Notes

Virtually unlimited notes can be recorded for Clients and Debtors.

Type as you would on a keyboard. The editor uses the following commands.

Function Keys

- F1 Help.............. Opens up this Help topic
- F2 Pick............. Pick from database fields and other items
- F5 Print.............Print all your notes
- F7 Delete............Delete the current line
- F8 Save and Exit.....Save the notes and exit

Exiting

- Press F8 to save and exit.
- Click the left mouse button outside the notes to save and exit.
- Press ESC to not save and exit.
- Click the right mouse button outside the notes to not save and exit.

Traversing

You can use the arrow keys, Page Up, Page Down, Home, End and Backspace keys to move anywhere on the screen. Or use your mouse and click to the location that you want to go.

Selecting

You can select sections of text by either holding down the left mouse button and dragging it over the text that you want to select or hold down the Shift key and use the Arrow keys to select the text.

Copying

After you have selected the text that you want to copy, select Edit from the top menu bar and then select Copy from the drop-down choices. This is useful if you want to copy notes between different Debtors.

Deleting

After you have selected the text that you want to delete, select Edit from the top menu bar and then select Delete from the drop-down choices. This is useful if you make a mistake while entering notes or you want to remove old notes.

Pasting

When you want to paste text that you have already copied, select Edit from the top menu bar and then select Paste from the drop-down choices. The text will be pasted at the current cursor location.

Each time a new Debtor note is entered, the Date, Time, User ID and current Status are automatically written on the first line.

Notes can also be entered using Contact Plans. If you select an action code whose contact plan contains a Note Event, the Date, Time, current Operator's ID, and the Debtor's current Status are recorded on a note line along with the note from the contact plan event Description field.

Date/Time Stamp Format

The dates in the Debtor and Client note time stamps will appear formatted using the date options specified in Collect!'s Date Format settings. This form is accessed through System-> Preferences- Options, Sounds and Colors, Select the DATE FORMAT button.

When notes are read from the database, Collect! will convert the original dates into the format Collect! has specified in the preferences. This is what will be displayed to the user.

When the notes are written back into the database, ALL the time stamp dates are converted into YYYYMMDD format without any separators.

There is one special case when reading old note dates, where Collect! cannot know what format a date is in. It is as follows. The date read from the notes is in MM/DD/YYYY or DD/MM/YYYY format and both the month and day are less than 13. Collect! cannot know which one is the month and which one is the day. The current date settings cannot be relied on because the user may have changed them.

To solve this, a new file is created in the bin folder called "dateformat.dat". It contains a format string representing the current date settings at the time it is created and represents the format of the dates in the existing notes. If the file exists, it is left alone. The user is free to change their date format settings in the preferences after this file is created.

When Collect! reads the notes and encounters an unconverted date in XX/XX/YYYY format where both the month and day are less than 13, it will use the data in 'dateformat.dat' to determine which fields represent the month and day. In all other cases, the month and day can be figured out easily.

When the notes are written back, all the dates are CONVERTED to the YYYYMMDD format.

This Date Format functionality is available in Collect! Version 11.6 Build 1.1 and newer.

See Also

- Copy Notes