[Please feel free to add comments to the FAQ; these comments will be incorporated into revisions of the document.]

General Usability Questions

Q1: How do I open up the user manual from wihin ODB?
Click on the Question Mark (help) icon, choose Help and Documentation... and then click on the Open PDF User Guide button.

Q2: How do I view all the records in my database?
Using the right-mouse button, click on the Select Records... button. You will see a popup menu that allows you to select all records. Please note that at this time the ODB program only performs searches on one table at a time.

Q3: How do I handle addresses where there are two people within a household in ODB?
The easiest thing to do is to put your primary contact in the first name and last name fields, and to put the other contact you have in that household on the second line of the address (line2). By doing this it becomes easier to produce mailing labels, since it is tough to fit the names of couples on one line if each partner keeps their original surname. We also added the titles (Mr., Ms., etc.) and suffixes (Jr., III, etc.) but for grassroots organizing groups we have found that the overhead of maintaining the titles and suffixes information and incorporating that into mail merges for formal invitations is not the most important priority. It is also possible to use Mr. & Mrs. if surname is the same.
Note that in ODB 1.0 there is a second email address field available under the email/web tab in the People entry screen. Thus it is possible to keep a couple together as one record, and see that communications will go to both people.

Q4: OK, I have entered some couples in the database where the surnames are different. But now when I enter a last name into the search box, I can't find the people who have their names on Line2.
If you right-click on the search box, you will notice a menu choice that allows you to search both lines of the address. For example, if you type "Jones" into the search box and then use this menu choice, you will find every one with "Jones" in the lastname or on Line2. You can also use this feature to search for organizations. E.g., you can type the word "Union" and find all the entries in the People table (if the People button is chosen) that have some kind of union listed as their place of employment in the second line of their address.

Q5: I have a signup sheet to enter. Is there a way to make it easier to include a comment about the event people signed up at as part of each new record?
Yes; ODB has a "repeated comments" feature for this purpose. Once you enter the first record, you can select that record and right-click on the "New Record" button. Then choose "Add with repeated comment from selected record." On subsequent records, you can choose "Add with last repeated comment" from this menu.

Q6: Is there a "mass update" feature?
YES! This feature was added in 2006 and in 2007 the feature was extended. From the main menu, you can mass update type codes, activity codes, and SRC codes by selecting two or more records and clicking on the Mass Action button. When you have selected some payments in the Advanced Search screen, you will see an additional "Mass Update" button in the results area, beginning with ODB 1.0.3.

Q7: I used the "Copy Emails" button to copy 50 emails to the clipboard so that I could send an email to 50 people. But my Microsoft Outlook 98 software does not accept a list of addresses separated by commas. Outlook requires semicolons. Will ODB support Outlook?
ODB already does. If you right-click on the copy emails button, you will notice many different options for copying the email list, including; the one-email-per-line format required by email-list software and a columnar format for generating phone lists, as well as the Outlook-compatible format.

Q8: How can I perform a query on donation and contact data simultaneously? E.g.: Find the email addresses of all volunteers who've made a donation in the past month, or find the donation history of everyone with interest in a specific issue.
If you do a donation query and check the "View Query" tab, you will notice that it is possible to "Add SQL to broaden your search" or "Add SQL to further restrict your search". Assuming you wanted to find people with activity code "V1-Volunteer" and issue code "T1-Toxics" you would put:

activit like "*V1*" and issues like "*T1*"

in "Add SQL to further restrict your search" box and click the search button. This is actually easy, because the SQL here can be generated by ODB if you do a simple "people" search, view the SQL, copy it, switch to "donations", and then paste the SQL in the "Add SQL to further restrict your search" box.

Q9: Can I print a thank you note in ODB?
Yes, after you search for the people you want to send thank you notes to, you can click Print button and choose Form Letter for xx Chosen People as the Printing format. You may also set ODB up so that a check box will appear in the Advanced Search area whenever a payment is added or edited. Checking this box and saving the payment will cause a thank you note to print. By default ODB will print just a single thank you note for all kinds of payments. ODB can be customized to allow many different kinds of notes, which will be selected based on the category of a payment.

Q10: How can I delete a payment, or reassign it to a different person?
You can always do that by pressing the delete key on your keyboard once the payment is selected in the Payment History screen. You also can edit the payment if you double click on it and change the amount, category, etc. When you are editing a payment you will see a 'Reassign' link near the top that lets you take an existing payment and assign it to a different person, which is useful if you want to consolidate payments from spouses or from duplicate people.

Q11: How can I check the current version of ODB?
The version number appears in the ODB title bar. Also there is a build date that appears in the splash screen, accessible from the question mark on the main ODB screen and upon startup.

Q12: How can I check the location of database?
You can do it by clicking on the wrench icon and select Show/Change DB Location. Don't enter a password; just read this screen and it will show you where the database is located. Then just click Cancel and Done to go back to the main ODB screen.