TechTrax has been around now for four years. It debuted in May of 2002.
Since then, we have published over 600 articles. You can find the help you need by searching our Archives...or even searching Google, now that so many of our articles are rated as the top hits for so many support questions. But we now have one more great way for you to find the right tutorial.
We used a little automation magic and pulled out all the names of our 600+ articles and put them together in one, hyperlinked Word document! We give it to you, here, as a little New Year's gift to help you get your own support library started.
Those of you familiar with Greg's free File Cataloger will understand the concept of this Word doc. The document is 25 pages long and contains a table that goes down the length of these pages. Columns have been setup to show you each article we've published, the name of the author, which department it appeared in, which issue date and we've also added a Keyword column. I've taken the liberty of inserting one term that fairly accurately represents the information covered in the respective articles, but you're free to change that information. We've also added a column for notes. It now looks very tiny since no text has been added. But the table will adjust for column size if you add notes.
The coolest part is that simple sort macros have been added, along with MacroButton fields, to the column titles. This allows you to just double click any column header to sort by that column.
Want to review all the Accessibility articles? Double click the Department column.
Need to review articles on Charts? Sort by Keyword.
Care to browse articles written by your favorite Author? Double click the Author heading.
Sure, you can do all this same type of sorting in our Archives. But I personally find it nice to have a document handy to browse and sort as I want. Gives me a feeling of power to know I have all this information just a click away. And since I use this method a lot with project file links...creating a master document to sort and link all files related to a specific project...I find this method easy to use. So I wanted to share the wealth.
When you find the article you want to read, assuming you're connected to the Internet, a click on the article title will activate the hyperlink and zip you right to the article you want.
Even better, you can add to this library. Or, since we did link all the articles, you might want to go through and delete articles about things that don't interest you? Whatever you decide, a copy of this document is waiting for you to customize as you want. You need only click the link below to download it and unzip it.
If you need help understanding how to download and unzip files from the web, see this TechTrax article: Downloading 101.
Also, since the file contains macros, created by me, I've added my digital signature to the file. If you want to use the macro version, you can install my signature and then not be bothered by security warning from that point forward for this file. Toss a shortcut to it on your desktop and you'll have all this information at your fingertips.
However, I know there are those who may not want to deal with macros. So we have a second version that has the macros removed. You can choose to download that version versus the automated one. Then you can sort the columns manually on your own by using the Table > Sort feature.
After each new issue of TechTrax is published, TechTrax members will be able to download an update to tack to the bottom of their master files. It will contain a matching table with just the articles from the previous month. A quick cut/paste will allow you to keep your document up-to-date, or maybe you'd prefer to start a second one? That's up to you.
Feel free to pass it around to friends. They'll be thrilled that you put this great doc together for them with all this knowledge! (I'll never tell!<wink>)
Finally, know that this article with the file links will be permanently linked on the main TechTrax page as well as our Download page on MouseTrax, so you can easily download more copies if you need it in the future.
To download the Word doc WITH automated sort macros, click:
TechTrax_First4Years_WithMacos.zip [157k]
To download the Word doc with NO macros, click:
TechTrax_First4Years_NoMacros.zip [147k]
Enjoy this easy access to all this information!
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