OVER 2 YOU, 026 (18/04/01)

CHURCH RECORDS

I am looking for software, which will enable me to maintain records of parishioners with associated information for Church purposes.  Apart from names and addresses such details as dates of birth, baptism, marriage, death, and membership of church activity groups such as Readers, Church cleaners etc would be needed.  This really needs to be linked to a word processor function to print letters and address labels as well as reports of various kinds.  Some form of analysis function would be useful for instance to sift the data by age group and by school attended etc. At present I use Churchill Parish 2000 and have discovered it has serious limitations.

Tom Doyle, via email

No question about it. Tom Doyle needs Rollcall from Data Developments, www.data-developments.co.uk. I've been using it in its various incarnations for five trouble-free years. The learning curve is very gentle, and it will do everything he wants for an initial outlay of £69. 

George Gibson, Minister, Medway URC Group,

I suggest he contacts www.bmsoftware.com or www.data-developments.co.uk

Brian Strand,

There is a product called ACT!2000 which has been designed specifically to allow users to maintain contact information.  Although there are 70 pre-defined fields users are able to create custom fields for their own specific requirements.  Built in templates allow users to instantly write letters, send e-mails, memos and faxes to one person or mail merge to hundreds depending on the selection criteria used.  The software integrates with Microsoft Word and Outlook.  I am sure the software would be more than adequate for Tom's needs. At the moment www.act.com are offering a 30-day free trial of the software either via a download or free CD. 

Mike Thiselton-Dyer, 

Microsoft Access can cope with all Tom Doyle needs for his records of  parishioners.
Roger Davis,

I suggest Tom Doyle's requirements for record keeping can be accommodated using Excel. He can create as many columns as he wishes in Excel to cover name, address, age, etc., and inserting an entry in the group membership columns to signify membership (perhaps "Y").  The rows would hold records for each individual.  The data sorting functions should allow all the analysis required.  Alternatively Access could be used instead of Excel Word processing, using the mail merge function, should allow all necessary documents, labels or lists to be produced.

Rod Bunyan,

Tom Doyle should be well served by Symantec's Q&A. It is a genuinely integrated database and word processor package which is simple to set up and simple for operators to use as I have found whilst installing it in 30 or so Enterprise Agencies for them to keep track of their clients and produce reports for their management.

Amongst its many virtues is a manual printed on paper with an index with which one can find the topic required in less than a minute which is more than can be said for present-day so-called Help screens online.

Gerald Humphreys,

RETIREMENT

With my retirement only 12136 days away I thought it would be nice to countdown these remaining days of toil on my PC.  Ideally I'm imagining a screen saver similar to the 3D Text option that comes as standard with Windows. But instead of displaying fixed text or the current time I want to be able to input the aim date. Then every time the screen saver is used it will display the current number of days I have left to work. Does anybody know of such an item?
Richard Fowle, via email

There are plenty of countdown screensavers available but this is the only one I have come across that is relevant to retirement is at: http://www.galttech.com/screenshots/retire.html

Craig,

Try www.panaga.com. then Internet Clocks, Counters, Countdowns Plenty of links to clocks of all types.

Ken Nixon,

MICROFICHE

Can you please tell me if there is an application or program that can convert a microfiche into readable pages on a PC screen?
Ray Clark, via email

I assume Mr Clark is has some microfiche film to scan, rather wanting to convert the image to a text file, for which there a number of applications on the market. There has recently appeared a fiche reader, which has the capability of resolving the text.  The device is called "Imagemouse", it is Anacomp Inc and more information can be found at  http://www.anacomp.com/ImageMouse/index.html 
Rodney Fry,

There are many problems in reading microfiche electronically. Microfiche come in many different image sizes. Also a lot depends on the clarity of the original and on the detail you need to see. To have a device that is versatile enough to read anything you throw at it, will be very expensive.

We manufacture and market a small compact device at a reasonable cost called FicheMate-3 which will read microfiche of A4 typed pages, the type generally use in genealogy. The screen images can be stored for further manipulation and to obtain hardcopy. The camera in the device requires a USB interface on your computer.

