BETA test - Sort the stock table

[Dale Harris]

I have hit the big red reset button on this topic, let me do it again.

Over last week I have rewritten most of the "move" functions for the stock table. Some functions are new, some old functions just work better. Here are then new instructions that will appear in the user's guide.
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With the recent additions to the "Stock table" feature it has become very easy to re-arrange the lines in the stock table into any order you may want. (New features below are identified with (*).

WARNING: DO NOT RE-ORDER THE STOCK TABLE WHILE OTHER COMPUTERS ARE USING THE STOCK TABLE OVER A NETWORK!

To move lines in the stock table press [F5] for "Move / Export lines." You will now be offered the option to "Backup the stock table." This is a truely wonderful idea. While making wholesale changes in the order of your stock table it will be quite easy to screw up your stock table beyond all comprehension and the only way to have a stock table again will be either to restore it from the back up or type in the entire stock table again from nothing. Trust me, restoring from a backup is the easier of the two options.
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1. Select/Unselect lines 5. Copy to clipboard. [CTRL]+[^] Move up
2. Add blank lines here 6. Paste from clipboard. [CTRL]+[v] Move down
3. Delete selected lines 7. Export to printer/database/spread sheet.
4. Sort stock table [SPACEBAR] Select/Unselect this line only.

"Move/Export" menu options
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When the menu above is at the bottom of the screen you can use the following options.

(*) If you hold down the [CTRL] key and then press either the up or down arrow keys the current line will move up or down in the stock table.

(*) Press the [SPACEBAR] to select the current line or unselect it if it is already selected.

Press [1] to select lines just by using the up and down arrow keys. You can also enter "search" terms and all lines in the stock table that match will be selected. Note when searching for descriptions or vendor stock numbers any partial match will be selected. For example if you are searching for "RING" then "DIAMOND RING", PISTON RINGS", "LORD OF THE RINGS", "KEYRING", will all be selected.

Press [DELETE] and all selected lines will be unselected.

Press [2] to add blank lines at your current location in the stock table. Lines after your current location will be moved back. Warning; if you do this the lines at the end of your stock table will be lost. For example if you are adding 20 lines to the middle of your stock table then the last 20 current lines of your stock table will be lost. This is not a bad thing if the current last 20 lines are empty, not so fine if they contain stock items.

Press [3] to delete selected items from your stock table. You may choose to just remove the lines leaving blank lines in their place or to move up the following lines to fill in.

(*) Press [4] to sort the stock table. You may choose to sort the entire stock table or you may enter a range of lines and only the lines between the "begin" line number and the "end" line number will be sorted. All other lines will remain in their current location. WARNING; when the program sorts lines, all lines in between "begin" and "end" with a stock number of zero will be erased.
You may sort by any field in the stock table like stock number, description, price, tax rate, inventory, anything. Sorting by either description or vendor stock number is not case sensitive, i.e. "a" = "A". You may sort in either increasing order (A --> Z, 1 --> 9) or decreasing order (Z --> A, 9 - -> 1). If items in your sort field are the same (for example you are sorting by price and many items have the same price) then like items will be further sorted by stock number.

Press [5] to move all selected lines into the clipboard. You may either make a new clipboard or copy to the end of the current clipboard. After you copy to the clipboard you will be offered the option of deleting the selected lines from the stock table. This is a good idea. If you do not delete and then later copy the clipboard to the stock table then you will have multiple twins of lines in the stock table. The POS program will not allow you to leave the "Move / Export lines" function if you have multiple lines with the same stock number. You will have to search each twin one at a time and either delete it or change the stock number or restore your stock table from the backup. Much easier to delete the selected lines now. This is also a problem if you copy the same lines twice into the clip board and then paste the clipboard into the stock table. Once again you will have twins in the stock table.

Press [6] to paste the clipboard to your current location in the stock table. You may either overwrite the current lines with the clipboard or move back the current lines of the stock table to make room for the clipboard contents. Warning; if you move back the current lines, the lines at the end of your stock table will be lost. For example if you are adding 20 lines from the clipboard to the middle of your stock table then the last 20 current lines of your stock table will be lost. This is not a bad thing if the current last 20 lines are empty, not so fine if they contain stock items.

Press [7] to export lines from your stock table to either a printer, a text file, or a data file that can then be loaded into any spreadsheet or database program.
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Here is the download link, it is a new version (6.14 BETA 3) as of 9-4-04 at 8:00pm

(This version has been released)
http://keyhut.com/pos3.htm