Short answer: No, but use the Export utility instead.
Long answer: For the moment I have no plans to implement a Print feature. One major reason is that there are so many different ways in which addresses can be printed - on envelopes, on labels, big or small - it's a lot of really tedious work, while you can ALREADY print addresses the way you want, without me having to do any additional work!
I developed the fairly powerful Export feature with printing in mind. You can export addresses to a plain text file, or HTML, or a comma-delimited file. You can then open that file in another application (in a text editor such as Notepad, in Word or WordPad, in your Web browser or even in a spreadsheet program like Excel) and print from there, using all the excellent printing and formatting facilities those programs support.
You can achieve the best results by exporting to HTML and printing from the web browser (or MS Word, which imports HTML documents nicely). The export feature is very flexible, allowing you to select addresses (or parts of them) and format them the way you need. It helps to know a little bit of HTML, but if you don't, there are several samples provided with the program, and I will be adding more of those in forthcoming releases.
(The Help file for the Export utility has detailed instructions on how the various export formats work.)
If the export utility doesn't do what you need to do for printing purposes, please let me know. I will be happy to extend the Exporter's capabilities. Its real function is, in fact, printing! I do think this gives the best of both worlds, because those other programs will offer superior printing capability, and the exporter allows you to customize the formatting and the elements you wish to print.
Also, if you just need to print (a part of) a single address, you can select the fields to be printed in the list view (hold down the Ctrl key and click the fields you want to print out), then click the Copy button on the toolbar. This will copy all the fields you selected, which you can then paste into Word or any text editor and print from there. (You can also click an address in the left pane and use the Copy button to copy all the fields to clipboard.)
A: Yes! Beginning with version 0.99, you can not only rename existing categories, but you can also add new ones, remove the categories you don't want, and use your own custom icons. Please see the "Categories and icons" command under the "Tools" menu. You can grab icons from the following file types: .ICO, .EXE, and .DLL. You can also use small bitmaps (.BMP files), but they will not have the cool transparency effect that regular icons have.
Note that using your custom icons will require PhoneDeck to load them at startup, which will slow down the program just a bit. If you want to go back to the original, default icons, just delete the file "phonedeck.icn" from the program's directory.
A: The program as a whole is not designed to be localized. However, names of all address fields can be changed, so you can use "First name", "Last name", "Home address", "Office email" etc. in your own language, throughout the program's interface. (See also the answer to the next question, below.)
PhoneDeck is distributed with interface files for several languages. To use them, click the "Select language" command from the "Tools" menu, make sure the "Use the following language file" checkbox is checked, and select the language you want. The new language will be used after you close and restart PhoneDeck. Note that all the language (.LNG) files must be placed in the same directory in which "phonedeck.exe" resides.
See the main PhoneDeck page for a list of all available languages. The .LNG files can also be downloaded separately.
If the language you need is not already available, you can create a new language file - it's very easy! Please read the file called "LANGUAGE.TXT", installed in PhoneDeck's "DOC" directory. The file contains detailed instructions on how to create a new language file. Feel free to contact me if you have any problems.
If you create a new language file, you can send it to me, and I will add it to the distribution for others to use. (Thanks to all who have already helped with LNG files for their languages; I appreciate that a lot.)
A: Yes. You can change the names of existing fields. Just pretend that you are using Phonedeck in a different language! Please see the file "language.txt" that is installed with the program in the DOC directory; it has all the necessary details. Basically, you will need to export the (default) English language file, modify it to suit your needs and then tell Phonedeck to load the modified file at startup.
A: No, because not all fields are created equal. Some are special-purpose fields - for instance, there are fields which are supposed to hold telephone numbers. For these fields Phonedeck activates the "Dial" feature. For other fields there may be other "special" features, such as "Send email" or "Launch URL", etc. Other fields are supposed to simply hold plain text - e.g. the address fields. Now, if you change the label that describes the "City" fields and call it "Alternate Phone", you can store a number in it, but Phonedeck will not recognize the field as one for which the Dial function should be enabled.
I intended Phonedeck to be a usable, but still a fairly simple application. Big organizers such as MS Outlook or Time And Chaos allow you to create new fields and set their data types; I did not build this ability into Phonedeck mainly because the complexity it introduces would require more time that I can spend on a freeware app. For the same reason you cannot ADD new fields.
