Q&A
Questions and Answers
(document last modified on September 12, 2020)
Please read this first
The following Questions and
Answers are intended only for the latest release of the program, which is currently 3.4.1
Before going on you may want to check the version you are using. Don't be afraid to update it if necessary.
WARNINGS
Always run the installer and the program itself as Administrator. For more details read Q&A #54.
For an issue that may happen in some conditions when reinstalling the program read Q&A #71.
1. Is the program really free of charge?
| Yes, it's free of charge for you to use for an unlimited time, with some restrictions explained in the license agreement that you must accept before installing the program (and can still read from inside it): not for sale, no warranty given, no internal modifications, and so on. |
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2. How can I run the program on my Mac OS or on a Linux/Android system?
| There are two essentially different ways:
1. By creating an independent virtual machine that insulates a Windows box on your Mac OS or any Linux distribution (Android is based on the Linux kernel after all). Inside this box you will be able to
run any Windows program on your computer the same way you would do it in the native Microsoft operating system. You can easily have such virtual
machine working by just installing VirtualBox on your system, which is a free of charge product from Sun Microsystems. Please go to the
VirtualBox site to get more info and download the
software. Designed specifically for Mac OS at the time of writing this, Parallels Desktop and
VMware Fusion also create hardware virtualization for running Windows
software on your computer.
2. With the help of Wine or
CrossOver, which act as an intermediate layer to encapsulate a Windows
environment. Wine is free of charge and works fine but is not perfect yet, so expect to see rather old fashioned buttons and some odd
color tones, and probably the internet links not working. But the program main functions should operate properly.
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6. What are the screen resolution requirements to run the program, and how can I change it if necessary?
| The screen must be able to work with a width of at least 1024 pixels and a height of at least 768. Smaller sizes may truncate some of the program forms. If you need to change it, close all the programs that may be running, place the mouse pointer near the center of the screen, make a click with the right button to open the Properties dialog, select the Configuration or Settings tab, and set the screen resolution to at least 1024 pixels wide and 768 pixels high. |
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7. What is the best place I can choose to make the backup copies of my data?
| I strongly recommend to make them in a drive different from the one where the program is installed. It can be either a second local hard disk, any network drive, a USB flash memory stick, aka pen drive, or a memory card, which is present in most netbooks, to prevent from losing your data in case of mechanical or logical failure of the disk where the user files are. |
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8. Can I import all my database in MS Access?
| Unfortunately the answer is no. There is no possibility of importing data from other formats, unless you were able to convert it to Paradox with the same field structure that the program uses, not an easy task if you are not an expert in database managing and lack the tools to do it. Developing a standard procedure to perform automatically that kind of operations is quite difficult, highly time consuming, and must be done in an almost case by case basis, given the number of existing formats and, above all, the multiplicity of field structures each one can have. |
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10. What is the purpose of the Update function?
| As explained in question #9, this function makes a full recalculation of the field Current cost, on a record by record basis, to adjust it for inflation. It only needs to be run once when some change has been made in the inflation database, otherwise it does nothing. |
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11. What is the Reindex function for?
| As you surely know, the specimens database file can be ordered by different criteria, and that order is saved in several auxiliary files technically known as index files. In certain circumstances they can get corrupted and then the reindex function comes to the rescue by simply rebuilding them. You don't usually need to perform this operation unless you notice some strange behavior when ordering the records, or an error message is shown when opening the database files or changing the order. You can choose between a regular and a clean reindex (this one works by deleting the preexisting index files). Any reindex operation also rebuilds the index files linked to the species, contacts and inflation database files. Read also question #57 for more details. |
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12. How to proceed if I ever need to restore the backup copy?
| Close the program and copy all the files from the folder where the backup is to the folder where the program is installed, allowing to overwrite all. You can learn which the backup folder is by opening the Utilities > Preferences menu item. Your files will be found inside a folder with a name equal to the day of the month inside another folder named Minerals.bak that must be inside it. |
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14. How do I move a column or change its width?
| Drag the title with the mouse to move it. To change the width put the cursor on the title, just over the right border, and drag left or right. The new positions of the columns, if moved, are not persistent when opening the program again, but the new widths are kept for further sessions. |
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15. Where are the user's settings stored and how can I reset them?
| All those settings, grid column widths included, are written
in the configuration file minerals.ini, that can be found in the program folder. To reset them close the
program first and then delete the file. However, if you are working with Windows Vista, 7, 8.x, 10, or upper and not
logged as administrator, watch out, because only Bill Gates and perhaps his closest friends know where the hell
the configuration file is actually allocated.
