I had mentioned in my post yesterday that somehow the Report Listing file had mysteriously converted the Minami Torishima prefix from JD1/M to JD1/W. I did a little detective work today and found out what happened. When I edit the csv Listing file in Wordpad to change the asterisk to something that Excel finds more digestible, I also routinely convert all the "M" flags (and the "L" flags in Version 7) to "W", since my Excel application really only cares about whether something is Worked (W), Confirmed (C) or Credited (X). I've been doing this for the three years or so since I started using Excel to track my DXCC stats and set up submissions. It works fine.
It turns out that even when you tick the "Match whole word only" box in the Search and Replace function in Wordpad, it goes ahead and changes every occurrence of "/M" to "/W" (thanks, Bill). So not only was JD1/M getting changed to JD1/W, HK0/M turned into HK0/W, etc. This never caused me any problem with the Version 7 report files, because I just dumped the csv file into Excel, selected the 160 through 6 data cells and pasted the cell contents into my main spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is set up just like the Version 6 listing file, with the active prefixes sorted alphabetically at the top of the list followed by the deleted prefixes sorted alphabetically at the bottom of the list. But... the Version 8 Listing format has changed, and now the prefixes are listed in straight alphabetical order, with the deleted prefixes interleaved with the active prefixes. This means to get the data in the order I need for my spreadsheet I have to do a sort by first the "D" field and then the Prefix field. When I do this sort, the erroneous JD1/W now gets put behind Ogasawara, JD1/O and the Ogasawara and Minami Torishima data lines are now reversed. All of this is a long way of explaining why I'm making a request to revise Version 8 in two ways: 1. Use some character other than * to flag entries ineligible for DXCC submission in the Report module. 2. PLEASE restore the Prefix order in the Report Listing format to that used in Version 7, with the active prefix list followed by the deleted prefix list. Since there will undoubtedly be some fine tuning happening after the initial release of V8.01 this would be a good time to make these changes. The asterisk issue is really pretty minor, but fixing it would make life easier for those of us who import the report file into Excel for whatever reason without forcing an intermediate editor session to replace the character. The change in the Listing prefix order is really a giant step backwards in user friendliness. There's really no point in cluttering the report with dozens of dead prefixes that most users never have, and certainly never will, encounter in their logs. Put the deleted prefixes at the end of the listing where they won't bother those who don't need them. It may sound like I'm incessantly whining about small things, and perhaps I am. But I still really like the new version. I'm looking forward to getting my license key so I can start using it in earnest. 73... Randy, W8FN ______________________________________________________________ Dx4win mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/dx4win Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
