Survey

Please note that there is no new survey this month.

Latest version information

There has been no upgrade issued since the last newsletter. 

The current version of AM-Win software is V7.631 The upgrade for this version is available for download on our website  Click here to open the download page and select V7.6 upgrade at the bottom right.

Any user who is using a version 7.609 or earlier please contact your supporting Consultant to discuss your upgrade. Do not upgrade prior to contacting your Consultant.

Details of changes in this new version can be obtained after installation within Am-win under help, About this version.

Christmas closure dates

AM-Win programming centre Sydney

From all the Staff at AMWIN Software Sydney, we wish all of our Agents, Distributors and Clients a merry Christmas and a safe and happy new year. We thank you all for your continued support & loyalty to AMWIN & we look forward to speaking with you in the new year!

Our Sydney office will be closed from Friday 18th December 2009 at 1.00pm and will reopen for business on Monday, 4th January 2010 at 9.00am.

ASIMS Sydney

The management and staff at ASIMS wish all clients a very safe and joyful Christmas break and a successful and prosperous New year in 2010.

Our office will be closed from Friday 18th December 2009 at 1.00pm and will re-  open for business on Monday, 4th January 2010 at 9.00am. 

We will monitor our e-mail on a regular basis during this time. If you have any URGENT support issues during this time, please send us a detailed email message and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

National Support

Support for systems that are down or non operational will be available during the holiday period. If your system is down or non operational contact us and you will be provided with the emergency support number.

AM-Win Head Office Queensland

Closing 5pm Friday December 18th and will re-open  January 4^th 2010.

ICS Queensland

Closing 5pm Friday December 18th and will re-open  January 4^th 2010.

Support for systems that are down or non operational will be available during the holiday period. If your system is down or non operational contact us and you will be provided with the emergency support number.

AM Systems Victoria

AM Systems will close December 18th and will reopen  January 11th 2010.  Happy Christmas and a ripper new year to everyone from David.

Southern Cross Business Technology

SCBT will close December 18th 2009 and will re-open on January 11th 2010

For extreme emergencies we will be available on mobile from the 5th to the 11th January

Willodene Tasmania

Closing 12 noon Thursday 24 December 2009. Re-open  9am Monday 4th January 2010

AM-Win releases Scheduler Module

The new Scheduler Module which is an "add on" to AM-Software has been 18 months in development and is now the perfect tool for those who send technicians, tradesmen, repairers and service people out to their clients homes or work places to service and repair their appliances, equipment, vehicles, office machinery or air-conditioning.

The scheduler module has also been designed to accommodate the solar power and hot water industries where we are continuing to enhance the product to include very specialised features, such as automatically calculating the Conergy rebates and discounts on purchase orders, offering the provision to print claim forms directly to Greenbank in an approved format and a specialised kit and invoice format that makes the whole estimating and invoicing process far easier and more efficient. 

Scheduler integrates seamlessly with AM-Win and as such many of AM-Win's features [Stock, clients, estimates etc] can all be accessed and utilised from within the module.

The scheduler allows the manager to sort your employees into order in the diary screen depending on who is working with whom.

For example, if you wish to view in the diary all the people who work together, you can manually sort them into that order.

For example if an apprentice has been assigned to a technician the scheduler lets you place them together so that it is easy to see what tasks have been allocated to both of them.

 We have included a document in PDF format on how to use the scheduler module. Reading the document will provide you with an idea of the module's power and flexibility and as such its ability to assist you when assigning tasks to your field technicians and service staff.

Click here to view or download the Scheduler Document in PDF format.

Please contact your supporting Consultant for more information or to purchase the Scheduler Module.

AM-Win Support Solutions

Windows, Word and Excel Tips

Windows

Another free kick from Google

You don't have to spend big bucks to promote your business on Google. There are other ways to get your business higher in the rankings. 

Google has offered business listings for some time where you can add your location to Google maps, write a story about who you are and what you do, publish your trading hours and the type of credit card facilities that you offer and even post up to 9 photos. You can even offer coupons to attract clients to your door.

You won't even need your IT guy to help as you can set it up yourself through Google's web interface.

You'll need a free Google account. If you don't already have one open Google, look up at the top right hand corner of your screen and you'll see "create an account". If you already have a Google account log in, select settings / Google account settings.

