The Business Master (3rd Edition)

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MEMBERSHIP LIST a MAIL LABEL PROGRAM VERSION 7.11 PROGRAM DESCRIPTION/OPERATIONS MANUAL NOVEMBER, 1991 COPYRIGHT 1988 LLOYD C. BOWEN, JR. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Membership List and Mail Label Program Copyright 1988 Lloyd C. Bowen, Jr. All Rights Reserved. TABLE OF CONTENTS System Requirements.................................1 Getting Started.....................................1 CLUBNAME.REC........................................1 Programs Included in the System.....................1 System Overview ....................................2 Printer Supplies....................................3 Sorting.............................................3 Choose Procedure....................................3 File Structure for MEMBER.REC.......................4 Mail Merge and Exporting Files......................4 Importing Files.....................................4 Formatted Output....................................5 Procedure Descriptions..............................5 Procedure #1 - Display..........................5 Procedure #2 - Print Mail Labels................5 Procedure #3 - Print Lists or Print to Disk.....5 Procedure #4 - Print Envelopes or Folders.......6 Procedure #5 - Print Multiple or Return Labels..6 Procedure #6 - Print Cards or Large Labels......7 Procedure #7 - Print Special Labels.............7 Procedure #8 - Add New Member...................7 Procedure #9 - Revise Member Record.............7 Procedure #10 - Sort Member Records..............8 Procedure #11 - Delete Member Record.............8 Procedure #12 - Import or Export Records.........8 Error Codes ........................................8 Sample Merge File for PC Write.....................10 Shareware Concept Shareware is Copyrighted Commercial Software! You are allowed to try before you buy, and freely give copies to your friends to try before they buy. Only distributors authorized by the author may make any charge for copies of Shareware programs. Anyone who finds the program useful is required to send payment for use of the program to the author or his listed agent. Please send any communications and your $20.00 Registration Fee to: Lloyd C. Bowen Jr. 2213 Peach Tree St. Amarillo, Texas 79109-1922 U.S.A. If you have any suggestion for improvements, let me know. Lloyd C. Bowen, Jr. 6/18/91 Maximum of 2000 Records per File, 1 File per Path Membership List and Mail Label Program Copyright 1988 Lloyd C. Bowen, Jr. All Rights Reserved. System Requirements Requires IBM PC, PCXT, PCAT or PS/2 or close compatible. with at least 256K RAM Getting Started First make a copy of your original disk, put the original in a safe place and use the copy! Copy the files MEMBER.EXE, MEMBER.OVR and MEMBER.HLP onto a newly formatted floppy disk. If you use a 360k floppy disk and your club has more than 1000 members you may want to use a second floppy for a data disk. If you use more than 1 floppy, put the program disk in drive A: and the data disk in drive B: then set the default to B:, type A:MEMBER and Press Enter. This works for hard disk subdirectories also, ie change to C:\LIONS, type C:\MEMBER\MEMBER and Press Enter. Hard disk users can have several different lists, just copy the member programs (MEMBER.EXE, MEMBER.OVR, MEMBER.HLP) into one subdirectory in the PATH (I keep mine in C:\DOS) and then create separate subdirectories for each list. Change to that subdirectory, type MEMBER and press Enter. ·You will create a MEMBER.REC and a CLUBNAME.REC for each subdirectory. To learn your PATH just type PATH and Press Enter. If your screen then says NO PATH you need to add a path command to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Get help if you don't understand. CLUBNAME.REC The information you enter at the initial start-up goes into the file CLUBNAME.REC and is used each time you start up thereafter. The information is also used to print return address labels. To change this data just erase the file and start over. Files Included Name Length Date ================= ======== ========= MEMBER DOC 35122 11-14-91 *MEMBER EXE 36416 11-14-91 *MEMBER HLP 8480 11-14-91 *MEMBER OVR 99283 11-14-91 ROLODEX FMT 10660 06-14-91 ==== ======== Total 5 181755 * Include on same disk and/or in same subdirectory preferably in the DOS PATH. Page 1 ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR FILES! Membership List and Mail Label Program Copyright 1988 Lloyd C. Bowen, Jr. All Rights Reserved. System Overview This program will provide a membership list for the average club. It also provides for Printing File Cards and Addressing