User`s guide

• •• B ASIC TIPS •••
(All tips are by HP Palmtop Paper
Managing Editor Ralph C. Turner,
unless otherwise noted.
You can con-
tact Ralph at ralph _ turner@thad-
deus.com)
Speed search
If you're like most palmtop users, your
C:\_DAT directory
is filled with so many
files that, when
in FILER, it's difficult to
quickly locate and highlight a particular
fi
le.
Although you can use the
ArrowKeys, as well as the PageUp and
PageDown keys, to scroll through the
files, there's an easier way: speed
search.
Just start typing a file's name.
FILER will jump to the file even before
you've finished typing its name.
You can also use speed search
while
FILER is "working." For instance,
if you've highlighted the C:\_DAT
direc-
tory and pressed (ENTER), you can
start typing the name of a file even
before
FILER displays the first screenful
of files.
Date stamp phone records
My Phone Book has a tendency to
become clogged with so many records
that it gets unwieldy. But cleaning out a
1,000-record database can be a chore
in itself. Not only can you forget who
some of the contacts are, there's no
way of knowing how old a record is.
Unless, that
is, you have some sort of
system.
In order for my system to work, I've
set the date format to "97-08-22." To do
this, open Setup by pressing
(CTRL)+(FILER), then (MENU) Qptions
l2atefTime. Then set the "Date Format"
to "YY-MM-DD" and press (F10) (OK).
Whenever I create a new
PhoneBook record, I enter the date into
the Note field. To do this, press (F3)
(Note), (Fn)+(Date), then
(F10) (OK).
[Actually, I have a macro that presses
(F2) (Add New
Item), then goes to the
Note field and presses (Fn)+(Date).]
Here 's how I determine what
records to purge. First I press (MENU)
~iew .sort. When the "sort" window
appears, I select the "Note" field (and
toggle
"Ascending") as the "1 st sort
field." Then I press (F10) (OK), and all
the records get arranged by date of cre-
ation, from oldest record down to
newest record.
I can now easily recognize the old-
est records (those that may be candi-
dates for purging.)
Hal Goldstein
Publisher, The HP Palmtop Paper
haLgoldstein@thaddeus . com
"Cannot open file"
If, when you try to open either the
PhoneBook, ApptBook, Database, or
NoteTaker applications, you're
present-
ed with an "Error - Cannot open file"
message, it means that the program
can't find the last file you
had open in
that program. (See Screen 1.)
These four programs automatically
open whatever file was last loaded into
them. The error message indicates that
the file has been deleted, renamed,
cor-
rupted, or moved.
So what do you do? If the file has
been deleted, you may still be able to
recover it. Go into FILER, press
(MENU) file .undelete. If you or your
palmtop haven't performed any save
operations since the file was deleted,
you'll probably
be successful in undelet-
ing it.
If the file can't be found because it's
been renamed, change its name to the
original name by going into
FILER and
pressing (MENU)
file Rename.
If you suspect the file's been cor-
rupted, retrieve a backup of the file (and
read Ed Keefe's "Through The Looking
Glass: Fixing Database
Files" in this
issue).
If the file has been moved, use
FILER to return the file to its earlier
I Cannot. open file I
Screen 1. If an application can't find the last
file it read, you may get this error message.
location: highlight the file, then press
(F3) (Move) [or, alternatively, press (F2)
(Copy) ] to put the file
in the path where
it was before
you moved it.
Finally, if none of the above reme-
dies work, press (ESC) to get rid of the
error message, then press (MENU)
file
New to start fresh with a new file. Or,
alternatively, press (MENU) file Qpen
to use another file.
Accommodating multiple
addresses
How do you handle the fact that many
people nowadays have more than one
address? For example, Mr.
Smith may
live in a Manhattan apartment during
the week, reside
on the weekends at his
Connecticut house, and spend his
vaca-
tions at his Colorado condominium.
Although the standard PhoneBook
structure has two address fields
("Address1" and "Address2") it has only
one set of fields for
"City," "State" and
"Zip." There's no easy way to enter in
more than one of Smith's complete
addresses.
Two different methods for
accom-
modating multiple Phone Book address-
es have been discussed by Ron Vieceli
([e-mail]) and
Avi
Meshar (100607 . 2125@com-
puserve.com) on CompuServe.
The first method involves creating a
new Phone Book
database that has
room for multiple addresses.
Since any
database record (including a
Phone Book record) can have
up to four
pages of fields, a database can
be cre-
ated that has more than enough room
for multiple address fields, as well as for
additional miscellaneous fields.
(See
Screen
2 and Screen 3.)
To create a PhoneBook database
with a new structure, first go to
FILER
and make a copy of your existing
PhoneBook file (PHONE.PDB). Use a
different name for the new file, such as
PHONE2.PDB.
Open the Database
application, then press (Menu) file
Qpen and load the PHONE2.PDB file.
(The file formats are the same for the
Database and the Phone Book
applica-
tions; only the file extensions are differ-
ent.) Now press (Menu) file Modify
Database. In order to bring up a second
(or th i
rd or fourth) page that you can
add new fields to, press
THEHPPALMTOPPAPER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997 31