In computers on Windows Vista, 7, 8.x, 10, or upper we could finally find the file minerals.ini at the folder
\Users\[user]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Minerals, where [user] is, you guessed, the name of the user
in Windows. However, you will need administrator permits to open it. |
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16. What is the difference between the fields Original cost and Current cost?
| The first cost is the amount you paid for the specimen at the moment of purchase. The latter means this same cost adjusted for the inflation that has been registered since then. It can be quite useful specially with pieces bought many years ago to get an idea of how much money would it be today. |
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20. What is the way to have multiple rows selected?
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down the Control key and click on each of the rows you want to select. If the rows are contiguous, hold down
the Shift key with your left hand and press the up or down arrow key. Combinations of both procedures can
also be used. Just try it and and get some practice. The selected rows will be enhanced with a blue color, and
a dot will be visible in its left margin. This operation may be useful for having a printed report restricted to
only certain records, and for summing up the cost, or the mass, or the appraisal value, of a number of selected
records. |
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22. Sometimes I find the field Country too short. Could it be widened?
| The actual field in the physical file has room for 12 characters. But it seems they are enough. There is no need to write Lao People's Democratic Republic or People's Republic of China if you can write just Lao or China, or United States of America and United Kingdom instead of the more common USA and UK. You can even enter an acronym or abbreviation that you like or find to be more mnemotechnical, since a country may have other meanings. For many people it must not be necessarily a nation-state, because there are territories that can also be considered a country without having that rank. |
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23. Would it be possible to add several more fields, like chemical formula and class, Dana and Strunz numbers, crystal system, synonymy, etymology, and the species name in more than one language?
| Given that that information is common to all specimens of a single species, it seems redundant to repeat it in each record. If you owned fifty pyrites, were you going to include in your file such amount of data multiplied by fifty? This is nowadays an inefficient way of storing information and even may be a waste of time as well. I think that you should never include any detail in your catalog that is already easily found on the net or in any reference book. As you may know, the program puts at your fingertips specific direct links with the major mineral databases on the internet, which can provide you with all of that and much more in a matter of seconds. For free! |
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25. What are the size (or maximum length) and type of each field?
| The maximum length is shown between parenthesis after every field name. The fields whose type is string (aka character or alphanumeric) are Number / ID (8), Main species / Specimen title, Species 2, Species 3, Species 4, Species 5, Species 6, Species 7 and Species 8 (25), Description (200), Storage location (10), Locality (120), Country (14), Source (75), Condition (12), Rating (2), Label price (9), Buy price (9), Size (30), Appraisal by (50), Free field 1 (60), Free field 2 (60), Free field 3 (60), Images (64). Acquired and Appraisal date are of date type. Original cost, Current cost and Appraisal value are currency. Mass is numeric (or float) with two decimal places. Marked is logical or Boolean. And the type of Notes is memo (or blob, binary large object), its size being very very large. |
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26. Could the size of any given field be enlarged?
| No, this is a task that the user cannot do by him/herself. Not only would the program have to be internally modified and recompiled, but the structure of the actual file that contains the data (whose name is minerals.db) would have to be changed too in every computer where it resides. |
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28. What are the meanings of the fields Label price and Buy price as opposed to Original cost?
| There are two major differences between them. Label price can be defined as the labeled price, the price the specimen was tagged when it formerly had been for sale, and Buy price the price really paid after the discount, if any. A switch of currency is now frequent, so you can buy, for instance, in euros but your credit card may be finally charged in dollars, which will be the Original cost. And sometimes you negociate with (and obtain from) the vendor a discount on the requested price. In both cases it may be interesting for many collectors to keep record of what the Label price and Buy price were at the moment of purchase. |
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29. What are the user file names? I mean the files where the data I'm entering is actually stored.
| They are named Minerals and Deleted, with the extensions db, mb, px, x?? and y??; Infl, with the extensions db and px; Species, with the extensions db and px; Filter.db; and Minerals.ini. But don't be worried with the risk of losing them. All these files are included in the backup utility, so every time you execute it they are copied to the folder you set in the Utilities > Preferences menu. |
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33. Can your program take, in its field Number / ID, dots or periods (.) or hyphens or slashes (-/). Will it take letters as well as numbers?