Envelopes, Folders and Labels at 6 lines per inch on an ASCII Printer. The program also Prints or Prints to Disk a Membership List and exports/imports SDF (System Data Format), SLF (Separate Line Format) and Delimited files that include all file information. Although others can be chosen the default for delimited files is the "Standard Mail Merge Format" used by most word processors. The program will create files called CLUBNAME.REC and MEMBER.REC when started up the 1st time and reads these files each time you start up thereafter. After this the records you enter won`t be saved unless you save them, this allows you to make changes for just one printing. To revise or delete a record you must KNOW the RECORD NUMBER. Records are RE-NUMBERED EACH TIME you DELETE a record or SORT the file. The record number is shown on the display screen. All fields except "Dues" AND "Select" are character fields and any ASCII character may be entered. Phone numbers allow 13, the normal form is (xxx)xxx-xxxx. Zip code allows 10 in the form xxxxx-xxxx. Street address allows 30, City allows 20 and State allows 4. Each Name field and Title allow 15. The TOTAL of the 3 Name Fields "MUST NOT EXCEED 30" or labels won`t print correctly. Dues and Select are True or False. The "Dates" and Committee allow 8 characters. Comment allows 40. Use the ? for a Wild Card when Choosing records to print or display. All fields may be sorted on and used for other than the named purpose, for instance Title may be used for a Type field such as "Relative" or "Friend" and either date could be birth date. Zip Code has been used for foreign country. Select allows you to select a group of members for addressing etc. which have no other field exclusively in common. I usually use the Folder option, I print my bulletins or form letters all at once then tear them off, turn them over and reinsert, address them using the Folder option, then fold, staple, stamp and mail. I use the Special Label procedure to print Diskette labels, and the Card option to print ROLODEX cards. The routine for formatting Cards takes a while to learn, but the formats can be saved, edited and re-used at will. Note that if you don't like the sizes listed you can pick your own! The Format (.FMT) files take 820 bytes of disk space per line, that is a 4 inch wide ROLODEX Format takes 10660 Bytes for 13 lines and an 8 inch wide by 5 inch long record card Format takes 24600 Bytes for 30 lines - a 66 line Format would take 54120 Bytes and this is the longest supported. The Maximum of 2000 records per file depends on the amount of memory available in the computer (RAM) and the maximum for your computer is shown each time you start the program. 609344 Bytes free RAM = 2000 Records! Directly booted with PC-DOS 3.1, PC-DOS 3.2 or MS-DOS 3.2 I get 2000 for the maximum. The disk file MEMBER.REC will be 230K with 1000 records. If you have more than 100 members on a floppy disk computer you should keep your records on a separate diskette to leave space for the format (.FMT) files. Remember list (.LST) files take as much space as your records! If you have EMS expanded memory the program will use it to store the overlays and run faster. Page 2 ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR FILES! Membership List and Mail Label Program Copyright 1988 Lloyd C. Bowen, Jr. All Rights Reserved. Printer Supplies The mail labels supported are all standard Nebs sizes; Singles are 3.5 x 15/16, 4.5 inch carrier; 2 across are 4 x 15/16, 9.5 inch carrier; 3 across are 2.75 x 15/16, 9.5 inch carrier. Only 8.5 by 11 inch paper is supported (European Size A should work). The envelope printing is set for 3.5 inches between 9 inch envelopes on a tractor feed, use Post Card for narrow envelopes. Sorting Starting with Version 7.0 a separate Sort procedure is provided which allows you to sort on any field. A separate Save procedure is also provided so that you can decide to save your records in whatever order you wish. This is IMPORTANT be sure to SAVE YOUR RECORDS anytime you ADD MEMBER(S). There is no need to sort when you make changes unless you change the Sort Field nor is it necessary to sort when you delete a record. Sorting takes time on big files! On my XT compatible which runs Norton's SI at 2.0 it takes 5 seconds to sort a "worst case" file of 100 records while to sort 2000 "worst case" records takes 55 minutes. The "worst case" means exact matches in the file; I took a 70 record file and copied it almost 29 times until I had 2000 records, then sorted this file on Last Name (Last Name+First Name+Middle Name) which means 70 records that matched character for character 29 times each. Some more XT