Area Codes
Area Codes by Anthony Stuchel

Have you ever wanted to find out the area code for a particular state or province? Ever wanted to find out the country code for a country you want to call from the U.S. or Canada? Ever gotten a phone number with a strange area code from a magazine ad or something, and wanted to know where that phone number is located? If you answered "yes" to any of the above questions, then Area Codes is for you!

Brief Instructions

Area Codes is very simple and intuitive to use. There are two groups of phone codes:  the U.S & Canada codes and the International codes. Each is on a separate page that you select by clicking on the appropriate tab at the top of the window. Once you are in the right part of the world, type in the information that you are looking for in the edit boxes near the top of the page. Area Codes will search for the closest match in the list box immediately below. Press ENTER or double-click the selected line in the list box to find more specific information. Select the Reset button at the bottom right of the page to reset the list boxes to include all available codes.

If you would like more information on how to use Area Codes, select one of the following:

Main Menu

How to Use Area Codes

Adding, Editing, and Deleting


Main Menu

File

Reset (Ctrl -R)

Select this to reset the lists on the current page to include all available codes.

Exit

Exit Area Codes.

Edit

Add Entry (Ctrl-A)

Add an entry into the Area Codes database. See Adding, Editing, and Deleting for more information.

Edit Entry (Ctrl-E)

Edit a currently existing entry into the Area Codes database. See Adding, Editing, and Deleting for more information.

Delete Entry (Ctrl-D)

Delete the currently selected entry from the Area Codes database. See Adding, Editing, and Deleting for more information.

Help

Help on Area Codes (F1)

Opens this help file.

About Area Codes (F9)

Gives you copyright and warranty information about Area Codes.


How To Use Area Codes

Step #1

Area Codes contains two pages of information:  the U.S. & Canada codes and International codes (codes for all countries that do not use the three digit area code system). First select either page by selecting the tab at the top of the window.

Step #2

Let's assume that you are looking for the area code for Shreveport, Louisiana. There are a number of ways that you may begin this search.

1)	Begin typing "Louisiana" in the edit box below the "State/Province" title. As soon as you type in the first few letters, you will see that Louisiana has been selected in the list box in that column. You may now press ENTER or double-click on "Louisiana" in the list box.

2)	Begin typing "Shreveport" in the edit box below the "City" title. As soon as you type in the first few letters, you will see that Shreveport has been selected in the list box in that column. You may now press ENTER or double-click on "Shreveport" in the list box.

3)	Instead of typing in the state or city, you can find them in the list boxes manually by scrolling through and selecting them. Once you have selected the state or city, press ENTER or double-click on the state or city.

Step #3

After you pressed ENTER or double-clicked, the number of items in the lists becomes much smaller. That's because Area Codes now displays information specific to the previously selected item. For example, if you double-clicked on "Louisiana," the cities that are listed will be only those located in Louisiana, and the area codes listed will be those in Louisiana. If you previously selected "Shreveport" there may be only "Louisiana", "Shreveport", and "318" available in the list boxes. That's because you found what you are looking for! 318 is the area code for Shreveport, LA.

Step #4

At this point, you could double-click "Louisiana" again and the full list of cities and area codes in Louisiana would appear. You can select various cities and area codes at your leisure. When you want to look at the entire list of area codes for this page again, select the Reset button at the bottom right of the window. This will reset the list boxes to include all available data.

Other Considerations

The International codes page works in the same manner. The only difference is that the International page does not have area codes, but instead uses country and city codes. Some cities may not have city codes, but all countries have country codes.

If a list box ever has "<NONE>" as the first entry, this means that there is no information for that field in the Area Codes database. If there is a "<NONE>" in the "City" field, then no cities have been entered for that state or country. If there is a "<NONE>" in the "City Codes" field, then there is no city code for that city (which is the case for some international cities). See Adding, Editing, and Deleting for more information about editing the Area Codes database.


Adding, Editing, and Deleting

Area Codes is basically a database of information. Therefore, you can add, edit, and delete entries in the Area Codes database. You do this by selecting the menu items from the Edit menu. Here is a list and description of the operations you can perform.

Add Entry

You can add a new entry at any time. You are provided with a dialog in which you enter the information for a new entry. For U.S./Canada entries, you provide the State or Province, the City, and the Area Code. You may leave the City field blank, but you must enter a State/Province and an area code. This is the best way to add your city if it was not included in the list of area codes.

For International entries, you provide the Country, Country Code, City, and City Code. You may leave the City and City Code fields blank, but you must enter the Country and Country Code. Select the OK button to verify the addition, or the Cancel button to exit without adding.

Note:  Area Codes isn't smart enough to know that only certain states have certain area codes. So if you enter something like "Texas, Houston, 318," it will not complain (even though 318 is a Louisiana area code). Be sure you enter in correct information, but if you mess up, there are ways to fix it.

Edit Entry

You may only edit an entry if list box fields have been selected. You are provided a dialog much like the "Add Entry" dialog. This time, some of the information is filled in already for you. All you need to do is change those fields that you wish, then press the OK button to verify the change, or the Cancel button to abort the changes.

Note:  The Edit Entry option will change the entry to whatever you enter into the edit fields--even if what you entered is something completely different than what used to be there. Again Area Codes does not watch for such things as moving Shreveport to New York state, so be sure you enter in correct information.

Delete Entry

You may only edit an entry if list box fields have been selected. A dialog with appear confirming whether or not you want to delete the entry. Select Yes to delete the entry or No if you change your mind about deleting the entry.

ACK! I Messed Up the Whole Thing!

All of this adding, editing, and deleting of the Area Codes database may leave it in quite a mess if you make enough mistakes. Never fear! There is a way to recover the database.

Area Codes makes a copy of the AREACODE.98 data file whenever you modify it. This data file is put into the \WINDOWS\SOFTDISK\AREACODE directory. The original copy in the directory in which the actual program is located is never changed. Area Codes will always try to read the copy before it tries to read the original. So if you want to revert the data file back to before you made any changes, simply delete the copy in the \WINDOWS\SOFTDISK\AREACODE directory. All fixed!