Tips

What follows are several tips for using Inspection Butler – little tricks to increase efficiency:

Add blank lines in comment and other text fields

When entering text into a text field (e.g. the Parcel History field in the Locations Panel), you can add blank lines between text – or simply create a new line – by typing Ctrl-Enter. In other words, hold down the Control key on the keyboard and then type the Enter key. This can be done multiple times to create multiple new-lines (or blank lines).

Don’t Use the mouse wheel (if you have one) while entering data

Using the mouse wheel to scroll a data-entry window up or down will actually create new blank records. These records can be used, by simply placing text in the appropriate fields. Or, they can be deleted by moving to the record to be deleted and clicking on the Delete Record button on the MS Access Toolbar:

Be aware of multiple scrollbars

As with any “windowing” application, MS Access will automatically display vertical scrollbars when a window is too large to be displayed all at once on your monitor. With Access, however, there is the possibility of having two (or more) scrollbars – one for the Access window, and one for each of the panels displayed within the Access window. Therefore, care should be taken when using Inspection Butler panels that you look for, and utilize, all of the scrollbars displayed.

Don’t unnecessarily create new records

The record navigation buttons at the bottom of each Inspection Butler Data Entry panel are very helpful tools. One of the pieces of information conveyed is the number of records in the database for that panel:

Unfortunately, it is fairly easy to create new records accidentally, if you are not careful. This is done when you try to navigate to a record beyond the maximum number displayed. For example, the image above shows that there are 3 records in the set being displayed, and the first one is currently being viewed. If the user were to push the next record button (the right-pointing arrow just to the right of the current record number) three times, the current record displayed would be 4, which would move beyond the total records number, which is currently 3. The way Inspection Butler deals with this currently is to create a new, blank record, which would be record number 4. If the user were to push the next record button again, another new record would be created (number 5), and so on.