Abacus Consulting, LLC

I have been using Org helper for a while now, but I have one problem. We don't put just the organization name in the last name field, because for clients with lots of contacts it can be hard to find the organization contact. So, we add a period before the organization name in the last name field, so the organization record is always the first record of contacts associated with that organization.

Here's the problem: Org helper puts the name of the organization into the last name field, but won't allow me to add the period prior to the name--it is always overwritten with whatever is in the organization field. In order to use Org Helper and still have our format, I have to turn it off so that I can save and close the record, then turn it back on for the next record. It would be great if the last name field were editable after the text was copied to it from the Organization field.

kwg

I don't think that it is practical to make the last name field editable, as the idea of the utility is that it will keep that field in sync, even if the org name is changed.

What I may be able to do without too much difficulty is add an option for a prefix character, so that OrgHelper will automatically insert that character (in your case a period) before the rest of the last name. I'll review the code and see how hard this would be to add, but please confirm that this solution would work.

Kevin,

That would work fine. The use of the period was actually an old trick I learned for my cell phone to make my most frequently called numbers come up on my contact list first (i.e., .Home, etc.)

kwg

OK, I will take a look at it. But just so you know, for now, if you put the disable delimiter character (currently a pipe "|" symbol) at the end of a last name, it will disable the syncing of the fields as you desire, and allow a period as a prefix.

This, I'm sure is not as convenient as having the period put in automatically.

I have posted Org Helper Beta 3 on the Org Helper Page. It now includes support for a prefix character(s).

I also made some pretty substantial changes to provide support for Time Matters 8 SR2. Please see the usage notes for configuring both a prefix character and SR2 support.

I assume you are using SR1C since you were using the prior version of Org Helper. I have not really tested on this SR, so would appreciate that you let me know either way how it is working before I announce the release to my notification list.

Thanks!

Post edited by: kbross, at: 2007/08/16 14:47

Thanks. Just upgraded to 2A today, so we'll see what happens (TM hasn't even posted what changes were made in 2A yet--guess we'll find out eventually).

Thanks for taking a look at this, and for making these changes so quickly.

kwg

Will work with 2A also. There should not be any substantive difference with Org Helper for SR2/SR2A. In the defaults.ini file, you can set the value to either 2 or 2A, but it really does not matter which.

Kevin,

Two things:

1. Can we converse by regular e-mail? This posting thing is a pain.

2. The file that was downloaded for the beta 3 was not "org helper", but "description edit 8". There is no .ini file in the c:/program files/description edit 8 folder. Should I move the defaults.ini file to the Description Edit 8 folder?

Sorry, linked it to the wrong file when I uploaded. That should be fixed now, so go ahead and re-download.

Re: corresponding by email, I prefer to keep anything that might be substantive to another user within the forum, so that I don't have to answer support questions, feature suggestions, troubleshooting methoeds etc. more than once.

If it would be of no value to another user, than email would be fine.

ok. I'll test it out and let you know what happens.

kwg