| Yes, you can type there any character, number, uppercase letter, dot, hyphen, slash, etc, except lowercase letters. |
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34. Can fields not used be minimized?
| If you mean hidden, the answer is: No in the edit form, but yes in the grid or main screen. To hide a field in the grid drag to the left as much as you can the column right border by placing the mouse cursor on the title. Do the opposite to make it visible again. This state is kept in further sessions of the program. |
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38. I found a minor bug related to the Order by number function, in the sense that if you write 1, 2, ..., 10, ..., 124, etc, the program will misunderstand and order them as follows: 1, 10, 11, 12, ..., 2, 20, 21,... etc.
| That's not a bug. The field Number / ID is not really numeric but alphanumeric. This means you can write in all kind of characters, digits, uppercase letters, punctuation signs, etc., even spaces, except lowercase letters. Therefore the digits are considered just as characters, so the number '2' follows the number '11' for the same reason that 'B' follows 'AA'. If you are going to use only digits you'd better write the Number / ID with leading zeros, for instance, '001', '002', '003' and so on. |
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39. What about printing labels? Nothing fancy would be needed, maybe the ability to choose a font and size, and font alignment for each of the three fields that most people would want on their labels (species/description/locality).
| Please read also question #52 before if having simple labels is enough for you. It's not as easy as it seems. Implementing a complete and flexible function to have labels printed is not a matter of a couple of hours because not only the fonts should be controlled. In addition to fonts there are a lot of other parameters to take into account. Paper size, columns number, columns width, label height, position of the fields, what fields to include, inserting a graphic logo, drawing frames, and so on. And all of them must be hard coded. I'm sorry, but currently I don't have enough time to develop such a function. An option might be to export the data in MS Excel format and get the labels from there. |
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42. What is the Marked field for?
| It has no predefined function. You can mark the records of the specimens you most prefer, or the pieces you plan to remove in the future, and so on. It can also be useful to have two parallel collections. The main (not marked) and the duplicates, or specialized (marked). The marked records will be displayed with red color font in the grid. |
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48. If I delete the mineral photos from my computer will they also be deleted from the database?
| To track the photos the database stores only a couple of short text strings: the image file's location and name. And those strings are not updated when you delete (or move) a photo since this is an operation that has to be performed from outside the program. So the deleted (or moved) images will no longer be displayed in the records because the program will be unable to find them. |
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52. How to print simple labels.
| Try this:
1. In the main screen move to the right by dragging the mouse all the grid colums other than Species/Name, Locality and Country, until all of them are placed in the right side of the screen. Read also question #14 for details on how to move and widen columns.
2. Make the Country column wider than usual with the mouse in order to push to the right the unwanted columns that still remain visible until all of them are hidden.
3. With a click select or make active the line of the specimen you want a label from.
4. Make sure the only visible columns are the ones you want printed.
5. When you are done, open the menu option File > Reports & Labels, or press Control+R.
6. Leave Page title and Page numbers unchecked.
7. Set Number of copies to 1 and Lines separation to 10.
8. Check Records in Page layout.
9. Check Current row in Rows.
10. Check Visible columns in Columns.
11. Click on the button Grid data in Font and select any font you like.
12. Click on the button Print to have the label printed.
13. Finally you may want to reset the grid columns order, width and position to the factory settings by clicking on the menu item Utilities > Reset Columns.
- You will get a printout with two columns. Discard the left one. There will be a simple label of your specimen in the right.
- Make some tries by setting different lines separation and grid data fonts, or changing the columns width and position, until getting the best result.
- If you don't like the country printed, just hide also this column the same way you did with the others.
- If you want the number, description or another field included, leave the corresponding column(s) visible.
- To print more than one label in one single operation try either to set a filter or to select multiple rows (read also question #20 for details). Or do nothing if you want to print one for every specimen. Then change the setting in step 9 accordingly.
- If you need more sophisticated labels, however, read question #39.
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53. I don't find the name of varieties in the species list.
| The species file is intended to keep only approved species names. The variety can be included in the fields Description or Notes. But you can add manually new names to the species file, and even translate them to your language if necessary. |
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54. Any special advice to install and use the program in Windows Vista, 7, 8.x, 10, or upper?
| Make sure you are logged in Windows as an administrator. If not, log in again in order to have all the administering permissions. Then open the file Properties window (press the mouse right button on the minerals.exe file name or/and on the program shortcut in the Desktop), then go to the Compatibility tab, Privilege level, and check Execute (or Run) this program as an administrator.
