Miscellaneous Tips from Readers

Dear Readers:

Here are some tips I've received from some of you. I hope you find them useful.

--Ted

A reader named William told of a free program he uses to convert OfficeVision/400 documents to Microsoft Word format ["Convert OV/400 Documents to MS Word for Free"]. Word includes a free batch-document converter. I don't know which versions of Word have it. I have only used it under Word 2000. If you have convpack.exe (the file containing the DCA-RFT conversion wizard) installed on your computer, select File, New, the Other Documents tab, and Batch Conversion Wizard. It can convert all or selected documents in an AS/400 at once.

I've used it for basic documents, nothing fancy. I recently used it to convert 185 OfficeVision/400 documents in only a few minutes. It also converts to and from other formats. I don't think it would handle mail merge, but for most of what people have I think it would work fine.

--David

In "Odds and Ends" a reader wrote, "I would prefer that most users not have access to WRKJOB because WRKJOB has a CL command line." As nice as that thought may be, DSPJOB also provides a command line in V4R4 and previous releases. Hint: option 16, Display commitment control status.

Don't rely on lack of a command line; it cannot replace good resource security.

--Tom

Did you know you could get to the Web from an OS/400 command line? In Client Access, choose Edit, Preferences, Hotspots. Check Execute URL. To open a Web page, key a URL on the OS/400 command line and click it. If you press Enter, you get an error.

--Bill

When you create column headings, leave the first ones blank, not the last ones. The column headings will look nicer.

Here's the typical way I've seen column headings defined.

A            COMPANY        3P 0B      TEXT('Company')                 
A                                      DFT(1)                          
A                                      COLHDG('Company' ' ' ' ')       
A            CUSTNBR        5P 0B      TEXT('Customer account number') 
A                                      COLHDG('Customer' 'account' +   
A                                      'number')                       
A            CUSTNAME      20   B      TEXT('Customer name')           
A                                      COLHDG('Customer' 'name' ' ')   
A            CADDRESS1     18   B      TEXT('Address line 1')          
A                                      COLHDG('Address' 'Line 1' ' ')  

Notice the headings on the generated report.

Company  Customer  Customer              Address    
         account   name                  Line 1     
         number                                     
    1         44   Joe's Shoes           11 Main st 
    1      10001   Sue's Bridal Shop     Dept 5     

Here's what I consider to be the better way.

A            COMPANY        3P 0B      TEXT('Company')               
A                                      DFT(1)                        
A                                      COLHDG(' ' ' ' 'Company')     
A            CUSTNBR        5P 0B      TEXT('Customer account number'
A                                      COLHDG('Customer' ' account' + 
A                                      '  number')                     
A            CUSTNAME      20   B      TEXT('Customer name')         
A                                      COLHDG(' ' 'Customer' 'name') 
A            CADDRESS1     18   B      TEXT('Address line 1')        
A                                      COLHDG(' ' 'Address' 'Line 1')

I much prefer the headings in this example.

         Customer                                   
          account  Customer              Address    
Company    number  name                  Line 1     
    1         44   Joe's Shoes           11 Main St 
    1      10001   Sue's Bridal Shop     Dept 5     

Query/400 and SQL/400 are among the software that automatically use column headings.

--Ed

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