It would be easy enough to list user-defined fields in the two-column view, but if you switch to the tabbed view (press F12) you'll see that it would be much harder to keep any semblance of order there, since in the tabbed view fields are divided into logical categories. If you redefined "Office phone" as "Alternate home phone" for instance, it would still appear on the "Office address" tab.
A: You can safely install the latest version over any previous version of PhoneDeck. The addressbook file format is the same.
One point, though: when you installed the earlier version of PhoneDeck, there was a file called "sample.dck" installed in the program's directory. It's just an example file with two or three addresses. This file is overwritten whenever you install a new version of PhoneDeck, and it should not be used as your personal addressbook file. In other words, your personal addresses file should NOT be called "sample.dck" - if it is, please rename it before installing a new version. Otherwise, there's nothing to worry about.
Of course, it is always a good idea to periodically back up your addresses file just in case!
A: Not directly. Like practically all Windows applications, PhoneDeck assumes default colors that you have defined for the whole system (Control Panel, Display, Appearance). To get the tan color in the screenshot on the website I just changed my Windows colors to one of the settings predefined in Control Panel (either "Wheat" or "Desert", I forget which it was). In general, Microsoft says programs should not change their colors independently of Windows settings, because it can easily lead to color scheme conflicts (if you change the gray background color, you also have to change the font color, because black will not be visible on blue or green shades, say; but if you change the font color, you have to change the highlight color as well - and so on); but also because some components will still use their own default color schemes (for instance, the color of the buttons, such as "OK" and "Cancel", cannot be changed independently - they will always use the system-default color). Even Microsoft's own controls, such as the tree view, sometimes behave erratically when their color scheme is altered. OK, this was a very long way of saying "No", but that's what it boils down to :)
A: In Windows Explorer, find the shortcut that starts PhoneDeck. Open the Properties dialog box fir this shortcut, click the "Shortcut" tab, and see if the shortcut is configured to start PhoneDeck as a "Normal window" or "Minimized". Also, in the same dialog box, check whether there is a "/min" or "-min" after the path to phonedeck.exe.
If the above doesn't help, then close PhoneDeck if it is running and do the following:
Open the Registry Editor ("regedit.exe", it is not placed on the Start menu by default, but it does get installed with Windows). In RegEdit, double-click the HKEY_CURRENT_USER item, then find "Software", open it, open "General Frenetics", and then "PhoneDeck". Under "PhoneDeck" you will find an item called "FormPos". Don't open this item, just right-click on it and select "Delete" from the menu, then confirm the deletion. This will reset the state and position of all PhoneDeck's windows and dialog boxes. Restart PhoneDeck and see if that helped.
PhoneDeck used to have a bug where it would start minimized if it was previously closed in the minimized state, but that bug is long gone. However, the relevant bit of configuration in registry could have been retained on your system.
This should help. Otherwise, PhoneDeck never starts minimized unless it is configured to do so in Options - at least I've never seen it happen since fixing that bug.
A: This was a bug and has now been fixed. Please upgrade to version 1.2 or later.
A: PhoneDeck always starts the application that is registered in your system for sending email. Applications for launching URLs (and sending email, etc.) currently cannot be configured inside PhoneDeck.
try the following: Click Start, then click "Run", and type
mailto:webmaster@tranglos.com
and see what application gets launched. This is exactly what PhoneDeck is doing, except you don't have to type the command by hand :)
One other thing to check is to open the Registry Editor (regedit.exe) and look up the following key:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\mailto\shell\open\command
The value for this key holds the actual application that is registered for sending email. You can change it there manually.
A: There's a "Given name first" command under the View menu. Click it (or press F6) to switch between First/Last and Last/First display settings.
A: No. I realize this may be a bit annoying, but the way this feature is currently designed, the items in the two Quick lists cannot be reordered or sorted. There's only ten items in each list (or fewer), so this should not be a usability issue, but it does look ugly.
A: After PhoneDeck starts dialing, you need to pick up the receiver and click the Talk/Hang Up button. PhoneDeck only dials the modem; you need to use the telephone for the remainder of the connection. (It may help to increase the modem volume (Options dialog box, "Modem" tab) so that you can hear when the connection has been made.)
