Australian Open Access User Group Meeting - 14 October 97 Show and tell (Q & A) OA slow to load The annoyance of OA taking 2 minutes to load on a high performance PC was raised. DISPI have a good tip for WIN95 users: To speed up OA loading time open a DOS window, press Alt-Enter to go to full screen, start OA, press Alt-Tab twice - OA should be already loaded. OA slow to print over a network Some users have found that it takes minutes to obtain an OA printout on a network running WIN95. It seems to be a problem with the Print Manager not realising that the print job has finished and it waits until "timeout" is reached (note this "timeout" does not appear to be the same as the one which can be adjusted for each printer port under Control Panel). Another symptom of this problem is that the printout will suddenly appear when you exit from OA. This can also cause problems under Windows for Workgroups. A possible solution is to add the "end of transmission" character ASCII (4) to the finalisation sequence of the OA printer configuration. We have not been able to try this trick because we don't have a problem with network printing so let us know if this, or some other trick, works. Another tip is to add the "form feed" character ASCII (12) to the form feed sequence of the OA printer configuration. The default configuration leaves this blank and, in this case, OA generates line feeds to get the bottom of the page. This could solve the problem the page creep on continuous A4 stationery, provided that the printer "knows" it is dealing with A4 paper. Pasting ASCII characters From anywhere is OA you can view the full ASCII character set by pressing Alt . Move the cursor to the desired character (for example, a line drawing character) and press . This pastes the character into the current application. An alternative, if you know the ASCII number, is to hold down the Alt key and type in the number using the numeric keypad. When you release the Alt key the character is pasted to the application. Commonly used characters can be defined in the User Defined Function keys and accessed by pressing the shift key together with the appropriate function key (see the Utilities manual for more information). Horizontal lines in print masks The quickly add a horizontal line to an OA print mask place the cursor at the start of the row, press to create a new item, type a quote, hold down the Alt key and type 196 on the numeric keypad, release the Alt key, type another quote, make the WIDTH 80 (or the width of the report), then the clever bit is to set JUSTIFICATION to REPEAT. This repeats the character across the page. HP printer character sets If the above tips for line drawing produce odd characters instead of lines you will need to add the PC character set command to the printer initialisation sequence. On HP laser printers this is (27)10U. Spreadsheets corrupted under WIN95 One user has found that OA spreadsheets can sometimes become corrupted when running as a network under WIN95. This might be because he is has hard disks in excess of 2 Gb (see the warning in the August newsletter) and OA is unable to write temporary working files. It might also be due to file sharing problems (perhaps WIN95 is not emulating Netbios correctly). Word Processor not working from a network drive Another user reported that he could not load word processor documents from a network drive and need to copy the file to the local C: drive to get it to work. This could also be due the 2Gb problem - in Novell Netware try setting a 2Gb virtual drive limit under the network administration. "Screen mask not set up correctly" The various ways that this error message can appear were explored. The usual problem is that the database screen mask refers to a field that is not in the records being accessed. This usually only happens in a Query where not all fields have been selected but it can also happen where a field has been deleted from a database table or a screen mask is based on joined tables and the join is not implemented. DESIGN the screen mask and the missing fields should be displayed as error messages (the Design function uses the SQL built into the screen mask for this purpose). Once the screen mask is loaded into design mode any problem fields can usually be identified because their SIZE is zero. Keith O'Donnell suggests bringing up the Entry Attributes window for each field and scrolling through each item to check for errors. For dependent fields press to display and check the expression. CD Drive not accessible over a network A user is running a CD drive under Windows 3.11 and has been unable to access the CD drive from a networked laptop running WIN95. This could be due to a mismatch between the 3.11 and WIN95 network operating systems but, more likely, it could indicate an Interrupt or Port conflict between the network car and the CD drive. Try setting the network card to a different Interrupt and/or Port (after carefully making a note of the current setting so it can be restored if necessary). Trapping divide by zero errors in screen masks The "correct" way to trap divide by zero errors in screen mask expressions is to include a true/false expression: B=0 | 0 | A/B The lazy way, which may be useful in the case of complicated denominators, is to add a nominal very small amount to the denominator: A/(B + 0.00000001) Use of expressions during data entry in screen masks Provided the display width is sufficient, you can enter an expression in a database screen mask numeric field. For example 60/6 could be typed and it is calculated as 10 when the key is pressed. This might be one case where you set the screen mask display width much wider than necessary for the stored numbers. OASYS program The OASYS utility program was demonstrated. This handy program documents the contents of OA screen masks, print masks and Programmer code. We are trying to find out whether it is still commercially available (reviewed by the AOUG in August 1993). After the break Keith gave a presentation on converting OA databases to MS Access and many tips for using MS Access (many things we take for granted with Open Access are not so easy to do in MS Access and Keith has developed many shortcuts to achieve this). Disclaimer Notice: Users should not act solely on the basis of the material contained in this document. Items contained in this document are presented as possible solutions to problems but do not constitute advice. In particular, no assurance can be given that the possible solutions will work in every situation or that loss of data will not occur. Always back-up data before trying to rectify a problem.