May 1999
News Letter
A message from the President:
The April 8th meeting was well attended with 29 people including 3 guests.
3 members paid their dues for another year and 2 guests joined.
The Question and Answer period was better than average with several people getting useable answers.
I tried something I’ve wanted to do for a while and could never think of it during a meeting: I’m familiar with most of the faces at the meetings and get largely the same names on the sign-in sheet each meeting, but when I try to put them together, later, I’m lost. So I pointed to each person in each row and named the ones I could and let them tell me, if I couldn’t. I was amazed at how many I could name already and intend to do this until I can name everybody.
A few members brought their ‘93-’97 Newsletter Archives floppy to exchange for the updated one, ‘93-’98 and a few bought the updated ones outright. It’s the best $1 you can spend for your computer. I’ll have more available at the May 13th meeting.
Several people took new Familiarity Forms and three were actually turned in.
Possibly this was due to the rules governing our monthly door prize: If you win, you get a $10 gift certificate from Staples unless your name is on the Statistics Sheet and then your door prize is doubled to $20. Percy Bell was the lucky winner and his name is on the Statistics Sheet. Do the math, how much did he win? Blank familiarity forms are available from me at each meeting. Get one.
We then had a very well received presentation on the subject of Spreadsheets.
Members learned, the instructor learned and it was a win-win situation. Our president, Larry Thompson, talked for nearly an hour and didn’t run out of material. We were in that fabulous room 132 and had a projector/monitor for all to share in the proceedings. We are scheduled for that same room in May, and we’re getting spoiled because it won’t always be available to us.
After the presentation on Spreadsheets 101, we voted on the reworked Constitution and By-Laws that Mark Pendergast so carefully revised. They were unanimously approved and are now our guiding documents. There was a copy in your January Newsletter and I’ll have several more copies again at the May meeting.
We need more members to pay their dues. Somebody’s dues expire each meeting, so come to a meeting and pay your dues. If your mailing label is highlighted, you are overdue. Pay ‘Em!
Chris Andrews, an Ivy Tech Lab Technician, helped me import my Works Database into my Access Database and the steps are told in a subsequent article.
On the subject of speakers, we have a lot of experience and talent, within our users group. Speak up, Volunteer and we’ll listen to your presentation.
In honor of National Limerick Day, May 12th: We’ll celebrate National Limerick Day
On the twelfth of the month of May
I worked on these lines
Through troubled times
But sadly, I have little to say.
Larry L. Thompson, President, Kokomo IBM PC Users Group.
--------------------------------------------------------The Windows 98 Upgrade
In April I purchased a Kling's 13GB Western Digital hard drive to replace my 2GB. Writing out the check was the easy part....now came the chore of installation, formatting, and installing all my programs. I must admit that this was the easiest install I been through, but I have discovered that I still haven't learned to backup all the data I will be needing.
I removed an old 540MB slave drive, moved the 2GB down to the bottom bay, and installed the new 13GB in the top bay remembering to set the jumpers. With only a few cuts on my hands from the metal frames, all was going well. I plugged in the power and data cables and put the computer back on the desk without the cover on (I have learned something). The old hard drives used to have little instruction books that always got lost and before the Internet you had no idea how to set jumpers. Most of the current drives I've seen have little diagrams right on the drive case; I guess they lost the booklets too.
I inserted the Windows 95 boot disk and crossed my fingers as I turned on the power. My computer booted up with Windows 95 from the now D: drive. I was surprised and happy that it booted, but how was I to get to the new C: drive? The next logical step was to unplug the cable from the slave drive and boot only with the new master. Now I had an A: drive, but no C: or D:. This called for another cup of coffee and a long stare at the computer. Finally I realized that the 13GB drive was pinned as a master, but there was no slave cabled. Fortunately the jumper pins were in the back of the drive and I could just reach in and remove the jumper. This time I booted to A: and was able to find a drive to partition. The next mistake was partitioning with the default 16-bit format that partitioned my 13GB drive into one 2GB drive. This sort of defeated the purpose of getting the extra space....I ran the fdisk program again and selected 32-bit format. I knew it was done correctly when the format took about 20 minutes.
