¢SOFTWARE SCENE¢¢ADDRESS DATABASE AND ENVELOPE PRINTER¢¢Supplier: John Foskett,¢ 26 Auckland Road,¢ Kingston-Upon-Thames,¢ Surrey KT1 3BG,¢ UK.¢¢Price: 6.00 Pounds¢Make cheques/POs payable to "J.Foskett"¢Overseas add one pound towards postage¢¢ Address Database and Envelope Printer (hereafter referred to as ADEP) is a new product from John Foskett. As the name implies, it was created especially for storing addresses and then printing them out whenever required. The program comes on one disk and boots up fairly quickly, presenting you with 14 options labelled A-N.¢¢ Five of these options (B, H, I, J, K, L and M) are "disk options", allowing you to get a file directory, load a previously stored file, save a new file, lock or unlock a file, prepare a disk for saving files onto (in ADEP's own special format) or change the disk drive which ADEP uses as the normal drive (assuming of course that you have more than one drive).¢¢ The first thing to do upon booting the program is to set the date using option A. This is always displayed in the six digit format but, cleverly, you could enter the date as either "09-04-95" or "9-4-95" and ADEP will convert it to the standard six-digit format anyway. The program even knows how many days are in each month and so will only allow legal entries (e.g. 31.09.95 is not allowed as there are only 30 days in September!). These features give a user-friendly feel to the program.¢¢ Next you may wish to enter the password which is recognised by ADEP. As standard, this is stored as "QWERTY" but of course can be immediately changed to something more appropriate. But why would you want a password??? Well, ordinarily, what's to stop someone from saving over or reading your files? With the password function, files can only be edited once the password has been entered. You also have the option of saving your files in one of 10 restricted file areas for which password authorisation must be given before they can be loaded and viewed. A useful feature.¢¢ Option C will allow you to create records. These consist of a name line, four address lines and finally, one telephone number line. These can later be added to a previously created file or stored as a new file.¢¢ Option D allows you to find a specific record (address) either by number, by listing them in sequence or by searching the records for a specific string (phrase or word). Once you have found the required address, the program gets really useful.¢¢ One of the main uses of the program is for printing on envelopes. Basically, you can choose the option of printing on a 229x161mm (A5) envelope or a 220x110mm (A4 paper folded into 3 panels) envelope. As well as printing the address, you have the option of printing your own address, preceded by "sender" or "if undelivered please return to", and the option of printing a warning such as "magnetic media - do not x-ray or bend" or "computer disks enclosed - do not x-ray or bend". It is also possible to simply print all of the addresses stored in a file for reference.¢¢ 24-pin printers may allow printing to take place in one of several fonts but 9-pin printer users can only print in the one. If the program doesn't appear to work correctly with your printer, the printer control codes can be modified using one of the menu options, allowing you to gain compatibility.¢¢ In case you haven't already guessed, ADDRESS DATABASE AND ENVELOPE PRINTER is a comprehensive, quality product and the best program of it's kind that I have come accross.¢¢ Small niggles include the fact that only four lines are available for address storage (which can sometimes be a little limiting) and only capital letters can be used in files.¢¢ I have no hesitation in recommending ADEP. If you send lots of letters it could well prove to be essential. Buy it immediately.¢