Now select "Local Business Centre". Once there select "Add new listing" and take it from there. You could also try http://google.com/lbc which providing you have an account and are already logged in should take you straight to the "Local Business Centre" page.

Google will now display this information when anyone finds your listing in the Google Search Engine. Not only that but Google indexes the information that you provide and will list it in the search results.

Who says that you get nothing for nothing.

Google also offers some free video's on You Tube [why not they own it] promoting the service - these can be viewed at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQEA1SFRMgk

MS Word

Using the Scroll Bar to help navigate through a document.

This is really helpful in a very long document. It keeps you from playing the guessing game as to where you are with the scroll button.

When you click and hold on the scroll bar in Word, a text box will appear that tells you what page you're scrolling to and the section title that begins the page (if you have sections and titles).

Below the scroll bar, you'll find a series of three buttons.

The top and bottom buttons (double up and down arrows) are for moving one object up or down.

The middle button (the dot) is called the Select Browse Object button. It allows you to select what items or objects the double up and down arrows jump to. For example, if you set the button to Graphic, the up and down arrows will jump from graphic to graphic, regardless of how many pages are between each graphic.

To see your choices, click on the Select Browse Object button. You should see a small palette of choices appear.

Select something from the palette that will aid you with your editing. The name of the icon will appear in the gray box along the bottom as you run the mouse pointer over each icon. (I tend to use either Browse by Page or Browse by Section, but you need to choose whatever will help you the most).

Once you've made your choice, the up and down arrows are immediately ready to jump from object to object, with the word "object" now being defined by the item you chose.

Keep in mind that you can change your choice of object whenever you wish.

Keeping Tables on One Page

Need to make sure that your smaller tables stay on a single page? Here's a handy trick you can use to enforce this rule. (This tip works with Microsoft Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, Word 2003, and Word 2007.)

As you develop more complex Word documents, it is inevitable that you will add tables. It can be disconcerting to have a page break occur in the middle of a table. Here's an approach that might be handy to keep your tables together

1.Select all the rows in the table

2.Display the Paragraph dialog box . (In Word 2007 display the Home tab of the ribbon and click the small icon at the bottom-right of the Paragraph group. In older versions of Word click Format | Paragraph.)

3.Make sure the Line and Page Breaks tab is selected.

4.Make sure the Keep Lines Together check box is selected.

5.Click on OK.

Now you need to repeat the same steps, with two minor variations. First, in step 1 select all the rows except the last one. Then, in step 4, make sure the Keep With Next check box is selected. This is necessary (performing this step with the last row not selected) so that the table stays together as a unit, rather than the table staying with the paragraph that follows it.

Select Entire document with your mouse

Want a quick way to select your entire document without taking your hand off of the mouse? Try clicking away using the technique described in this tip. (This tip works with Microsoft Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, Word 2003, and Word 2007.)

1.Move the mouse pointer to the left of the paragraphs in your document. (Make sure you don't click the mouse yet.) The pointer changes to an arrow pointing up and to the right.

2.Hold down the Ctrl key.

3.Click the left mouse button.

Another way to do this is to simply triple-click the left mouse button after step 1.

Note:

Please note that we do not provide support for our Word and Excel tips as they are provided by a third party. If you need further information why not try using Google - Cut and paste the heading of our tip into Google's search box. You'll be amazed at the information available.

Microsoft Excel Tips

 A quick memory jog when entering a worksheet function

Need a quick memory jog when entering a worksheet function? Here's a shortcut that will be invaluable. (This tip works with Microsoft Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, Excel 2003, and Excel 2007.)

One of the tools that Excel provides for adding functions to a formula is Insert | Function, which starts a wizard-like interface that leads you through constructing the function properly. If you are like most frequent users of Excel, this level of help is a little much; all you need is a memory-jog as to what parameters should be used with the function.;

One obscure shortcut provided in Excel actually provides just the amount of help you want. For example, let's say you know you want to use the SUBSTITUTE function, but you cannot remember all the parameters that are used with it. Type an equal sign, followed by SUBSTITUTE and a left parenthesis, like this:

=SUBSTITUTE(

Now, press Shift+Ctrl+A. Excel magically adds all the parameters for the formula, like this:

=SUBSTITUTE(text,old_text,new_text,instance_num)

What's more, the first parameter (text) is highlighted, and you can simply start typing what you want used for that parameter. Replace or delete the other parameters, as desired, and you have your correctly constructed function ready to go.