Dr. Brian Legg,

SAILING  

I intend to sail -- mainly in the Med -- with my laptop and mobile phone, and wonder if anyone has any advice of how to access Internet and E-Mail on the boat?

B. H. Portsmouth, via email

I have successfully used my Motorola Timeport mobile phone connected via the infra read port to my Compaq laptop for the past few years sailing all through the Mediterranean from Spain to France, Corsica, Italy, and currently Greece. It is ideal for getting email and even though the call is back to an ISP in the UK the calls with Vodafone' International Calling plan cost about 50p. For surfing the net it is possible via a mobile but is painfully slow and expensive. I have used this however for getting weather forecasts where I know the exact URL for the page I needed. There is plenty of Internet cafes or Hotels with Internet access. Mobile phone coverage is far greater than in the UK and provided you are within 15 miles of an Island or the mainland you can get good reception.
Steve Spillane, Silchester, Reading

I live with my wife Carol on our yacht Holy Smoke and am currently writing an article for the yachting press about the use of email etc. on boats. I am now in Southern Spain. There is not a satisfactory single solution to this problem, only a compromise. Above all I warn BH not, repeat NOT to try to use his British mobile with a computer in spite of what various retailers will tell him. I would also get his British mobile unblocked before leaving the UK so he can use foreign SIM cards.

Mobile signals at sea and coastally in Brittany and the UK are unreliable, though good in Spain and Portugal except in rivers. It costs about £1 per minute. A friend's first month's bill was £750 for what he thought was casual use! I recommend Cyber cafes for surfing the net for about £2 per hour or the free service in public libraries.
Peter Flood,

EXCEL POWER

Has anyone written an Excel spreadsheet to calculate which of the power companies will give the best deal for your area? What is required is a method of entering the number of units of gas and electricity used again the cost per unit of each supplier. This information is obtainable from the Ofgem.gov.uk web side. Standing order charges and direct debit discount also require taking into account. I am not experience in writing spreadsheets. I was hoping someone might save me some time.

Peter Martin, via email

I used uSwitch, which is independent of any particular supplier, takes account of preferences (such as obtaining energy from renewable sources) and rates the suppliers according to cost and service. You can then switch suppliers for free via the Internet, phone, fax or post. The address is: http://www.uswitch.co.uk/
Henry Price, price_

The site I find best for comparing prices of energy supplies, as referred to in the DT's top10websites a few weeks ago, is provided by Powerbrokers - www.pbrs.co.uk.  It's fast, very easy to use, simply laid out, and can be used for gas or electricity or both, with either your current monthly spend or your annual usage in kWh.  Well worth a look.  I've just used it to change suppliers myself.

Andy Rodgers,

CAN YOU HELP?

My church, Little Chalfont Methodist is producing a newsletter using MS Word 2000 for distribution to the local community. It is a nuisance to have to count out 139 copies, 5 copies etc for the various streets. I use Visual Basic extensively but not in Word. Could someone give me the skeleton Visual Basic routine to print the street name on each copy? Our print run is around 2000 on a Xerox 20 page a minute printer, that is, 240 double sided A3 copies an hour so we need to have a procedure to restart at a particular street.

Derek Sully, via email

I have a scrapbook with a separate page for each year dating back to the late 1800's. I would like to make a computer version of the album but the photos and newspaper cuttings are far too large to fit onto one screen and be legible. Do you know of any software I could use whereby I could click onto a particular year from an index to bring up the "full-page" screen, and then click onto a particular item to bring that item to full-screen.  A "turning page effect" would be a nice touch but am I expecting too much?

Bob Eddleston, Mellor Brook, Blackburn

I run the handicap system for a small bridge club by entering the weekly scores onto an Excel spreadsheet.  The first column of my spreadsheet is a list of player's names, the second column the latest scores, the third column the previous week's scores. I need to average each player's last five scores which I do by using the IF and COUNT functions.  My formula takes the form if the count of the array B1 to F1 equals 5 then average, if the count of the array B1 to G1 equals 5 then average, etc.  However this dumbo method of working out the averages is very clumsy and is also very restrictive as the number of scores I can pick up automatically is restricted by the number of IFs permitted in a cell.  Can anyone tell me how to pick up and average the first 5 scores in a row?

Jan Elsworth, via email