times on a 2000 record file: LOAD 36 seconds, SAVE 2 minutes 35 seconds, PRINT TO DISK 2 minutes. The same tests on my 8 mhz PCAT which runs Norton's SI at 8.0: Sort 2000 "worst case" records, 17 minutes 25 seconds. Load 2000 records, 19 seconds. Save 2000 records, 21.3 seconds. My 20 mhz 386 does these much faster. The save times are greatly affected by the speed of the disk drive. Floppies are much slower. Choose Procedure In addition to sorting the records on any field you are given the opportunity to choose to operate with only records chosen for some particular attribute. ie city, state, zip code, etc. One new feature of the Choose procedure not noted on the screen is the use of an asterisk (*) in choosing names. If you enter an asterisk when asked for Last Name you can sort for first and middle name only, further, if you also enter an asterisk when asked for First Name you can choose only a particular middle name. You can also enter just one letter or number to choose all records who's field starts with that letter or number. For instance you might have your records sorted by last name and choose to print all records with zip codes starting with 0. This would print east coast addresses in alphabetical order. You might want to print address labels for these and then repeat the process and export a mail merge for your word processor. This is particularly useful when printing folders for mailing, as you can be sure of getting the letters and their addresses on the back in the same order. Page 3 ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR FILES! Membership List and Mail Label Program Copyright 1988 Lloyd C. Bowen, Jr. All Rights Reserved. File Structure for MEMBER.REC LastName:STRING[15] 15 Characters FirstName:STRING[15] 15 Characters MiddleName:STRING[15] 15 Characters Street:STRING[30] 30 Characters City:STRING[20] 20 Characters State:STRING[4] 4 Characters ZipCode:STRING[10] 10 Characters Phone:STRING[13] 13 Characters WorkPhone:STRING[13] 13 Characters Title:STRING[15] 15 Characters *Dues:BOOLEAN Logical - T or F DateJoined:STRING[8] 8 Characters Comment:STRING[40] 40 Characters *Select:BOOLEAN Logical - T or F Committee:STRING[8] 8 Characters DuesDueDate:STRING[8] 8 Characters * Writes a text string when output to Separate Line Format. The File uses 230 bytes per record in Pascal random file. Boolean uses 1 byte while Strings use their length + 1 In some database programs Strings are called Character Fields and Boolean are called Logical Fields. ·The comma delimited file and the SDF file are in the order above from top to bottom. ·The Boolean Fields are 1 character each (either T or F) and the string fields have the number of characters shown in the brackets. Mail Merge and Exporting Files The Membership List produces three types of mail merge, two of which serve as data export files. The types are; Standard Mail Merge or Comma Delimited (Other delimiters may be specified), System Data Format (SDF) or Fixed Length and Separate Line Format (SLF). The first two are used to export data to other programs while the SLF is used exclusively for Mail Merge. All three are output in the order shown above from top to bottom. The SLF file substitutes "Dues are Paid" or Dues not Paid" for the Dues Logical and "Selected" or a blank line for the Selected Logical. The other files use a T or an F for these values as required by most database programs. I use SLF for my mail merge in PCWrite, which supports all three. See Example on Page 10. Importing Files The Membership List imports the three formats mentioned above, and also the MEMBER.REC format used by the program. All are added to your current record but do not have to be saved. This means you can import another list just for one time use, sort it as you wish, make output files and then exit without saving the records. Of course you can save them if you wish to. To Import or Export press I at the main menu. Page 4 ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR FILES! Membership List and Mail Label Program Copyright 1988 Lloyd C. Bowen, Jr. All Rights Reserved. Formatted Output The Membership List allows, the creation, storing, editing and use of formatted (.FMT) files. This allows you to develop files to fill in forms, develop your own forms to fill in or even to use a special size of label not directly supported. Included on the program disk is one such file ROLODEX.FMT that I have used. I also developed one for tow envelopes one to the member from the club and the next one from the member to the club. The second had a place for the member to sign and as you can guess it was for an election. Some of these things can also be done