ll start again from the beginning the field name on the status bar will flash to tell you that this has happened 146 Edit gt Replace Ctrl H This command has many options and features For full details of what they all do press F1 when the command is open Finding and replacing text To search for and replace a piece of text use the command Edit gt Replace Find and Replace Jeverything inthis field F Find To replace all occurrences of a word or fragment of text fill in Find What and Replace With and then press Replace All To look at each occurrence and decide if you want to replace it press Find instead of Replace All Cardbox will then show you what it has found and let you decide whether to ignore this occurrence Skip or replace it Replace Tools gt Highlight Dubious Spellings Shift F7 Tools gt Check Spelling F7 Spelling checker 147 Spelling checker Cardbox has a built in spelling checker You can ask it to check
343. y the owner of the master profile can perform a restricted operation If user profiles haven t been set up then Cardbox asks for an access code The access code is a number computed from the serial number of your copy of Cardbox We give out access codes only to registered users of Cardbox You can ask for an access code when you register or you can ask for it later on when you decide that you want to use encryption or user profiles Only the Professional Edition of Cardbox can set up encryption but all editions can use encrypted databases It is your responsibility to make sure that your actions with Cardbox are legal and this includes the use of encryption We cannot give you any advice on the legality of encryption where you are and you should consult your legal advisers Encryption 257 Encryption For complete security you can encrypt your database An encrypted database cannot be read by anyone who does not have the key What encryption protects you against If someone steals your backups or makes a copy of your database files he will not be able to read your database unless he has somehow also got hold of your encryption key The database remains permanently encrypted even while you have it open Cardbox simply decrypts portions of it after it has read them from the disk and before it makes any use of the data it has read The reverse process happens when Cardbox has to write to your database file it encrypt
344. you can easily add new ones if you want On the left is a contact list suitable for inserting into a personal organiser You can buy special paper for this it has two perforated organiser pages within each large laser printable sheet Below you can see a mail merged letter that pulls in fields from a record You can use this kind of format for personalised letters individually or in bulk for filling in the blanks in standard forms or contracts or for emails or faxes You can have as many different letter formats as you like Ms Mary Padfield Derry amp Mann Ltd 121 Bolt Road outhampton ampshire S03 8DA Dear Ms Padfield Here are the product details you requested Following our recent conversation I enclose details of the products you are interested in I will contact you next week in order to arrange an appointment but if you would like to discuss anything beforehand please call us on 06881 289000 and quote reference PICBASE Yours sincerely Damian Taylor 29 30 oso o0 M M Setting up pushbuttons and macros is a feature of the Professional Edition On the left is an example of a barcoded label produced by a Cardbox format A field in the record contains the number and Cardbox draws the barcode automatically You could use this in a library with each label identifying one book The record for the book would contain all its bibliographical details plus its loca
345. you have more than one database open in your Cardbox workspace you can use Ctrl F6 to switch from one database window to the next To move through your database windows hold down the Ctrl key press F6 until you get to the window you want then release Ctrl Alternatively use the Window menu which lists your database windows by name or use the command Window gt Windows 48 For more about workspaces see page 61 A look at the Cardbox screen The top of a Cardbox window n Cardbox winser BB File Edit Search View Tools Window Help lala kia es eeka Ged i effets eee The title bar if you have several different workspaces you can use File gt Workspace to give each one a different name in which case the name will appear at the top in place of the word Cardbox If you have a database window that is maximised so that it takes up the whole of the Cardbox window its name appears on the title bar as well The menu bar contains all Cardbox s standard menu commands The miniature Cardbox logo on the left appears when you have a maximised database window and it gives you access to that window s System menu The toolbar contains buttons for commonly used functions If you re not sure what a button does hold the mouse over it for a moment and a brief description will appear If you have the Professional Edition then you can add toolbar buttons of your own If there are too many buttons to fit in the size of your
346. you want to set or change the properties of fixed text double click on it Alternatively select it and then use Edit gt Item Properties or press Enter Text Type the text you want The fixed text item will automatically adjust itself to the size of the text you type Align You can make Cardbox left justify right justify or centre a fixed text item The effect is fairly subtle but it means respectively that the left hand edge the right hand edge or the centre of the item will be exactly aligned on a grid column Appearance You can give a fixed text item its own appearance independently of the appearance of the format as a whole For appearances and how to alter them see Appearance p 107 For general rules and caveats relating to individual per item appearances in format design see page 191 Insert gt Line Box Ctrl L The format design screen 201 Lines and boxes Lines and boxes have no meaning for Cardbox they are like the rulings on a pre printed form You can use boxes to tie related items together or lines to separate different regions of your format Inserting lines and boxes The mouse cursor turns into a hollow square Move the mouse to where you want the line or box to start press the mouse button hold it down move the mouse to where you want the line or box to end and release the mouse button If you start and end in the same row you ll get a horizontal line if you start and end in the s
347. you will need to know where they are Workspace files filetype cbw these store information about your workspaces including the names of all the databases that are open and the current selection within each one Losing a workspace file is not disastrous but it is inconvenient To back up a workspace file you need to know its location if you re not sure of this use File gt Workspace to find out Macros filetype cbs if you use macros each macro will be stored in a separate file The location of a macro file depends on the macro s association General and Workspace macros are stored in fixed locations use Tools gt Options Macros Related Databases macros are stored in the same directory as the relevant database and macros specific to a single database are stored ina directory whose name is derived from the database name so that for instance the macros for mydata fil are stored in a directory called mydata fil cbs User spelling dictionaries filetype tlx these files store the words that you have decided should be valid even though they do not exist in Cardbox s standard spelling dictionaries The user dictionaries have filenames starting with ud User dictionaries for a database are stored in the same directory as macros for that database more general user dictionaries are stored in the same directory as general macros but this can be overridden by Tools gt Options Spelling Registry settings Followi
348. ything to start with but you can manually tell it not to index certain terms You can change the indexing mode even after you ve started putting data into your database but the changes won t automatically affect your existing records If you have Manual or Automatic indexing you can also use validators to do some intelligent indexing for you for instance you can set up a validator to index all dates but leave words and numbers alone See Validators p 206 Caption Most fields need some sort of explanation or you won t know what they mean when you look at the screen or at a printout Captions are one way of providing this explanation A field caption appears as part of the field and if you redraw a field or move it around the caption goes with it There are a few cases where a field caption is not a good idea and fixed text is better see Fixed Text p 199 for an explanation Only the Professional Edition of Cardbox can set up validators but all editions can use them once they have been set up The format design screen 191 Highlight dubious spellings Cardbox has a spelling checker which can underline words that seem not to be correctly spelt You can turn this on and off while you re editing a record but if you know that you re always going to want this feature in a particular field set the Highlight Dubious Spellings option This saves you constantly having to press Shift F7 to turn the underlining

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