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Text File | 1992-10-03 | 23.8 KB | 490 lines

VERSION 1.0 of HOLD-ANYTHING! from Elk Creek Software Copyright 1992, M.J.Paulick INTRODUCTION: HOLD-ANYTHING! is a program you can use to hold anything! All those things you really need to keep track of can now be kept safely in your computer with minimal effort. This simple to use (and inexpensive) program is bound to become a long-term friend that remembers everything for you. It's as easy to use as a filing cabinet. HOLD-ANYTHING! lets you store, retrieve, and print any kind of information quickly, simply, and without having to spend a lot of time learning how to do it. With HOLD-ANYTHING!, you can create categories to hold any (and all) kinds of unrelated information. You can quickly locate any item within one of your categories by simply typing the first few letters of that item's name. You can easily print a complete list of any category, or print any number of items from that category by first selecting them before printing. Here are just a few things you can use HOLD-ANYTHING! to keep track of: Meeting notes or project notes Recipes or meal plans. Collections (albums, stamps, coins, cards, art, videos, software, etc.). Trip information for vacation or business, including car mileage, hotels to stay at, interesting sights, etc. Expense account records. Insurance policy organizer. Notes to remember. Diary or log book. Consultant's time log. Investments. Account numbers (banks, house bills, SSN's, drivers licenses, etc.). Credit cards, and numbers to call if lost. People (phone numbers, addresses, birthdays, etc.). Exercise log. Dieting information, calorie log. Hunting or fishing log, to remember those hot spots and how to get back to them. Companies and business contacts. The best part is that you can use HOLD-ANYTHING! for ALL these things! There are many specialized database programs to keep track of everything from investments to recipes. Some of them are fine programs. But who wants to buy (and learn) a different program for each category of information you need to keep track of? Are you really that excited about record keeping? Maybe you want to keep track of your household inventory. You need to record serial numbers, values and descriptions for insurance purposes. All you really need is an organized place to keep this information in whatever form you want to type it, and be done as quickly as possible. Then if your house burns down, you've hopefully kept a copy of this information on a single diskette at work, which you can print and give to the insurance company. HOLD-ANYTHING! makes it so easy, you may actually do this! Speaking of terrible accidents, you may also want a category called "What To Do If Suddenly I Ain't Around" or something like that (25 characters or less), then show your family how to use this program. Maybe you want to keep a log of activities by date. You can add 1 record for every day you have notes you want to record. HOLD-ANYTHING! makes this easy by automatically placing the current date in the Record Name field if you tell it to. You can then enter all information for that date, and easily find any date's entry again. REGISTERING HOLD-ANYTHING!: HOLD-ANYTHING! is provided to you for a free 30-day evaluation period only. If you continue to use it, you need to license this software directly with the author by sending $19.00 plus $4.00 shipping and handling to Elk Creek Software. When you register, you will receive the very latest version with the opening registration-reminder screen REMOVED. HOLD-ANYTHING! is always being improved, so you will probably receive a newer version than you currently have. You will also be put on our mailing list for notification of future updates. You will also receive a FREE copy of NAMEBASE for you to evaluate. NAMEBASE is a great name/address program that has the same look and feel as HOLD-ANYTHING! NAMEBASE is a sophisticated program that keeps track of names, addresses, phone numbers, birthdays, and notes about people or companies. It prints a pocket-size address book, rolodex cards, labels, and many reports. It will even dial the phone for you, and can be used for mail-merge with most word processors. You're sure to like NAMEBASE. If you know how to use HOLD-ANYTHING!, you will find NAMEBASE takes no time at all to learn. HOLD-ANYTHING! is copyrighted, but you may distribute the program freely as long as you make it clear that users are expected to pay the author for the program if they find it useful after a 30-day free evaluation period. Please send $19.00 + 4.00 shipping and handling to: Elk Creek Software 13630 Rampart Dr. Conifer, CO 80433-5106 Don't forget to indicate the diskette size your prefer (360K or 720K) You can also order with your MC, Visa, AmEx, or Discover card by calling 800-242-4775 (from outside the U.S., call 713-524-6394) or by FAX to 713- 524-6398 or by CompuServe to 71355,470. Tell them you want part number 10649. These phone numbers are for ordering only. Elk Creek Software can NOT be reached at those numbers. Product support will be provided by mail, via CompuServe, or by phone for a minimum of 90 days after purchase. You can contact Elk Creek Software on CompuServe at 70640,1614, or at the above address, or by calling 303-838- 5796. We will rush the newest version to you, usually the next day. We sincerely appreciate your honesty, and we'll make you glad you did business with us. There is an option on the REPORTS MENU which will print a registration form if you want to use it. Don't forget to specify diskette size. LEGAL DISCLAIMERS: WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR LOST DATA. You should make regular backups of your data file, which is named HOLD.DAT. THIS SOFTWARE AND INSTRUCTIONS ARE SUPPLIED 'AS IS'. WE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES RELATING TO THIS SOFTWARE & MANUAL, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. WE WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, INDIRECT OR SIMILAR DAMAGES DUE TO LOSS OF DATA OR ANY OTHER REASON. This agreement shall be governed by the laws of the State of Colorado. Any action brought by either party arising out of or related to this agreement shall be brought only in a STATE or FEDERAL COURT of competent jurisdiction located in Jefferson County, Colorado. The parties hereby consent to in personam jurisdiction of said courts. INSTALLING HOLD-ANYTHING!: Simply copy all files from the HOLD-ANYTHING! diskette to any directory on your hard disk, or insert the HOLD-ANYTHING! diskette into your floppy drive if you don't have a hard disk. Then follow the instructions under the heading STARTING HOLD-ANYTHING!. If you need more instruction than that, read below: To install HOLD-ANYTHING! on your hard disk, you should first create a sub-directory. Refer to your DOS manual, or follow these directions: - Make sure you are at the DOS prompt (usually contains a > symbol). - Make sure that the default disk is the one you want to copy HOLD-ANYTHING! onto. You can change the default disk by simply typing the name of this disk followed by a colon (:), such as C: - Make a new sub-directory on this disk using the DOS Make Directory command (MD), such as MD \HOLD This will create a sub-directory called HOLD on the default disk. - Change to this new directory using the DOS Change Directory command (CD), such as CD \HOLD Copy all files from the HOLD-ANYTHING! floppy disk to your hard disk using the DOS COPY command, such as COPY A:*.* C:\HOLD That's all there is to it! STARTING HOLD-ANYTHING!, AND USING COMMAND LINE OPTIONS: You start HOLD-ANYTHING! simply by typing HOLD at the DOS prompt. First make sure you are in the directory where the HOLD-ANYTHING! files have been copied to. For example, if you copied the HOLD- ANYTHING! files to a directory called HOLD on your C drive, and HOLD is not the current directory, you would issue the following DOS commands to start HOLD-ANYTHING!: C: CD \HOLD HOLD Besides the HOLD.EXE file, HOLD-ANYTHING! needs a database file called HOLD.DAT. HOLD.DAT contains your data, and the program will create this file if it cannot find it. You can also have HOLD-ANYTHING! use any other file name for your database by specifying that file name after the HOLD command, such as: HOLD MYFILE.DAT This allows you to use more than one database if you want. Certain monochrome monitors, such as those found on some laptops and other machines, emulate a color monitor. HOLD-ANYTHING! automatically detects the type of monitor you are using and adjusts accordingly, but has no way of knowing that some machines that say they are color are not. If you have a monochrome monitor and have difficulty reading the screens, try starting HOLD-ANYTHING! with the following command: HOLD/B HOLD-ANYTHING! is supplied to you with a sample HOLD.DAT file, which already contains some data. To look at this file, start HOLD- ANYTHING! with the following command: HOLD When you want to start entering your own data, delete this sample file with the following command: DEL HOLD.DAT Then start HOLD-ANYTHING! as before, by typing the following command: HOLD When you don't specify any file name after the HOLD command, HOLD-ANYTHING! looks for a file called HOLD.DAT. If it does not find this file, it will create a new one for you without any records in it. THE FIRST SCREEN: The first screen you see (after the introductory screen) when starting HOLD-ANYTHING! displays up to 40 records at once, with 1 of the records highlighted by the cursor bar. Pressing the arrow keys (also the Home, End, PageUp or PageDown keys) or clicking the left mouse button on any record name moves this cursor bar. To EDIT, ADD, or DELETE the highlighted record, press one of the keys indicated in the boxes at the top of the screen, or click the left mouse button on one of those boxes. On the last line of the first screen, just to the left of the copyright notice, you will see a number. This number indicates how many records are in the currently active category. THE MENU: You can display the menu from the first screen by pressing the F2 key, or by pressing Alt-M, or by clicking the right mouse button. Another right mouse button-click hides the menu again. You choose a menu option by highlighting the option you want (using the cursor keys) and pressing ENTER, or by typing the first letter of that option, or by clicking the left mouse button on any menu option. An alternate way to choose a menu option without displaying the menu first is to hold down the Alt key and press the first letter of that menu option. For example, pressing Alt-C displays the Category Selection menu option. This only works if you have NOT pressed F2 to display the menu first. Pressing the ESC key or clicking the right mouse button will get rid of the menu if you do not want to make a choice. An option not on the menu is Alt-D, which takes you to DOS. You then type EXIT to return to HOLD-ANYTHING!, exactly where you left off. This only works if the menu is NOT displayed, and only if you are on the first screen. ABOUT CATEGORIES: You can separate items in your list into many logical categories within the same file. You can create up to 254 categories in each database, each category containing completely separate data. You can have an unlimited number