with a word processor and mail merge, so you should consider both and decide which is best for your application. Procedure Descriptions - Procedure #1 - Display The Display procedure (#1 on the main menu) simply displays the entire member record. It goes through the Choose procedure to allow you to choose which records to display. Press F to see the entire file. Procedure #2 - Print Mail Labels The Print Mail Labels procedure (#2 on the main menu) prints mail labels in three formats. All skip a line, print four lines and skip a line. This equals six lines or one inch and ready for the next label. The choices are one, two or three across. Two across starts the second label at the forty second character and three across starts at twenty- nine and fifty-seven. Three across changes first and middle names to initials, but you should try to keep street addresses down to twenty- four characters if you plan to use three across labels or they will chop off 28, 28, 24. Allows you to add blank spaces at the start of each line for printers where this is hard to adjust. Allows you to add blank lines before the first line is printed for page feed printers where the start isn't adjustable. Also allows you to add blank lines after each line of labels is printed which allows you to use different size labels. These options can be changed at will until you choose a label size at which time the program will start printing. Also goes through the Choose procedure to allow you to choose which records to print labels for. Press F to print the entire file. Procedure #3 - Print Lists or Print to Disk The Print Membership Lists or Print to Disk procedure (#3 on the main menu) prints chosen member records in two different formats, either a complete file dump similar to the display format or just name and telephone numbers. Either of these may be printed to disk, which means an ASCII or DOS Text file which can be edited with a word processor. Also goes through the Choose procedure to allow you to choose which records to include on the list. Press F to see the entire file. A menu is next encountered with three choices, Print to Disk, Change Printers and Print Phone List. Change printers calls up the Printer procedure to allow you to change to pure ASCII (Space Bar) if you plan to print to disk. Print to Disk Changes the destination of your data and shows Page 5 ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR FILES! Membership List and Mail Label Program Copyright 1988 Lloyd C. Bowen, Jr. All Rights Reserved. Procedure #3 - Print Lists or Print to Disk (Continued) under the menu. To change back you must exit to the main menu and start over. Print Phone List also shows under the menu. When you have the settings you want, Press the Space Bar to Continue. Since this is a list procedure all disk files are given the .LST extension. You can choose where (drive and subdirectory) to put the file and the name (up to eight characters) but not the extension. Procedure #4 - Print Envelopes or Folders The Print Envelopes or Folders procedure (#4 on the main menu) prints Envelopes in two sizes, Post Cards and Folders. The Envelope and Folder settings are adjusted for 9 inch width (address starts 38 characters from the left edge) and Post Cards for 6 inch width (address starts 21 characters from the left edge). The height settings are; Envelopes 3.5 inches or 21 lines, Post Cards 4 inches or 24 lines and Long Envelopes 6 inches or 36 lines. The return address, if used, starts on line 2 and prints the 4 lines entered when you started the program. If you need to change this, exit the program and delete CLUBNAME.REC. You can now start the program again and enter the new return address. The address starts at line 10 for Envelopes and Folders, line 13 for Post Cards and line 19 for Long Envelopes, this is also 4 lines. Folders now send a form feed code to the printer, as do all HP Laserjet settings. You may add blank lines at the end of any that don't form feed. This allows you to adjust form length as needed for your printer. I use 4 inch by 9 inch Envelopes, but they overlap 1/2 inch on the tractor feed carrier so I have to start 2 lines down on the first envelope to clear the overlap and start a new envelope every 21 lines. Allows you to add blank spaces at the start of each line for printers where this is hard to adjust. Allows you to add blank lines before the first line is printed for page feed printers where the start isn't adjustable. Also allows you to add blank lines after each line of labels is printed which allows you to use different size labels. These options can be changed at will until you choose a what to print at which time