Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook

Announcement

Collapse

The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
  • Spam.
  • Vulgar language.
  • Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
  • Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
  • Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
  • Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less

Database has disappeared

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Database has disappeared

    Help! While attempting to print a portion of my maillist (Alpha 5, version 3.04) to send Christmas cards to only certain of my mail contacts, somehow I have lost my entire database. I had marked the records that I wanted to print, but when I went to "print preview", it appeared that all records were going to print. Don't clearly recall what I did, as recomended in help file for marking and printing only selected records, but now my database has disappeared. Since I did not delete or compress or any other operation, I believe that my file is still there, but I can't find and open it. Any Alpha 5 experts in Denver?
    Thanks for any suggestions.
    David C. Vigil
    Denver, CO

    #2
    RE: Database has disappeared

    Can you see your database files in Windows Explorer? If so, they're still on the hard drive. Let us know if the tables are there, then we can suggest a solution.

    Like you, I suspect they're still there and just not showing up.

    Comment


      #3
      RE: Database has disappeared

      Thanks, Ohlen - The files are in the heirarchy: A5v3 - Templates - Tables - Mailing List - (Mailing List Database files and Mailing List files)(there are duplicate sets of files with .Alx, .Alm, .Alk, .Ddd, .Ddm and .Ddx extensions, as well as alpha logo files labeled "Database for Mailing List" and "Mailing List".
      I can't get any files to open with expected data and attempting to open some gives message "unexpected filr format" or some such. Files seem to be there.
      Any suggestions?
      Thanks,
      David C. Vigil

      Comment


        #4
        RE: Database has disappeared

        It sounds to me like you've mixed your database with the A5V3 files. Here's what I'd do.

        First let's make sure we're speaking the same language. A table is a file with the suffix .dbf, .cdx, .fpt., )these files hold the data and indexes) .ddd .ddm .ddx (these hold the forms, field rules, etc.).

        The .adb .alb .alm .alx files are your database files and should have the name you assigned to your database.

        Move the first group of files to a new folder (I always make mine a subfolder of the A5 program files) but you can do it anyway you want. Then create a new database and place it in the same new folder. Then, using the control panel, add your tables to the new database. This should give you a functioning database in it's own folder.

        Remember to open the database. If you try to open individual tables, Alpha will create a database to put the tables in. This may explain the duplicate files.

        When you have it all working you can delete the tables and database files from the program folder.

        Comment


          #5
          RE: Database has disappeared

          Thanks again, Ohlen - I've created a new folder, although the old folder was among those that are installed by A5, in the "Tables" subfolder, under the "Templates" folder. I've put the new folder immediately under the A5 folder and have copied the files that you described as table files (data, indexes,forms, field ruls, etc.) into the new folder, which I've called "New Maillist".
          I've opened A5 and created a new, empty database in the new folder. I looked at the A5 control panel and cannot for the life of me figure out how to add the tables to the new database.
          I feel like i'm so nar and yet so far.
          Thanks,
          David C. Vigil

          Comment


            #6
            RE: Database has disappeared

            >>I looked at the A5 control panel and cannot for the life of me figure out how to add the tables to the new database.

            Comment


              #7
              RE: Database has disappeared

              Ohlen -
              A miracle! While playing around with Alpha 5, I discovered that I had no .dbf file in the directory "Tables", tried looking in "Database" directory and found what looked promising. Got the file loaded and it appeared to contain only the first entry of 487 that should have been in the file. Tried "operations" and exported ti diskette - showed that 487 records had been successfully exported! That let me know that they REALLY were there! Now I seem to have the entire database back, although, perhaps not as recently updated, which I don't understand - but so what, most of it's there. Thanks for your patience and all of your help. I really should try to learn more about the operation of Alpha 5, but have been satisfied to simply maintain this simple name, address, phone number database for mailings. The overlay view looks like it could be much an improvement over the simple table view that is all I've ever used.
              Again, thanks,
              David C. Vigil

              Comment

              Working...
              X