Truncated Contact Log in SK98 under XP

[IanMcKean]

I have just discovered that my contact log gets truncated when I save all in SK98. I discovered this on a fairly long contact log record, but not so long that I couldn't add text to it. But after saving, some of my text at the bottom of the log has disappeared.

I have just copied the missing data from a W98 system, but after appending it to the end of the contact log and saving, most of what I appended has disappeared again. Has anyone else found this problem?

 

[IanMcKean]

Further to above, what is dangerous about this problem is that you can be gaily adding stuff to your contact log without realising that info is dropping off the end!

 

[IanMcKean]

Further to my two previous posts, I have been doing some more investigation with my W98 system and find it behaves exactly the same as the XP system. So it is a Sidekick problem. I was always aware that if you added text to the contact log it would eventually stop you adding any more. But I was not aware that if you only added a little at a time, not enough to hit the limit while editing, you would not know that your oldest data was being truncated. This is very disappointing. Has anyone else come across this "feature" and got a solution?

 

[james33]

Dear Ian,

Upon examining the help file in Sidekick (and if Help does not work on your machine go to

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917607

and download the file that allows you to use the old .hlp files in Vista),

I found that there is a limit of 5,000 characters to each card and if your Contact log is included in this limit & if you are a VERY heavy user of the contact log well I guess that is the limit.

A workaround could be to duplicate cards with a long contact log and then split the contact log between the duplicates whilst keeping the index values the same and adding 01 02 03 to the end of the index values (as long as they are not greater than about 16 characters or whatever that limit is which the cards will sort on)

and if you understood that gobbledygook I will be amazed!

Regards
Jim

Regards Jim
Check the FAQ area of this Forum for answers (If there are any FAQs!) , it could save you a lot of time and effort!

 

[james33]

Dear Ian,

In my experience the best place for the kind of data that you are saving in your contact log is a folder on the root of the C:\ Drive.
For example:
C:\Sidekick_Log
The reason that I would save it in there is that if I create a text file for a Mr James Brown I would name the text file :
C:\James_Brown

I would then in a field called
"ContactInfo"

Save the full path to that text file in that field as in:

C:\SidekickLog\James_Brown.txt

Thus by Double-Clicking on that field you can highlight the entire path (as there are no gaps in the path) and then if you copy (Ctrl+C)
you can then bring up the RUN dialog
WinKey + R and paste the path into that and press enter and it will open your text file.

It means that in the event that you wish to put your Data into another Program you can export that field too and you still have your Data accessible.

Regards
Jim