the program will start printing. If you need a size not supported I would suggest making a .FMT file (See #6 Print Cards or Large Labels and Formatted Output). Procedure #5 - Print Multiple or Return Labels The Print Multiple or Return Labels procedure (#5 on the main menu) prints multiple copies of a mail label in three formats. All skip a line, print four lines and skip a line. This equals six lines or one inch and ready for the next label. The choices are one, two or three across. Two across starts the second label at the forty second character and three across starts at twenty-nine and fifty-seven. If printing a member record, three across changes first and middle names to initials, but you should try to keep street addresses down to twenty- four characters if you plan to use three across labels. If printing Return labels three across none of your 4 return address lines should exceed 24 characters or they will chopped off 28, 28, 24. Allows you to add blank spaces at the start of each line for printers where this is Page 6 ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR FILES! Membership List and Mail Label Program Copyright 1988 Lloyd C. Bowen, Jr. All Rights Reserved. hard to adjust. Allows you to add blank lines before the first line is printed for page feed printers where the start isn't adjustable. Also allows you to add blank lines after each line of labels is printed which allows you to use different size labels. These options can be changed at will until you choose a label size at which time the program will start printing. Procedure #6 - Print Cards or Large Labels The Print Cards or Large Labels procedure (#6 on the main menu) allows you to create, save, edit and re-use Formatted Output (.FMT) files. The maximums are 66 lines of up to 80 characters each with each line divided into as many as 10 segments. A segment can either be typed by you or it can be any of the fields in the member record or one of the return address lines. The record fields are shown as blanks (except for the logical fields) for the maximum length allowed. This means that if you have fields such as first, middle and last names which allow 15 characters each (45) and you know that the total of the three never exceeds 30 then you can safely exceed the 80 characters when creating a file. The printed output won't exceed 80 characters in any case. This is particularly useful for large mail labels not supported in the label procedures. Also You can Choose None and print the form only. Procedure #7 - Print Special Labels The Print Special Labels procedure (#7 on the main menu) allows you to enter a special label and print multiple copies of it. This procedure only supports one across, but will print on the first column of labels if you use two or three across. You may enter up to six lines with no automatic skip. Each line entered will be centered unless you add spaces to the maximum of 35 characters. I usually print my floppy disk labels with this procedure. Procedure #8 - Add New Member The Add New Member procedure (#8 on the main menu) allows you to add new members, after the first time you start up you can enter Q in the last name field and return to the menu. The program insists upon at least one record being entered the first time. You can press enter and leave a field blank if you so desire. Procedure #9 - Revise Member Record The Revise Member Record procedure (#9 on the main menu) allows you to change any field in a chosen member record. You should first use display to determine the record number for the record to be revised. You can enter Q in the last name field and return to the menu. If you press Enter when asked for the record number it will automatically go to the next record. Otherwise it works just like adding a new member. Pressing Enter will leave a field unchanged. Page 7 ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR FILES! Membership List and Mail Label Program Copyright 1988 Lloyd C. Bowen, Jr. All Rights Reserved. Procedure #10 - Sort Member Records The Sort Member Records procedure (#0 on the main menu) allows you to sort on any field except the logical fields. See "Sorting" on page 3. Procedure #11 - Delete Member Record The Delete Member Record procedure ("D" on the main menu) allows you to delete member records one at a time. The Display procedure should be used first to determine the record number of the member to be deleted. Remember that the records are renumbered each time a member is deleted and each time the file is sorted on a different field. If you have several members to delete, note their record numbers using the Display procedure and DELETE THE HIGHEST NUMBER