The Inventory Records function will allow you to keep track of Church Inventory with up to 15 boxes of detailed information, an independent Note file, and Pictures for each item. OPENING THE INVENTORY RECORDS DIALOG To open the Inventory Records dialog window click on INVENTORY in the main ChurchReg and a window appears as shown in Fig.1 below. Fig. 1 - Inventory Records Dialog Window Fig. 2 - Inventory Picture Display ENTERING INFORMATION To start a new record for an inventory item, select FILE | NEW from the Inventory menu or just click the NEW button at the bottom right. The edit boxes include information for Description, Model Number, Serial Number, Date of Purchase, Vendor Name and Address, Vendor ID, Phone, Fax, Website, Email, and Cost. Standard Cut, Copy, and Paste features apply while typing text. CHANGING CHARACTER CASE To quickly change the character case of text you type, select and highlight the text then press CTRL+Q to toggle between upper case, sentence case, and lower case characters. Case change does not work unless the text has been highlighted. PRINTING INVENTORY RECORDS To Print Inventory records select FILE | PRINT REPORT or press CTRL+P. The report includes all data from the 15 edit boxes for each item. You can choose to use the Default Printer for your system from the File menu. If the Default Printer is not used then the Printer Dialog window appears allowing you to select the Printer you want to use and set it's properties. PHONE NUMBERS To dial a phone number found in any of the edit boxes - left click the edit box that has the phone number then select PHONE from the menu. The PHONE DIALER pops up with the phone number inserted as the number to dial. EMAIL AND WEBSITES To send email using the email address found in one of the edit boxes - left click the edit box that has the email address then select FILE | SEND EMAIL from the Inventory menu or press CTRL+E. To go to a Vendor's Website click on edit box that displays the Vendor's website address then select FILE | GO TO WEBSITE from the Inventory menu or press CTRL+W. SEARCHING FOR INFORMATION Use the SEARCH function to locate information on an item from any of the edit fields. When you click on SEARCH | FIND in the menu, the cursor will jump to the Search box located below the List window. You can also press CTRL+F to go to the Search box. Type in your search text in the Search box followed by pressing ENTER. If found - the text will be highlighted on the screen to signal it's location. To continue a search, press F3 or select SEARCH | FIND NEXT from the Inventory menu. When the search reaches the end of all records it will continue from the beginning of the records. INVENTORY PICTURES Each record can display a picture of the item. First obtain a picture either from a scanned photograph or digital camera. The picture file format must be a bitmap (.bmp) image and the size will automatically be stretched or shrunk to fit the area overlaying the list box at the right side of the window. See Fig.2 above. Whenever you move the mouse pointer over the displayed picture or press ESC the picture will disappear. CHOOSING A PICTURE In the Inventory menu click on PICTURE | SELECT PICTURE or press F10. A dialog window opens as shown below in Fig. 3. Fig. 3 - Inventory Picture Selection When you click the BROWSE button, a folder opens allowing you to view and select a picture file as shown below in Fig.4. Fig. 4 - Browse Picture Selection After selecting one or more picture file names for the Inventory Item, click on the OPEN button. The InvPics Folder then closes and you are returned to the Picture List window (see Fig.3). PICK A DEFAULT PICTURE In the Picture List Window (Fig. 3), move the selection highlight to the picture file name you want to use then press ACCEPT. The current highlight selection becomes the default picture to display. In the future you can return to the Picture List and move the highlight to another selection. If you want to remove a picture filename from the list click the REMOVE button. DISPLAYING THE PICTURE Once you have selected the picture for the Inventory Item and you are back in the Inventory dialog window - press F9 and the picture will be displayed. You can also select PICTURE | SHOW PICTURE from the Inventory menu. Pressing ESC or moving the mouse pointer over the picture will close the picture. INVENTORY NOTES Besides the 15 edit boxes, you can keep an independent note file for each Inventory Item. In the menu click on NOTES and a Note window appears as shown in Fig. 5 below. The Note window overlays all edit boxes. Fig. 5 - Inventory Notes The Note window allows up to 32000 characters and when that limit is reached a notification message will pop up. You can select and highlight a block of text then press CTRL+Q to toggle between upper case, sentence case, and lower case characters. If the information you need to keep exceeds the 32000 character limit, you can press CTRL+A to select All and then press CTRL+C to copy the entire note record to the Windows Clipboard. After copying, you can then paste the information into your favourite word processing program. Save the records in your word processor program using a filename to identify the notes, for example 0888-20030930, for the item number and date. After saving, clear the Inventory notes in ChurchReg by pressing CTRL+A to select All and then press DELETE. You then have a clear window to start entering notes over again. PASTING THE DATE AND TIME While typing Notes you can press CTRL+D to paste today's date and time on the current line. CLOSING INVENTORY ITEM NOTES After typing your notes for the Inventory Item, press ESC and a message appears asking if you want to Save Changes before quitting. Inventory Notes are saved in the INVNTORY folder as a standard text (. txt) file using the current record number as a filename (e.g. 00008.txt). There is only one note file allowed for each Inventory Item. The only way to keep and ongoing history of Note files for an Inventory Item is to cut and paste into your favourite word processor as mentioned earlier or by manually copying and renaming the Inventory Item's notefile in the Inventory folder (e.g. 00008a.txt, 00008b.txt).