******************************************************* | *** IT'S RECOMENDED THAT YOU DON'T MODIFY THIS FILE *** | ******************************************************* | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- &&&&&& & & &&&&&& &&&&& &&&& &&&& & & && & & & & & & & & & && & & & & &&&&&& &&&&& & & &&&& & & & & & & & & & & &&&&& & & & & & & &&&&&& & & & & & & & & & & && & & & & &&&&&& & & &&&& &&&& & & & & &&&&&& & & & &&&&& &&&&& &&&&& &&&&&& &&&& &&&& & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & &&&&& &&&& &&&& &&&&&&& & & & & &&&&& & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & &&&&& &&&&& & & &&&&&& &&&& &&&& &&&&&& & & &&&& &&&& & & & & & & & & & & &&&&&& & & & & &&&& & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & &&&&&& &&&& &&&& & & ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents: 1. Running Personal Address Book 2. Adding New Records 3. Editing Existing Records 4. Searching for Addresses 5. Transferring Addresses to Other Applications 6. Using HELP 7. Performance and Implementation Issues 8. Credits and Copyrights ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. RUNNING PERSONAL ADDRESS BOOK When you execute the program for the first time it will give you a message "No database found...". Don't worry, it means that your address book contains no addresses and a new data base will be created for you as soon as you add your first record. Just click OK and proceed normally :))) *** DO NOT MODIFY THE NEXT LINE *** 2. ADDING NEW RECORDS In the main window locate the "Add" button and press it. A new dialog box will open up with several edit boxes where you enter your data. The edit boxes are grouped by: * Name & Address * Phone & Fax * E-mail & WWW * Note * Location The edit boxes are self explanatory. The only one that I will mention here is "Location". When you write down someone's address or phone number it might be their home or work or school address and/or phone number. You have to have means of identifying the location of the addresses and/or phone numbers. That's why I included this field here. There are 5 options to choose from: - Home - School - Office - Work (not everyone works in an office) - Other If you select the "Other" option, the edit box below will be automatically enabled and you will be able to type in your own specific location that you want to assign to the record. When you're done entering the address just click OK. Make sure that at least one of the search fields (Nickname, First Name, Last Name, E-Mail, WWW Address, Phone Number) contain data. If you leave all of these fields blank the program won't let you save the data. It needs to have some way of searching for the record(s) you've just put in. 3. EDDITING EXISTING RECORDS In the main window locate the "Edit" button and press it. If you don't have a record displayed already, you will be prompted to choose whether you want to add a new record or cancel the operation. If you click YES refer to ADDING NEW RECORDS section. Otherwise you will get the same dialog widow as in the previous section but some or all of the fields will be filled with data. 4. SEARCHING FOR ADDRESSES First, in the box labeled "SEARCH BY" select the field you want to perform the search by (First Name, Last Name etc.). The "Last Name" is chosen for you by default. Then you can click on the check boxes below to narrow the search criteria. - Starts With: Looks for records that start with the string in the SEARCH FOR box. Checking this check box automatically disables the MATCH WHOLE WORDS check box. - Case Sensitive: Checking this box forces the to be sensitive to characters' cases. - Match Whole Words: Looks for records whose field(s) contain the exact copy of the string in the SEARCH FOR box. Checking this box automatically disables the STARTS WITH box. Finally go to the box labeled "SEARCH FOR" and type the last name or first name (or whatever other field you chose to search by) and click on the "FIND" button. A record will be displayed in a rectangular area right beneath the caption "Enjoy Your Personal Address Book". If there are more than one record found, then you can view the other records by pressing the little buttons with ">>" or "<<" signs. The number next to these buttons is the counter. It shows how many records were found and which record you’re viewing. For example, 3/7 means that your looking at the third record out of 7 that were found. There is a option to display all the records that your address book contains. In order to do that, in the "SEARCH FOR" box enter * (often called a wild card) and click on "FIND". You will be able to browse through all the records in you address book. 5. TRANSFERRING ADDRESSES TO OTHER APPLICATIONS When an address is displayed in the white display area, you can extract any or all the information you can see there. Just highlight the fields of information you need and right click on the white display area. You will see a popup menu where you can choose COPY and the highlighted components will be copied to the Windows clipboard. Now you can use any word editor and paste it there. If you want all the displayed info, just right click on the display area, choose SELECT ALL, then choose COPY, and again you can paste it in your favorite word processor. 6. USING HELP In the main window locate the "Help" button and click it. A new window will pop up with some credit info at the top, a large viewing box containing this text in the middle, and three buttons on the bottom. If you press the "Print" button the contents of this help will be sent out to the default printer (if you're not hooked up to a network it will be sent to the printer hooked to your computer). If you're having problems finding something and you know its there, or if the records displayed contain some "garbage" you can try to rebuild the Database by pressing "Fix DB". This might fix the problem. When your done, make sure that you close the entire program and start it again before searching for other records. When you’re done with the help screen click "Close" to close the help window and go back to where you were before. You can also access the help window from the Add/Edit dialog. The exact window and information will be displayed but the text will be automatically scrolled down to the section about adding/editing records. 7. PERFORMANCE AND IMPLEMENTAION ISSUES The Personal Address Book was written in C++ using Borland C++ compiler with OWL 5.0. It should run on any 32 bit MS Windows platform. The records are stored on a disk in the file "data.pab" (I don't recommend that you modify this file directly) and in the "backup.pab". I have tested this program on a slow 486DX/66 32 Mb RAM using 5000 records and the searching performance has not significantly decreased as compared to 1000 or less records. If you have a slower computer and/or less memory then you would probably notice a slight drop in the search speed at 5000 Records. The "Backup.pab" file holds a copy of all the records as of the last use of this program. If you should accidentally delete "Data.pab" or if this file should get corrupted in any way you can use the "Fix DB" button in help window to restore/fix the data. 8. CREDITS AND COPYRIGHTS Feel free to copy and distribute this program. If you encounter any bugs, errors or if you just have any comments please report them to: Rafal Szukala rszukala@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu