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Finding a Contact Record

You can search for something useful to do in many ways, but a good way in a sales office is to work from your contacts. From the main menu, select Query, Contact. This will give you a contact listing you can scroll through. You can also type the first letter of your contact to jump to that part of your listing.

You might not be able to remember the exact name of your contact. As you start to put letters in the Find Contact field, the list display will immediately move to the best match it can find according to the first letters, or according to the Soundex match. If it cannot find a match using the letters you type in, automatically the Soundex lookup software will try to find a name that more or less sounds like the spoken sound of these letters, even if the target name is much longer.

Soundex Word Matching Is Not Infallible

For example, Hazel will not be found if you type in azel. You should try to get the first letter correct.

When you find your target contact, click on it and your worktop will bring the contact record to the top. If there are any outstanding things for you to do, they can be inspected by clicking on the Pending tab.

Of course, if you are very methodical, your target contact record will already be actively sitting on top of your GoldMine workspace.

The contact record that is on the top of your GoldMine workspace is assumed to be the one you are working on—the record most likely to be altered as a result of your actions. This is called the active record or the record with input focus.

GoldMine is always trying to be helpful, so it will open with the collection of records you were last using and with the final record you were looking at as the active record.

Figure 3.1 shows how I have called Lookup to search my records according to the entry in the Contact field.

Figure 3.1 I spy someone beginning with S in the Contact Listing.

Sync Contact Window has been checked to ensure that whichever line I highlight will open the contact record. To select another record, move the highlight bar with an up or down arrow. If you see whom you want, try a click.

Go for a Spin with Your Selected Few

You might have only a selected few records open in your workspace. The spin buttons, always in the top-left corner of the uppermost record, will change your active contact.

Cloning an Existing Record

From the main menu, select File, New Record. Doing so opens the Add a New Record dialog box, as shown in Figure 3.2. If you click the Create Duplicate Record check box—twice if it is already ticked—you will find that your new record will have the basic information copied from your active record.

There is a check box that displays the new record in a separate window. There are also four check boxes that control how you want the check for duplicates to be conducted.

Figure 3.2 Create a new contact in the same company by partially duplicating the active record.

When you click OK in the Add a New Record dialog box, the system will create a new contact record containing whatever information you have been able to supply. GoldMine automatically copies the last word of the Contact field into the Last (name) field.

When you select OK, or press Enter, GoldMine creates a contact record with a unique account number. The Summary tab will show your ID as the user who created the record and today's date. You can generate a record with little data or even a blank record. Obviously, you will need to come back to fill in some fields.

Beware the Enter Key!

In a contact record, you can press Enter after typing in field data, but do not press Enter until you are finished with a dialog box because GoldMine will assume that you do not want to edit anything else in the display. For example, use Tab and Shift+Tab to move about, or click the field you need. Up and down arrows are also very useful because they move your data entry window through the sequence of fields—without leaving any out.

Toggling GoldMine Options

To activate any toggle option in GoldMine using the keyboard, press Tab to advance to the option, and then press the spacebar. To deactivate a toggle option, press the spacebar. The check mark disappears from the box.

Another method is to press Alt plus the underlined letter of the option. Doing so locates your pointer. You can then toggle the option on and off by using the spacebar or by clicking.

If you select a menu with keystrokes, GoldMine will highlight the first command. For example, Alt will highlight the first item in the main menu, F will open the options of the File menu, and N will open a new record.

The same thing happens if you click the New icon in a toolbar.

Are Your Options Dimmed?

A menu option will be dimmed if it is not going to do anything—perhaps because you have not previously selected any text, or because there is nothing in your Clipboard. Dimmed options cannot be executed.

Adding Notes to a Contact Record

You can add a note to a contact record by selecting Contact, Insert a Note from the main menu. On the Basic toolbar there is a jolly picture of a manual typewriter that will do the same. Or you can press Ctrl+I. Whichever method you choose, Figure 3.3 shows what happens.

Figure 3.3 Add a timed and dated note to the Notes tab prefixed with your user ID.

Your notes will be saved automatically.

Your status bar will briefly display the number of character bytes saved as notes. There is space for 64,000 characters. You would need to use the scroll buttons to read this much text.

Another way to save a note entry or alteration is by clicking outside the Notes tab. Curiously, you don't have to make a deliberate save if you are using the local menu—you could right-click in the Notes tab or press the keyboard's local menu key. You can select Paste and your notes will be updated permanently by the addition of whatever you had stored on your Clipboard.

Always Visit Your Local Menu

Right-click to invoke a local menu that depends on where your pointer is at the time. The local menu will probably contain just the very command you need next. Some keyboards have a Local Menu key that is also called the Application key. It carries an icon of a menu with a pointing arrow and also invokes the local menu that is relevant to the place where you last clicked.

Entering Standardized Data

There are some parts of a GoldMine record that you have to type in exactly or import from a file where someone has typed them—names and addresses, for example. But other fields are much more useful if everyone enters the data by selecting an entry from a lookup table. In that way it is easy to call up a report and let GoldMine tell you how many of your contacts have a particular entry in a specific field. Standardized data is information that is made up from one or more options on a lookup table. If you allow your users to freely enter text or numbers in a data entry window, then you don't have standardized data in that field.

If you are pointing at a record field, right-clicking will open a small window to receive your entry. To select a standardized value for this field, right-click on the space where the data will be displayed, or click the right arrow button.

You will see a lookup table or browse list. This list might contain only the entry Lookup window. In these circumstances you can either type in the entry you require, or you can click Entry window to get to the Field Lookup dialog box. Here you will be able to create a lookup entry that can be used over and over again, by you and by other users.

If your installation has been in use for some time, or if the administrator has installed a template for your particular industry, the lookup list might already contain a suitable entry, which you can highlight and click. Figure 3.4 shows the existing choices for the Department field. If the list is very long, you can jump closer to certain entries by typing in the first letter of the value you seek.

Figure 3.4 Find a standardized entry for this Department field from the lookup table.

It's sensible to always create a lookup item if you think you might need it again in this field.

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