Using the Magazine Index Program and the Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet.
The instructions below are written for Microsoft XP & assume your main hard drive is C: See note at end **
Magazine Index Search Engine.
The Magazine Search Engine is an easy to use program that does not require Microsoft Excel, Open Office or WinZip to function. It also offers facilities that are not easily available in Excel.
To use click on the the Magazine Search Engine link, then Run & Run again. This will load the basic program into your PC in a location C:/Program Files/Index. (be sure your main hard drive is drive C: this is the default drive letter. ** See below) Next click on the link to download the latest Index Data Files, followed by Run, Run, Unzip, ( note at this point you have an option to change the target directory, for example drive D: ) Close. This will add data files to the basic program. You can now log off the Internet and install the program. Navigate to C:/Program Files and look for a new entry (in alphabetical order) called Index. It is best to use Windows Explorer for this. Before you proceed create a shortcut on your Desktop. Right click on the Icon, then Send To, Desktop (create a short cut).You can now close Programs & return to your Desktop where you should see a green Index.exe Icon. Double click on this and the Magazine Index Page will open. You only need to do all this once as the Index Data Files program will load automatically. No need to use the basic program again, just update with the Index Data Files.
The Program offers 8 (grey) options and 4 (clear) data panels. The Quit button exits the program, Print Form prints a copy of the entire page, Then there are 5 more or less self explanatory buttons, a window to enter the word you are searching for in the Search Text box, a button to Clear Search Text or empty this window, then below is a panel showing which fields to search, I always use the last, All the above, then the next window shows what Indexes are loaded. You need to choose one of these, and then a button to Delete File called:- this deletes any unwanted files. You can see why this is required later. On the right is a large panel where the results of your search are displayed.
So to do a search, select an Index, say Aeromodeller.csv, then Search in, All the above etc., then enter your search word, say Yulon and then click on Search. The results pop up in the large window on the right. For Yulon this is currently gives 3 results. You have the option to Search and Print or to Search and Output to a .CSV file. The results will still pop up in the window but a new .csv file (yulo.csv) will appear in the Index of files.(Lower left) You can now search using this new file and refine the results by, for example using the word Chinn. Only one result will now be displayed. You can delete the yulo.csv file as it is no longer required. Quit will exit the program. Well that's about it, not a lot more I can say. Once you have set it all up & used it a few times it will all slot into place. Once the Aeromodeller Index is finished it will only be updated to correct any errors, and I am sure there are plenty !! . The other Model Engineering Indexes are Updated every Month as the Indexes are on going.
Microsoft Excel Files and other similar Spreadsheets
The following notes are for users not familiar with Microsoft Excel and can be disregarded by 'computer buffs'.
When doing searches on an unlocked spreadsheet it is all too easy to totally scramble the data. Only sort THE WHOLE DATABASE. (by selecting the extreme top left hand box when the entire spreadsheet turns blue) If you do scramble it by mistake, close the file BUT DO NOT SAVE. The original file will be unaffected or you can just reload from the unzipped master copy, in the worst case download a brand new file off the web.
To do a full spreadsheet search click on Edit then Find and in the Find What box enter a word say "Yulon" then click on Find Next box. Excel finds each occurrence of this word in turn. The drop down box can get in the way but can be moved around by "dragging and dropping" with the mouse, using it's Blue top margin. By highlighting columns (fields) or linked sections of the spreadsheet, searches can be confined to these areas. Otherwise it searches the whole database. Find Next moves on to the next entry etc.
Another way is to use the Find All button. This will find every occurrence of the word "Yulon" (for example) and present this in a drop down table. This is fine if the word only appears once or twice, but "(Ron) Warring" may appear dozens of times. The location of the entries is listed under Cell as $E$1367 ( column E Line 1367 etc.)
Beware of making any alterations, changes or additions to your database. These will be lost at the first update unless you are prepared to take special precautions. This is only a brief introduction to spreadsheets, for more information consult a book on spreadsheets.
These files have now been used by many thousands of Model Engineers from all over the world and have proved to be very robust, that is they work. If you have problems it is almost 100% certain that the problem lies in either your Internet connection or your Computer. So far no problems have been reported by Vista users.
** If your main hard drive is NOT drive C: then you probably have two drives on your PC and one of these will almost certainly be C: The Index.exe will load into this drive and if required create a new folder called Program Files. You can copy & move these files to drive D as required.
Copyright Text © Colin Usher 2009 Illustrations © Colin Usher 2009
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