Now I was really on a roll. I plugged in the cable to the slave drive and reset the jumper on the master even though I noticed that everything worked without the 13GB pinned as a master drive. After a discussion with a friend, I decided to go right to the 98 Upgrade instead of installing and configuring 95 and then upgrading. This caused a problem with Internet Explore, but I've gotten over it. The 98 disk will ask you to insert the old 95 disk for a few minutes, then go on with the install. The next problem encountered was a second "Communications Device" which turned out to be a modem. I had not installed the modem driver properly and Windows 98 was telling me this by trying to set up a second one the right way. I tested this theory by trying to get to the Internet...no way! I finally deleted the second modem with a question mark next to it and the LT Win Modem. With the next reboot the system detected the modem and I installed the driver by actually following the software instructions.
I was afraid to test the waters too much so I just installed the programs I really needed for school and the Internet. A few days later I got brave and installed almost everything I have. Of the 13GB I've used 2.3GB. This is about the time I discovered that I had forgotten to write down my "Options" and "Custom" choices in Office, and that my favorite calendar program has a little glitch in Windows 98. Everything works and prints, but in at least two places when pulling up a small "go to date" calendar the month shows up as "February 247" instead of the correct month and year. Considering that all my other old programs work under 98 I guess I can't complain. The new version of Internet Explorer also caused a problem by using Outlook Express to handle email. I was used to Microsoft Internet Mail and wanted to continue with it, but IE4.0 has other ideas. My only choices in the Internet properties-programs are Outlook and Outlook Express. I decided that maybe a change would be good so I searched the Microsoft site about how to get my old address book and messages into the new Outlook. It only wants to import the old 3.0 versions and I had upgraded to 4.0 about a month ago. Once again I just cussed and accepted it; after all it was my fault for not printing out my email before I started this adventure.
So now I have Windows 98 and 98 Plus! Pack installed, IE 4.0, Office 97, and all my games up and running. I made a boot disk during the installation that I labeled and stored. 98 Plus! set up McAfee and I made a VirusScan Emergency disk after hearing another club member's report about how it cleaned up a virus on his computer. I can now surf the net and bring home disks used at school without worrying about a nasty virus destroying my system. That will happen the next time I get a bigger hard drive!
Marcy Young
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IMPORTING A WORKS DATABASE INTO ACCESS
The help screen in Access tells you that you can’t directly import a Works Database. You must first convert it to another format. They recommend db IV.
That didn’t work for me. My help came from Chris Andrews, an Ivy Tech Lab Technician. He recommended first converting the Works Database to a Text Database. There-in lies the secret. After doing that, you must identify all of your fields from Works and in Design View, tell Access where all those fields are going as well as listing their size and format. It seems to me that Marcy Young and Mark Pendergast had each recommended trying Text w/Tabs and Test w/Commas. I believe those were also good approaches to my problem. I made a wrong choice by rejecting delimited data and chosing spaces between columns. This crunched all my data into fewer fields and rendered it useless. Choosing delimited data straightened my fields and was the key to success. I had 10046 lines of data in Works and it loaded, at the end of my 24,000 entries in Access, in just a few seconds, maybe 15-20. Incidently, the Access Database had to be closed before this process could take place. It took me about a month to input all those 10046 entries into the Works Database and I was willing to do it all over, if necessary. You can only imagine my delight when all that data transferred in such a short time.
When you need to input a Works Database into Access, I recommend these steps:
1. Save your Works Database as Text.
2. Jot down the precise name of your Access program.
3. List the field names you will be using.
4. List the field sizes and formats.
5. Write the Name and Location of your Works Database Text.
6. Call up Access without opening any database.
7. Choose Input External Data from the File Menu.
8. Fill in the blanks in Design View and stand back ! ! !
9. If this doesn’t work, see Chris Andrews.
Larry Thompson 4-9-99
SOUR NOTES
Every once in a while my computer made some horrible sound after I had committed another illegal operation. After putting up with that clank for some time a friend suggested that I just change the sound to anything that I want.