Failing to do so can produce some system errors at startup or, depending on the Windows version, your data files can be found at the folder \Users\[user]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Minerals, where [user] is the name of the user logged in Windows. |
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57. What is the difference between a regular reindex and a clean reindex?
| The regular reindex operation just rebuilds the preexisting auxiliary index files. A clean reindex, however, physically deletes all those index files and then builds new ones from scratch. This second operation can be a lifesaver when a regular reindex is not enough to solve the problem because of the poor condition of the index files. Read also question #11 for more details. |
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58. How can I quickly find the record linked to an image file?
| Look for a button on the top area in the main screen that shows a magnifying glass and click on it. This is the Search button. Then enter the file name or just a portion of it and click on the Next button. For higher efficiency, however, it is recommended to give the image files a name in a way that the specimen number is included in it, for example, 1234-galena.jpg. |
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59. What is the best way to name the picture files?
| Of course, there is no general rule to do that. But it is a good idea to name them by starting with the specimen's number, followed by a hyphen and the species name. If you have several photos of the same specimen, add a sequential number. For example, 1234-galena2.jpg. |
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60. How can I reach the program's author to make a question?
| You can do it via private message from several minerals forums (Mindat and FMF, for instance). But take note there is no guarantee that you will get an answer. If I ever receive messages by the dozens, unfortunately I will not be able to send a response to all of them. My leisure time is not unlimited. Especially do not expect any answer if your question is solved in this Q&A page, so please read it carefully before messaging me. |
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64. The specimen photos I added to the Edit form are shown very slowly in the Carousel. Why?
| This most often happens because the image is too large or it is in PNG or BMP format, your computer is short
of memory or CPU speed, or too many programs are open at the same time. You can dramatically increase the opening speed by getting
a copy of your photos with a more manageable size, or converting them to the JPEG/JPG format, or closing the programs that clutter
the available memory, or, if all of this fails, by upgrading your computer. |
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66. My new Netbook does not allow to set a screen resolution over 1024x600, so I find some of your program screens truncated at the bottom. Any solution?
| There is a solution to that problem in most cases. Try this:
1. Go to the Windows Start menu and type the order regedit in the Execute box, then hit Enter.
2. Scroll up on the left pane to make sure you are at the very top of the tree.
3. At the top menu, go to Edit then Find... and search for the word Display1_DownScalingSupported. Be patient, the process can take a while.
4. After right-clicking, change the value of Display1_DownScalingSupported you find from "0" to "1".
5. Then press the F3 key to make sure you change every found instance, because otherwise the hack won't work. There might be more than 10.
So you'll have to repeat the steps 4 and 5 a number of times.
6. Once done, restart the system, and open the minerals cataloging program again. It will produce a message and try to change the
resolution to the minimum supported, 1024x768. If it failed to do so, this may mean your computer does not have that capability. Contact with
the manufacturer.
For advanced users, more details can be got by googling the key words display1_downscalingsupported netbook together and other similar
combinations.
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71.
After reinstalling the program I get a number of error messages like Index file corrupted, Field ... not found,
Cannot perform this operation on a closed dataset, A component named ... already exists, and my data has suddenly
vanished.
| This can occur sometimes in certain systems. But don't panic and try this:
1. Close the program. If you can't, then open the Windows Task Manager (Control+Shift+Esc) and kill the program or end the task.
2. Open the Minerals program folder with the Windows Explorer, and sort the files by alphabetical order.
3. Carefully delete all files with name minerals except those with extensions DB, MB, EXE and INI (maybe you will need to set your Windows Explorer to not hide extensions of known file types).
4. Carefully delete all files with name deleted except those with extensions DB and MB.
5. Open the file minerals.ini with a pure text editor, like Notepad or WordPad, search for two lines that begin with Order=<here a number> and Invers=<here a number>, and delete both.
6. Save and close.
7. Open the Minerals program. You'll probably still get some message like No index currently active but your data
should be there now. Dismiss it and jump to the next step.
8. First of all go to the Utilities > Reindex menu item and click on Regular reindex button.
9. Then open the menu File and click on Removed.
10. First of all go to the Utilities > Reindex menu item and click on Regular reindex button.
11. It's done. Just close and open the program again. No more errors should be shown.
12. If you keep getting error messages, repeat the two reindex operations with Clean reindex button instead.
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Program latest release: 3.4.1
Copyright © Carles Millan, 2007-2021