Issue 13 - 09/01/00

This is the ScheduleStar and HighSchoolSports.Net weekly newsletter.
Tips and tricks for using ScheduleStar to your best advantage.


In this Issue:
NEWSLETTER RETURNS FROM SUMMER VACATION
BACKUPS REVISITED
IMPORTING STUDENTS
HIGHSCHOOLSPORTS.NET APPROACHES 1 MILLION ATHLETIC EVENTS ONLINE!


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NEWSLETTER RETURNS FROM SUMMER VACATION

Welcome back Schedule Star users!

With the 2000-2001 school year just getting underway, the newsletter has returned from summer vacation as well.

This summer marked some big changes for Schedule Star. First and foremost, we relocated the tech support office to Bridgeport, Ohio. Please note our new address and contact information:

Schedule Star
1145 Market Street
Wheeling, WV 26003
Phone: 740-633-2953
Fax: 304-233-2525

Contact information for our Billing and Sales office remanins the same.


New on our Schedule Star TEAM!
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We have also added staff to answer your calls. Terry Shafer is with us, and many of you have already talked with her... or may have spoken with Terry when she was with Greencastle-Antrim High School in Greencastle, PA. She brings a wealth of real-world experience. She has been on the "front lines" just as you are. Give her a call, I'm confident that you will find her to be an excellent resource.


Palm Pilot
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We are progressing nicely on the Palm Pilot version of Schedule Star, and will be releasing it on October 21st (well within the Fall Season, as promised). We need people to test the Palm Version. If you have a Palm Pilot, and don't mind looking at an early release, please send an e-mail to mailto:terry@schedulestar.com and ask to be on the list.


The current Schedule Star is Version 4.1 Build 4155. This has been unchanged since March 5th, and has practically no "issues". There will be an update between now and the first of the year, and it will be tested throughly. We want to thank EVERYONE who has taken the time to make suggestions and make the input that defines the next set of features that we will add to Schedule Star. Your help makes it very best, and continues to define Schedule Star as "the one you will use.


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BACKUPS REVISITED

When have your schedule entered in Schedule Star exactly the way you want it, protect it. Make a backup. It takes one minute or less.

We have a whole new series of horror stories from this summer: backups on the network server that took a WEEK to get from backup tapes; useless backups made by copying files instead of using the built-in backup utility; Athletic Directors who returned from summer vacation to find an upgraded computer (with NO data on it); worn-out hard drives that didn't return from summer vacation because computers sat idle all summer...the list goes on and on.

There is simply no subsitute for having a backup in your hand. You will know exactly where it is, and with even the worst case you can easily recover your data.

Make your backup every Friday, or when you add lots of information. One minute or less. Don't depend on your network person's assurances that they backup your data every night. That's not the issue. When is your overworked network person going to get time to restore your data? If it's in your breifcase, you can be up and running in five minutes or less.

Even if your machine is secure, you really NEED to make a backup. There are only two kinds of hard drives in today's computers... those that have failed and those that are about to. Which do you have? There is nothing worse than those beeps made by a computer's hard drive that refuses to start up in the morning.

Have you made a backup lately?


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IMPORTING STUDENTS

Our tech support fielded a large number of questions these past few weeks regarding Schedule Star's Student Import utility. If the student information for your incoming class is available and can be exported and reformatted by spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel, this utility can save you considerable time. Instead of typing all the information into the Student Directory for each individual student, you can import the information all at once.

For Schedule Star to correctly import students, the information MUST be in a VERY SPECIFIC format. With the hundreds of different student database programs in use, Schedule Star cannot recognize just any format.

On every Schedule Star CD is a folder titled Students. Inside this folder are sample student data files in both Excel .xls format and Comma-delimited .csv format. Your information MUST be in .csv format to import into Schedule Star.

The easiest way to approach importing students is to bring your student information into Excel, open the sample .xls file, copy the header file from this spreadsheet, and past it at the top of the spreadsheet containing your information. Then it becomes a matter of simply rearranging your data into the correct columns.

When you are done reformatting your data, SAVE THE FILE AS A COMMA-DELIMITED .CSV. Open Schedule Star, MAKE A BACKUP, then click on Utilities and click on Import Students. Browse to the file you saved and double-click on it in the window on the left. The program will show you the first and last record before importing, letting you cancel and make changes if the information doesn't line up. After importing, check your Student Directory. If you find a problem, just restore from backup, correct the mistake, and import again.


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HIGHSCHOOLSPORTS.NET APPROACHES 1 MILLION ATHLETIC EVENTS ONLINE!

We are rapidly approaching ONE MILLION High School Athletic events online! Regardless of who is giving what away, Schedule Star remains the only "Schedule Once, use EVERYWHERE" designed specifically to save you TIME.

Sure, it's about the cost of a cup of coffee each day. One single, simple place for your Schedules, scores and activities, without all the adversiting clutter.

Besides, we are there for you today and into the future, just as we have been for the past 37 years. We are not a "live fast, die young, leave a pretty corpse" dot-com company.

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