Ok, so where do you find sounds to replace the ones you don’t want. Simply use a search engine to look for either sounds or .WAV files. One of my favorite sites is: http://soundamerica.com/
Now you have to get the sound onto your computer. Right-click on the sound-file link and choose "Save Link As..." A box will pop up showing the name of the chosen sound file and where it’s presently going to be saved on your PC. Feel free to change the name of the file but do not delete the file extension .WAV. I place mine in a file called "Media." To get it there, click on the "C:\" drive in the "Save in" field. Then open the "Windows" folder, followed by the "Media" folder. Now hit "Save."
To assign your sound to a computer action or function, click on the Start button. Choose "Settings" and then the "Control Panel." Click on "Sounds." This will open "Sounds Properties."This window will list all of the events to which you can assign your new sound. Highlight an event, and then click on the Browse button. A new window will pop up and show you the sound
files saved in the "Media" folder. Find your desired sound clip, highlight it, and click "OK."
After you hit "OK," you’ll be taken back to the "Sound Properties" window. There, you can testyour new sound by clicking on the Play button. If you like what you have done, just hit Apply.
Jerry Henry
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RECYCLE YOUR FLOPPIES--PART 1 OF 2
If you discover a floppy disk full of files you’ll never use again, don’t throw it away. Assuming you know the disk is still in good
condition (if you aren’t sure, stay tuned for
our next tip), recycle it.
With the disk in your floppy drive, double-
click My Computer, then right-click your
floppy drive icon and select Format. Select
Quick (Erase) and type a label for the disk,
if you want (up to 11 characters). Click OK,
wait for a message telling you the operation
is complete, click OK, then click Close. Now stick a fresh, clean label on that disk.
It’s good as new!
Next tip, performing a full format....
Ed Danley
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RECYCLE YOUR FLOPPIES--PART 2
OF 2
In our last tip, we showed you how to wipe
a floppy disk clean of all files for easy
recycling. With the disk in your floppy
drive, double-click My Computer, right-
click your floppy drive icon and select
Format, Quick (Erase), and click OK. If you
aren’t sure that the disk is error-free, or if
you have a disk that you know needs
complete reformatting (such as one that was
formatted for a Macintosh system), you’ll
want to perform a full format to ensure that
the disk is safe to use.
Follow the steps above, but inside the Format dialog box, select Full under format
type. Type a label for the disk, if you want
and click OK. Windows 95 will now wipe
the disk clean, check it for errors, and prepare it for file storage.
Ed Danley
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Hot Site
Over thirty years experience as a reference librarian has shown me that occasionally a question shows up that I haven’t a clue how to find the answer. This site is one of the best that I have found in this situation. Simply type in a short sentence that asks what you want to know. If no reasonable answers are found, it is a good idea to rephrase the question at least once before giving up. Quick example: what are the ten commandments of American Indians? I typed in "10 commandments of Native Americans?" The results come up as Jeeves Knows The Following and gives you a list of possibilities. This was a real reference question and Jeeves nailed it.
Jerry Henry
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This month’s User Bucks
Marcy Young $2
Ed Danley $1
Jerry Henry $1
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If a meeting is cancelled due to inclement weather, radio station WIOU and WWKI will be notified by 5:00 P.M. on the day of the meeting.
Membershp Dues: $10
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Larry Thompson, 457-5622
Vice-President Ross Jordan 457-4894
Treasurer Richard Coop Sr., 459-8731
Member Services Rodney Malkoff, 453-1159
Director Paul Mays, 219-626-2689
Newsletter Editor Jerry Henry 453-4144
Newsletter Distribution Ed Danley, 453-7004
Group WWW site http://www.iquest.net/kokopc/
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