I have one account that is all one specialty, several dictators, but they use the same terminology, so I can use one glossary for all of them, I think.

The other one is ERs and consults, many specialties.

Do you change glossaries according to the dictator, the specialty, or just keep one huge one?

I'm thinking for continuations to be more accurate, the more you can narrow it down by specialty (or dictator) it would be better? I have no idea what I am talking about, so any words of wisdom or advice before I start it (start it wrong, I should say) would be very much appreciated!

Gotta go. I love this forum!

Different people handle their glossaries in each and every way you have mentioned, so the answer to how to do it is "it depends."

Yes, the more personalized the glossary, whether by dictator or specialty, the more likely the choice you want will automatically pop to the first line of the advisory. Also, it is easier to include/merge glossaries than to pick a subset that you want out of one huge glossary, so at least at the beginning you may want to keep things very divided up. As you get a feel for how things work and what you need on your account, you can make what changes in your arrangement you feel are best. Including, unincluding, and rearranging the order of your includes is very easy to do. If you merge glossaries, you should keep backup copies of your component glossaries as well, which makes it easy to try different combos.

Hi, Tallulah! Thanks for joining PT, I'm pleased!

I have some things to say about first starting with IT! I'll do it tomorrow or the next day when my brain is in better shape. For now, I just wanted to pop in.

What a nice welcome! Any ideas on getting me started in the right direction would be SO appreciated. I know IT is the most powerful tool out there, I just want to be using it right.

I can't even figure out what "includes" are at the moment. Off to their site for some hints for now! I usually jump into something new without reading the instructions - (yes I live dangerously - hehe), but this time it's going to be different. I will be here a lot in the future, I can tell. Thanks for putting all this information in one spot, Harrie, and everyone here who contributes! And Tonks - you rock! What beautiful minds you have here. (And some smilies I just love, too).

Thank you so much for the kind words. You know, we appreciate that!

Fortunately for both of us, I am able to function a lot better this morning! And here are a few things I would advise:

• Use a marker key instead of the spacebar. It will slow you down for a few days, but then you'll be okay, and the benefits over the spacebar are huge.
• Choose your singles glossary and adjust it accordingly. You can do that in Notepad. For myself, I was so used to the singles I'd used over the years that I just put all of those in and that's all.
• Use the IT forums and articles there for great tips that help a lot!
• Check the settings in IT. You can do a lot of customizing. For instance, one space after periods or two, whether you want caps after colons, that type thing. When you get it and install it, open up IT and click on the gray bar above "phrases," - that will bring you to all the settings you'll want to know about and/or adjust.

I'd suggest you do a manual continuation situation at first, just so you can see how cool it is! Check how in this thread I'd always known IT does this, intuitively I could tell from just using it, but Jean I came on here and showed that little trick, and I just think it's so neat! Of course, that's very neat, but you'll want to do compilations to get a lot of continuations easily for your work. Lots about that on the IT forum.

These are just a few off my head. I may come back with more. One thing maybe someone could help me out with......shorts. The shorts glossary? I see people having questions and difficulties about shorts, but I can't remember myself anything about it. Can someone give some pointers there? Or is it only something you run into with the spacebar?

Lastly, Tallulah, IT does have a learning curve, so just expect that and don't be frustrated. And ask anything you need to ask about! Oh! Try some cool commands, too! See our IT Commands forum!

Wait. That's not lastly. You asked about includes. Includes are great. All it is is that, when and if you do have separate glossaries, you simply go to a setting and "include" them in the order you want underneath your main glossary, so that any glossary you want is available to you.

And check out the IT Editor! Just do Alt + / to switch to it. In the Editor, I like to have my advisories on top. It's just a view I enjoy. For simple reports without a lot of formatting, and of course depending on your entire work set-up, (some people likely never use it), you can type in the editor and copy it over to your platform or whatever. It's really just like WordPad, I believe. And in the editor, Ctrl + A not only selects it all, but copies to clipboard, too. You can skip the Ctrl + C!

Wow! Thanks for all the info, Harrie! I'm going to print this out and refer to it when I have it installed. I've been reading (and reading, and reading!) at the IT forums, too. A lot of info to digest, but I'm so glad it's there (and here).

Thanks again!

I'll be baaaaack!

I thought I read somewhere that you could import Smartype glossaries. I failed to check, though, if it said it was a Smartype for WORD glossary.

I just tried to import mine and it didn't work. That's going to be a major blow...I think.

UPDATED TO SAY: I saved it as a .Txt file in notepad, then imported that file, and I'll be darned, it worked! All my addresses files are in there (thousands, I think), and it took so long I thought it would crash, but it finally told me where to find the glossary, and I tried bringing up doctors just like I used to do in Smartype, and it WORKED! WOOHOO!

I'm liking this IT already!

That's fantastic, Tallulah! No greater feeling than being able to import all your entries! I wonder why it did not work through the regular way, though - am curious.

Well, I'm not sure why it didn't work the "regular" way either, but this brings up a very good point. Plain delimited text can always go almost anywhere and do almost anything. If you need to extract information from any spreadsheet or database type program, and it offers to make a delimited text export, take the offer. Even if it also claims to make an export directly compatible with the program to which you are moving the data, also make a plain text export as insurance. If your direct export/import flops for whatever reason, you will almost always be able to bring that plain text data in. It may take a little more work than direct export/import conversion, but it almost certainly will work. That means you won't be sitting there crying and typing, crying and typing if your direct conversion just does not work. If you are leaving a job and can get an export from your expander, make sure you get a plain-vanilla delimited text export in addition to anything fancier. When you find there is a problem with fancy, it will often be too late to go back and get the delimited text version.

With the Importer V you should be able to import all Smartype files, those from DOS with the .___ extension and those from Smartype for Word with the .vcb extension.

It should only take a few clicks Please let us know at support@textware.com if for any reason you cannot convert your files.

Marianne

Thank you, Marianne. Love great tech support!