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Maintenance Program

Create Definitions For . . .

  • Crossover Events - Allows creation of Crossovers and the corresponding item codes which are associated with the crossover. From the Customer Form > Monthly Auto Pulls tab > 'Item Description' field a crossover event can be chosen (CTRL-E). Then the corresponding item codes will be ordered for the customer. If items are added to the crossover later, they will be added to each customer who has selected the crossover event. This procedure can be used for more than crossovers. If you have several customers who order all 'Star Wars' comics, they could be defined here, then each month when the new Previews catalog arrives, add the new item codes here, and they will be added to the customers. This would be a good example because there are frequent changes in the Star Wars titles with mini-series' and one-shots, which makes adding the new items to the monthly auto pulls for each customer labor intensive.
    Hot-Keys

Export . . .

  • Phone Book - Create a file containing personal information for each customer in the database. The file can be created as a comma delimited format, or a Microsoft Word mail merge format.

    For the purpose of importing into a different program (e.g. Excel or Word) or to perform a mail merge to print letters, envelopes, or labels. A mail merge can be performed from within Word without using this option by specifying the 'Customer' table within 'Program Files\ComicBook Pull File\ComicBook Pull File_be.mdb'. However, this option is provided as a means to be able to physically take the file to a different location; to be used with programs which can't extract the information directly from 'ComicBook Pull File_be.mdb'; or simply because the file created from this option eliminates the fields which would not be normally used in a phone book, making for fewer field options, and thus easier to create labels, etc. It should also be used if the person doing the mail merge shouldn't have access to private information such as a credit card number.

    A phone book report is also available.

Import . . .

General .csv file info - This is a standard file format which consists of each field seperated by a comma. At the end of a record is a line return so that the first field on the subsequent record is visually below the first field of the previous record. If a field is not used, but a field after it is, a blank field must be left for the unused field. But blank fields are optional to the right of the last field.

A .csv file is simple to create from a spreadsheet such as Excel. To manually create a .csv file using Excel, put each fields information in a separate column. If a field should be blank, leave the column blank for that row. In the case with the customer import where there are many fields, it may be helpful to title each column on the first row before adding all the data, then when you are done, remove the first row which contains the titles. Once all the data is entered into Excel, Save the file as a .csv format file (instead of the standard .xls). This procedure will add the commas between each field.

  • Cycle Sheet Info - Allows for cycle sheet info to be imported from a POS system, spreadsheet (etc.). The file must be a comma delimited file format (.csv) and have the fields specified in the following order. The first two fields are required but the rest are optional. If a field is not used, but a field after it is, there must be a field specified for the skipped field(s). For example if you wanted to import that you received 12 copies of JAN070100 on Jan 1, 2008 then the file should be at least JAN070100, 1/1/2008,,,12. Any commas after the final field containing data in each record are optional. Each line must end with a line return.
    This is an example of what an import file would look like within Wordpad.
    JUN071234,2/13/2007,2,3,2
    JUL072122,3/2/2007,,10,
    AUG073200,1/3/2007,,4,25

    Field Example Definition
    Item Code (required) JAN082424 TEXT(13)
    Date (required) 12/31/2008 DATE/TIME
    Inventory Qty 3 LONG INT
    Order Qty 12 LONG INT
    Receive Qty 33 LONG INT
    Held Back Qty 3 LONG INT


  • Customer Info - Allows for customer info to be imported. This would usually be done only for new users who want to transfer data from another system. It could, however, be used by a store which adds customer data to a POS system and wants to import this data into CBPF also. You must be careful though that you only import new users who are not already in CBPF, because importing a customer who is already in CBPF will create a duplicate customer record.
    • Field Example Definition
    Last Name Smith TEXT(30)
    First Name John TEXT(30)
    Middle Name (user defined field) Box 101 TEXT(20)
    Salutation Mr. TEXT(5)
    Date 5/12/2001 DATE/TIME
    Address 123 Main St. TEXT(35)
    City Salina TEXT(20)
    State KS TEXT(2)
    ZIP 67401 TEXT(10)
    Phone (785) 827-1133 TEXT(14)
    Phone Ext. 100 TEXT(6)
    E-Mail #mailto:james@collectorspairofdice.com# Note: The format must be followed with the "#mailto:" in front and "#" at the end of the e-mail address
    Work Place Walmart TEXT(20)
    Work Address 456 South St TEXT(35)
    Work Phone (785) 821-1111 TEXT(14)
    Work Phone Ext 34902 TEXT(50)
    Credit Amt 120.45 CURRENCY
    Deposit 45.69 CURRENCY
    Cell Phone (913) 342-1454 TEXT(14)
    Comments Stops in once a month MEMO
    Address 2 Apt 105 TEXT(35)
    User Defined number 456 LONG INT

Remove Old Records From . . .

Allows for cleanup of old data. You will be prompted for a date prior to which data will be deleted. For example if you remove items from the Diamond All table prior to Jan 2006, then all Previews data will be deleted which are in Dec 2005 or earlier. This will keep the file smaller, and the program faster. Once this is completed, the data cannot be recovered except through the restoration of the files from a backup. It is not uncommon to receive a message that not all records were deleted. This is due to the fact that some data links to other data, and the linking process in some cases resticts deleting of the linked data.

Service Calls . . . (The following items are not used by the store except when placing a service call for some problem. They are password protected to remove the possibility of accidental modification)

  • Options -
  • Open Objects -
  • Delete Objects -