 Keep row and column labels visible

If you add row and column labels to your worksheet data, you may want them to appear on-screen at all times so that you can better work with the data. This is easily done by freezing rows and columns, as described in this tip. (This tip works with Microsoft Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, Excel 2003, and Excel 2007.)

When you develop a worksheet you often add a row or two of labels at the top of each column, and perhaps a column of labels to the left of each row. If your worksheet becomes quite large, it is not unusual for the row and column labels to scroll off the screen so that you can no longer see them.

To keep row and column labels visible, consider "freezing" the rows and columns in which the labels are located. For instance, you could easily freeze the first four rows of a worksheet along with the first column. Then, when you scroll the worksheet the rows and columns will remain on the screen—only the unfrozen portion of the screen will scroll.

You specify what rows and columns you want to freeze by selecting the cell immediately below and to the right of the area to be frozen. For instance, if you want to freeze rows 1 through 4 and column A, you would select the cell at B5. Then, to freeze the rows and columns, you select Freeze Panes from the Window menu. (In Excel 2007 you display the View tab of the ribbon, click Freeze Panes in the Window group, and then click Freeze Panes again.) Excel places a thicker black line above and to the left of the current cell to indicate the rows and columns frozen.

If you no longer need to use the frozen panes, simply choose Unfreeze Panes from the Window menu. (In Excel 2007 you display the View tab of the ribbon, click Freeze Panes in the Window group, and then click Unfreeze Panes.)

Note:

Please note that we do not provide support for our Word and Excel tips as they are provided by a third party. If you need further information why not try using Google - Cut and paste the heading of our tip into Google's search box. You'll be amazed at the information available.

Whoops

Problems viewing the video - Right mouse button Click here and select "save as" to download.

Jokes

Git my gun, Maw

In the mountain backwoods you don't see too many people hang-gliding.

Ol' Zeke decided to save up and get a hang-glider. He took it to the highest mountain, and after struggling to the top, got ready to take flight. He took off running and reached the edge—into the wind he went!

Meanwhile, Maw & Paw Abner were sittin' on the porch swing, talkin 'bout the good ol' days, when maw spotted the biggest bird she had ever seen.

"Look at the size of that bird, Paw!" she exclaimed.

Paw stood up, "Git my gun, Maw."

Maw ran into the house and brought out his pump action shotgun. He took careful aim. BANG...BANG...BANG...BANG! The monster-size bird continued to sail silently over the tree tops.

"I think ya missed him, Paw," she said.

"Yeah," he replied, "but at least he let go of ol' Zeke!"

You'd better think it over

Ladies - Before you get on the phone and complain about the following yarn it was sent in by one of our women clients. Great yarn for the dinner table or down at the pub.

Two men are out on the boat at their favourite spot, just fishing quietly, not saying too much [as men do].

Bob breaks the silence and says, 'I think I'm gonna divorce my wife. She hasn't spoken to me in over 2 months.'

Five minutes go past in silence, then Bill looks up at Bob and says, 'You'd better think it over Bob, women like that are hard to find.'

Another great lawyer yarn.

NASA interviewed potential astronauts for a trip to Mars. Only one person could go and, since there couldn't be enough fuel for a return trip, it would be one-way only.

The first applicant was an engineer. "How much would you expect to get paid for this trip?" the interviewer asked.

The engineer immediately answered, "One million dollars. And I'll donate it all to charity."

The next applicant was a doctor. Once again, "How much would you expect to get paid for this trip?"

The doctor answered, "Two million dollars; a million for my family and the other million for medical research."

The last applicant was a lawyer. And finally, "How much would you expect to get paid for this trip?"

He immediately whispered, "Three million dollars."

"Why so much more than the others?" the interviewer curiously inquired.

The lawyer eagerly replied, "I'll give you one million, I'll keep a million, and we'll send that engineer!"

The AM-Win team around the country and New Zealand wish everybody the best for Christmas and hope that you have a prosperous, successful and stress free 2010.

Office, Excel and Windows logos are the property of Microsoft and are used for reference points only.