of databases, simply by specifying a different file name on the command line when you start the program, as described previously. To create categories, first display the menu by pressing F2, then choose the "Category Selection" option. This displays a list of all your categories. Highlight the first item in the list, "CREATE A NEW CATEGORY" and press ENTER, or click the left mouse button twice very quickly on this item (called a "double-click") to display a box which asks you for the name you want to call this new category. Type any name you want and press ENTER to display the previous screen. You will see the name of your new category displayed in the list. That's all there is to it. Now you must choose the category you want to make "active" by highlighting that category name in the list and pressing ENTER, or by double-clicking the left mouse button on that category name. You always know which category you have chosen, because the category name is displayed on the top line of the main screen. CHANGING THE TITLE ON THE TOP OF THE FIRST SCREEN: HOLD-ANYTHING! displays the name of the current category on the top of the main screen. If this is the first time you are using a new file (which HOLD-ANYTHING! created automatically for you,) you will see the title "Category 1 (the default)" on the top line of the screen. You can change this title to anything you like (up to 25 characters) by pressing F2 to display the menu, then choosing the "Category Selection" option. Simply highlight the line which says "Category 1 (the default)" and press the Insert key. Then change the name to "Gardening Information" or whatever else you want for the title of this category, and press ENTER. Then press ENTER again to select this category, and the title on the top of your screen will be changed. SELECTING A RECORD TO DISPLAY OR CHANGE: On the first screen, if you want to quickly locate a record in the list, simply type the first few letters of that record's name. Each time you press a letter, the record name that most closely matches what you typed will be found. Pressing the backspace key will erase the last letter you typed and search for the closest match of the remaining letters. Note that the backspace key has a different function from the left-arrow key on this screen. If a match is not found, the cursor bar will move to the point in the list where this record would have been, and you will hear a beep. You can also use the 4 arrow keys, Page-up and Page-down, Home, or End keys, or the mouse to find a record in the list. Any time you press one of the arrow keys, the cursor bar will move in the direction of the arrow, and all letters that you typed in the search field will be cleared. You can also click the left mouse button on any of the 4 arrows displayed to the right of the list of items. Once you have located a record in the list, all the information about that record is displayed on the bottom half of the screen. If you want to change any of this data, simply press ENTER to go to the EDIT screen, or click the mouse on the ENTER-Edit box at the top of the screen, or click the mouse on the highlighted item. The first mouse click moves the cursor bar to an item in the list. Once the cursor bar is already on an item, another mouse click on the same item takes you to the EDIT screen for that item. To add a new record, press the INSERT key or click the mouse on the INSERT box. To delete a record, press the DELETE key or click the DELETE box. A box will pop up asking you to verify the delete before proceeding. ADDING OR CHANGING YOUR DATA. THE EDIT SCREEN: ENTERING DATA: To get to the EDIT screen you simply highlight a record on the first screen and press ENTER. Or, if you want to add a new record, you just press the INSERT key while on the first screen. Either way, you will then be looking at the EDIT screen. On the EDIT screen, you first enter the name of the item you are entering data for. If you want the name of the record to be the current date, just press F8 and today's date will automatically be entered for you. Then press the TAB key (or the down-arrow key) to go to the notes field. You can then type any information you want to include about this record. The maximum length of the notes field is about 30,000 characters. You can use the Up or Down arrow keys to scroll through your notes a line at a time, or click the mouse on the scroll arrows on the right side of the screen . Some other keys you can use when entering text in the NOTES field: - To move Down a Page, press Page Down, or click the down-arrow. - To move Up a Page, press Page Up, or click the up-arrow. - To move Down to the last line of notes, press Ctrl-Page Down. - To move Up to the first line of your notes, press Ctrl-Page Up. - To move to the End of a line, press the END key. - To move to the Beginning of a line, press the HOME key. - To Delete the entire line that the cursor is on, press Ctrl-D. - To Add a new line, press Ctrl-A; this will insert the new line above the line that the cursor is on. - To move the cursor a word at a time to the left or right, press Ctrl-left arrow or Ctrl-right arrow. When you reach the end of a line, just keep typing; words will automatically wrap around to the next line. The EDIT screen has various option boxes at the top of the screen which indicate the key to press for that option, just like the first screen. You can also click the left mouse button on any of those boxes. NOTE: If you decide to enter your own dates in the Record Name field (rather than just pressing F8 for the current date), make sure you type the date in the form YEAR-MONTH-DAY (YYYY-MM-DD). Example: 1992-10-29. Otherwise, the