FIRST. Procedure #12 - Import or Export Records The Import or Export Records procedure ("I" on the main menu) allows you to import files in four formats and export files in three formats. Three formats common to both are the Separate Line Format (SLF), the System Data Format (SDF) sometimes called constant length and the Delimited Format (DLT). The abbreviations shown are used as the default extension when exporting these files. The delimited file allows you to choose delimiters either for import or export with the default being the "Standard Mail Merge Format" which uses a comma (,) to separate fields and a quotation mark (") at the start and finish of a character string. This means that if you plan to use this you should avoid (") in your data or change this delimiter when you export. Remember that most word processors insist upon the Standard Mail Merge format. See "Mail Merge" and "Importing Files"on page 3. Runtime Error List The screen will appear as follows: Runtime error NNN at (some memory address) Where NNN = any number with from 1 to 3 digits. Only errors 100 and 101 have ever been reported: NNN === 2 FILE DOES NOT EXIST A file is missing from your data disk, in most cases this error is trapped and you will be questioned within the program. 3 PATH NOT FOUND The path you entered does not exist. 4 TOO MANY OPEN FILES You don't have the commands (FILES=20 and BUFFERS=20) or more in your CONFIG.SYS file or you haven't re-booted the computer since entering them. Can be caused by memory resident programs. Page 8 ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR FILES! Membership List and Mail Label Program Copyright 1988 Lloyd C. Bowen, Jr. All Rights Reserved. Runtime Error List (Continued) The screen will appear as follows: Runtime error NNN at (some memory address) Where NNN = any number with from 1 to 3 digits. Only errors 100 and 101 have ever been reported: NNN === 5 FILE ACCESS DENIED Either you have a file marked for read only or the directory is full. 15 INVALID DRIVE SELECTION The drive you entered does not exist. 100 DISK READ ERROR - UNEXPECTED END-OF-FILE Usually occurs when there are files on the data disk which have 0 bytes. Zero byte files occur when the computer crashes or is turned off during certain operations. Just erase them and start over. Also will occur if you change some of the values in the league leader file. 101 DISK WRITE ERROR The disk is full, no more room to write. You may have to go to a hard disk or a larger floppy format. Should happen for very large clubs only. May occur if you enter the wrong path when using a hard drive. 102 FILE NOT ASSIGNED You entered an unusable file name. Check your DOS manual for characters which can be used in file names. 150 DISK IS WRITE PROTECTED Either remove write protection or use another disk. 152 DRIVE NOT READY Is the door open? 154 CRC ERROR The file you are trying to read is corrupted, go to a backup. 156 DISK SEEK ERROR The disk you are trying to read from is corrupted, go to a backup. 158 SECTOR NOT FOUND The disk probably needs to be formatted. 159 PRINTER IS OUT OF PAPER Put some paper in the printer. 160 DEVICE WRITE FAULT Your printer is off or off line. 162 HARDWARE FAILURE Some piece of your computer has failed, see your service man. 208 OVERLAY MANAGER NOR INSTALLED The file MEMBER.OVR is missing from your program disk. 209 OVERLAY FILE READ ERROR The file MEMBER.OVR is corrupted, replace from your original. Page 9 ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR FILES! Membership List and Mail Label Program Copyright 1988 Lloyd C. Bowen, Jr. All Rights Reserved. Sample PC Write Merge File Using Single Line Format {FNAME} {LNAME} {MNAME} {ADDRESS} {CITY} {STATE} {ZIP} {PHONE} {WPHONE} {TITLE} {DUES} {DATEJOIMED} {COMMENT} {SELECT} {COMMITTEE} {DUESDUEDATE=today} {} l---+---L1--T-+----2---------3----+----4----+----5--T-+----6----+----7R-T-+----r Lloyd C. Bowen, Jr. 2213 Peach Tree St. Amarillo, Texas 79109-1922 (806)352-0821 November 11, 1991 {TITLE-} {FNAME} {MNAME) {LNAME} {COMMITTEE-} Committee {ADDRESS} {CITY}, {STATE} {ZIP} l---+---L1--T-+----2---------3----+----4----+----5--T-+----6----+----7J-T-+----r Dear {FNAME}, Please note that your dues are due {DUESDUEDATE}. The amount is still $12.00 per year. We have the following phones listed for you, please inform us of any changes with your remittance. l---+---L1--T-+----2---------3----+----4----+----5--T-+----6----+----7R-T-+----r Home {PHONE} Work {WPHONE} I am normally home between 9 & 10 PM central time for calls. ALWAYS BACK-UP YOUR DATA FILES! Yours Truly Lloyd C. Bowen, Jr. Page 10 ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR FILES!