A modem is not connected to the sound card, so it's not possible to hear the other party via speakers. Some modems allow for speaker/microphone setup, but such features are modem-specific; for this to work, you must used the software that came with the modem; PhoneDeck cannot do it.
A: The modem simply does not send any "connected" information back to the program - because the modem doesn't know that it is connected!
Technically, the modem can only connect to another modem, a fax machine, etc. - i.e. when making a data call - because it then receives some data from the other end, so that it knows it's connected. But when someone just picks up the receiver on the other end of the line, the modem doesn't consider this as connection established, because it doesn't receive any confirmation signal from the other end. Note that the Windows system dialer has the same limitation.
To know for sure that the call has been connected, increase the modem volume in the "Options" dialog box, so that you can hear the modem's beeps. See also the previous question.
A: The error message will look something like this: "Importing aborted due to an unexpected error: Invalid character in CSV string at pos <number>."
I have heard about this error from several users, usually trying to import CSV files created by Microsoft Address Book. In all cases, the error results from the fact that the CSV file is not properly formed. There is nothing PhoneDeck can do about it, and the fault lies strictly with the application used to create the CSV file.
A quick look at the CSV file reveals the problem. A CSV file must contain one address per line, and a single address cannot be split into two or more lines - it absolutely must be contained within a single line. This is required by the CSV format: each line is a separate database record (address, in our case), and the fields of the record are separated with commas.
If you look at the CSV file that generates this error, you'll see that this is not what happens. It will have sections that look like this:
ACME Inc,,,,"ID: 635385-33-235
Customer Number 36232 0011"
It's difficult even to figure out where one address ends and another begins, but it is very clear that lines are broken into segments. This is not a valid CSV file, and PhoneDeck will not be able to import it.
It seems that either the file was exported in such a state, or some application wrapped long lines into these short segments. This could happen if you edited the CSV file in a text editor, such as Notepad, with the Word Wrap option turned ON. If you didn't, and if the file was exported with lines broken, then the only solution would be to manually join the lines (the parts of each address) into long lines, so that each address is contained in a single line.
A: Not yet. Password protection is not something that can be grafted onto an existing design - it wouldn't be done right that way. I originally intended to add this to PhoneDeck from the start, but then I realized I already had too many applications that encrypt data, each with its own password. I decided it's overall a better idea, instead, to use some sort of disk encryption software, such as PGP Disk (freeware versions exist), ScramDisk (free, but somewhat unwieldy) or BestCrypt (commercial). That way, you are assured of reliable encryption, and you can protect all your sensitive data regardless of whether the particular application supports encryption.
However, encryption will be available in version 2.0 of PhoneDeck.
A: PhoneDeck doesn't have a reliable facility to extracting icons from files which contain more than 1 icon. You would need a specialized program for this, such as MicroAngelo (shareware) or any other icon editor. Basically, you need to extract the icons you need from "moricons.dll", and save them as normal icon files (*.ico). Then add these icons to PhoneDeck.
A: The procedure for deleting quick list items is not very convenient. From the "Address" menu, choose the "Quick List" command at bottom. A submenu will be displayed including "Remove from Quick Dial" and "Remove from Quick Email" commands. Click the appropriate command. A dialog box will be displayed with all the quick list items. Click the item which you want to remove.
A: No. This is a modem-specific feature. Modems are not normally connected to the sound card, so you won't be able to speak through the microphone or hear the other party through the speakers. You can only use the phone handset as you normally do.
Some modems come with a headset and a microphone, which you connect to the modem itself, not the soundcard. This depends entirely on the particular brand of the modem you have, and PhoneDeck cannot do anything in this regard.
You'll hear sound from the modem's internal beeper until you click the button in the dialer window (you can change the modem speaker volume in the Options dialog box, on the "Modem" tab). After that, the call is routed through the telephone.
A: Yes. The five custom fields in PhoneDeck are specific to each individual file. Therefore, the names of these fields are not set in configuration options, which are global, but in the File Properties dialog box.
From the File menu, select Properties, then click the "Custom fields" tab. After you've changed the names of the custom fields, click OK, then save the file. The names you specify here will apply only to the current file.
Please note that PhoneDeck currently has very poor support for these custom fields. particularly, they are not supported by the import/export module (dckport.exe)