records will not sort in date order, making them more difficult to find. TRANSFERRING RECORDS BETWEEN CATEGORIES: You can copy or move a record from one category to another. You must first display the record you want to copy or move on the EDIT screen. You then press F3 for Transfer. This displays a list of all categories. Pick the category you want and press M to move or C to copy the record to the selected category, or click the mouse on the appropriate box. THE REPORTS: Before printing any reports, make sure you have chosen the correct printer using the SETUP OPTIONS menu option. If any reports have "garbage" characters on the first page, or the report does not fit on the page, you may have chosen the wrong printer setup option. Most printers in the known world claim compatibility with either the Epson, IBM, or Hewlett Packard printers. If you have another brand of printer and are having trouble, consult your printer manual for instructions on how to set up your printer to emulate one of the above printers, and then select the appropriate printer option. MAKE SURE YOUR PRINTER IS TURNED ON AND IN 'READY' STATUS. After making sure your printer is ready, select the Reports option from the menu. Select the report you want from the list, and press ENTER, or double-click on the report you want. The next screen asks you to select specific records to print (press F10 to see the selection screen), or lets you just press ENTER to print all records in the current category. At any time, you can change your mind and not print the report by pressing ESC. You can also cancel a report while it is printing by pressing ESC as long as HOLD-ANYTHING! is displaying the blinking PLEASE WAIT message. Be aware that many printers have buffers which accept the data before printing it, so cancelling a report will usually not stop the printing immediately. You can print a single record by first highlighting that record on the first screen and pressing Enter, which takes you to the EDIT screen. Once you are at the EDIT screen, press F6 to print all the data for that one record. EXPORT TO FILE HOLD.OUT One of the "reports" does not print at all, but instead creates a standard ASCII file. The HOLD.OUT file will contain all data for every item (or every item you select) in the current category. This file is deleted and recreated each time you run this export "report". The HOLD.OUT file is a standard sequential ASCII file. It contains two fields. Each field is surrounded by quotes, and separated from the next by a comma. Each record ends with one Carriage Return and one Line Feed (CR LF) character. HOLD-ANYTHING only has two fields, so that is all that is contained in the HOLD.OUT file. The first field in each record is the name you decided to call an item, and the second field is all the notes you typed in for that item. This file is useful if you want to import this data into another program, or to move many records at once from one category to another. To do this, you first create the HOLD.OUT file by running the "Export to file HOLD.OUT" report, then copy that file into any category you choose by using the "Import file" function on the menu. Please be aware that any double quotes in your data will be exported as single quotes because double quotes are used to delimit each field within the HOLD.OUT file. IMPORT FILE: To copy a HOLD.OUT file back into HOLD-ANYTHING!, choose the "Import file" option from the menu, pick the category you want to copy the HOLD.OUT file into, then press ENTER. Be aware that this could take a bit of time if you are dealing with a lot of records. HOLD-ANYTHING! will first verify that all your records in the HOLD.OUT file are o.k. before it starts adding them to the file. If it finds any errors, no records will be copied. An example of an error is if any record has less or more fields than HOLD-ANYTHING! requires. This could happen if you created the HOLD.OUT file yourself with a text editor, and did not follow the format that HOLD-ANYTHING! expects. If a record with the exact same name already exists in the category you are copying into, it will be replaced with the record from the HOLD.OUT file. If you have records with duplicate names in the HOLD.OUT file, only the last one will be added to the category EXITING HOLD-ANYTHING!: To end HOLD-ANYTHING!, simply press the Escape key (Esc) from the first screen. Do NOT turn off power to the computer before you see the DOS prompt. Wait for HOLD-ANYTHING! to completely end, and for the DOS prompt to appear. LAST, BUT MOST IMPORTANT: ALWAYS back up your data file after using HOLD-ANYTHING!! Do this by copying your HOLD.DAT file to a floppy disk, with the command: COPY HOLD.DAT A: This assumes that your floppy drive is drive A: We hope you like HOLD-ANYTHING!, and look forward to showing you the exciting new features in future versions. Thanks for giving HOLD-ANYTHING! a try! _______ ____|__ | (R) --| | |------------------- | ____|__ | Association of | | |_| Shareware |__| o | Professionals -----| | |--------------------- |___|___| MEMBER This program is produced by a member of the Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP). ASP wants to make sure that the shareware principle works for you. If you are unable to resolve a shareware-related problem with an ASP member by contacting the member directly, ASP may be able to help. The ASP Ombudsman can help you resolve a dispute or problem with an ASP member, but does not provide technical support for members' products. Please write to the ASP Ombudsman at 545 Grover Road, Muskegon, MI 49442 or send a CompuServe message via CompuServe Mail to ASP Ombudsman 70007,3536.