This text file contains of excerpts from the book GETTING THE MOST OUT OF DESKMATE 3, by Michael A. Banks, published by Brady Books/Simon & Schuster, and available in your local Tandy/Radio Shack or Waldenbooks store now. The tips are typical of those found throughout the book (these deal with the Address Book and Text applications, and with accessing DOS directly from DeskMate). The tips and the book are for DeskMate 3.2, 3.3 and later versions. This text is Copyright, 1989, Michael A. Banks. Permission is hereby granted to copy and upload the text in this file to computer bulletin boards and other online services ONLY if the entire contents are retained in complete and unmodified form, including this statement and copyright notice. ADDRESS BOOK TIPS Multiple Address Files The fact that Address Book uses only one data file is not as limiting as it may seem. Address Book's ability to create subsets of itself in the form of lists effectively gives you the capability to create a number of separate databases within the existing file (many of which will contain some of the same files). However, for to speed disk access, saving disk space, or for other reasons, you may wish to create more than one PERSONAL.ADR file. To do this, rename PERSONAL.ADR to ADDRESS.1, using the Rename... option on the desktop's File menu, or DOS's REN command. Then start Address Book, and press Esc (twice if you are using DeskMate 3.02 or earlier) when DeskMate's "File Not Found" box appears. A dialog box will be query whether you want to create a new Address Book; select YES and the new Address Book will be created. When you wish to access the old Address Book file, rename the current Address Book to ADDRESS.2, and ADDRESS.1 to PERSONAL.ADR. Labeling Address Cards for Fast Finds If you need to find certain address cards to make them easy to find later (maybe you don't want to add them to a group, or you need to mark them for later inclusion in a group) establish a certain character string to use as an address card "label." The same kinds of strings you might use in Text as markers will be fine for the job (????? or xxxxx). ACCESSING DOS FROM DESKMATE Pipeline to DOS Commands with the Task Switch and the Desktop Remember: You can rename, copy, and delete files directly, if you wish, by using the Task Switch to move between a DeskMate application and the desktop. Select Task Switch from the Utilities (F10) menu; the desktop will be displayed and you can access the desktop's file menu as necessary. When you select Task Switch again, the previous application will return immediately, with the screen as it was when you left it. Task switching also provides access to the desktop Directory menu, a convenient feature if you access files from several directories, or need to create a directory or subdirectory in which to store a file or files. And, since the Disk menu is also available, you can format or copy disks if necessary, and find out how much space is available on a disk. Need to see a directory of all the files on a disk or in a directory? Switch to the Tree view from the desktop. DIRECT DOS Access DeskMate provides most frequently-used disk commands on the desktop's File and Disk menus. You can copy, delete, and rename specific files from the File menu, and format, do diskcopies, and check available disk space from the Disk menu. However, DeskMate does not allow you to issue commands directly to DOS, something that can be a bit restricting at times. Fortunately, you can create your own pipeline to DOS via the File menu's Run option. When you select the Run option, a dialog box prompts you for a program name--typically a .COM, .EXE or a DeskMate application program--and an optional filename to use with the program. A little-known (and previously undocumented) fact is that you can also run batch files with the Run option. Thus, to enter a direct DOS command, you need only create a batch file in the current directory that issues the DOS command you wish to use, and run it via the Run option on the File menu. And what kinds of commands would you want to issue? Well, considering the time and effort it takes to enter a hard-disk directory path when you want to open a file that's not in the current directory, or when you want to change directories, creating batch files that change directories is an excellent application for the batch-file DOS pipeline. For example, if you find that you frequently access a directory named FINANCE, simply create this batch file: CD\FINANCE and store it in your DeskMate directory; call the batch file FIN. (To create this batch file, type COPY CON FIN.BAT at the DOS prompt, type CD\FINANCE and press F6 and ENTER. Better yet, create a directory called BATCH, include the command SET PATH=C:\BATCH in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file, and store FIN.BAT in the BATCH directory. Then you will be able to access FIN.BAT no matter what directory you're currently in. When you're ready to switch to the FINANCE directory, press F2 on the desktop, select Run, enter FIN.BAT in the program name edit box, and press ENTER. Another use for the batch-file DOS pipeline is when you need to see actual file sizes and don't want to waste time and effort switching to and from the Tree view on the desktop. Create a batch file that has the command DIR in it, and name it DIR.BAT. Then, whenever you need to see a directory, just run it. (Note: Such batch files should always be run from the desktop; if you run one from an application, unpredictable results may occur. You can, of course, use the Task Switch to flip over to the desktop when you are using an application.) TEXT TIPS Be Precise Like most computer program functions, Find... is very literal. If you enter "the" as a search string, Find... will find "then," "other," and "thesaurus" as well as "the". There is a way around this. Find... (and Substitute) can locate spaces as easily as any other character, so to find a word alone just enter a space before and after the word; that way, Find... will locate only occurrences of the string as an individual word. To find occurrences of a word at the beginnings of sentences, enter two spaces before the word (assuming you are using the standard format of entering two spaces at the end of a sentence). You can use punctuation marks to find a word or string at the end of a sentence, or otherwise narrow your search parameters. Formatting Text Files for Export to ASCII When you are going to print a document to a disk file, you should first use the To ASCII command to eliminate formatting codes, then set these parameters in the Page Setup dialog box: * "portrait" (up and down) printing * a left margin of 0 and a right margin of 80 or less (65 is ideal * number of lines per page and number of lines printed per page at the maximum of 84 (this prevents page breaks being inserted in the file) * single spacing and no pause between pages (these are defaults, so all you have to remember is to not check either of the check boxes at the bottom of the page) Copyright, 1989, Michael A. Banks All Rights Reserved Interested in modem communications? Check out THE MODEM REFERENCE, also by Michael A. Banks and published by Brady Books/Simon & Schuster. Recommended by Jerry Pournelle in Byte, The New York times, The Smithsonian Magazine, various computer magazines, etc. Want the lowdown on getting more out of your word processor? Read the only book on word processing written by writers, for writers: WORD PROCESSING SECRETS FOR WRITERS, by Michael A. Banks & Ansen Dibel (Writer's Digest Books).