Mr Star,
I started cataloging my grandmother's 4000+ collection of various
species at age 14 and now that I'm 23...I can tell you that the EASIEST
way to catalog on the computer is using Excel and NOT Word. I keep
record of each specific number, name, quality, size, where it was found,
does it have an operculum, who it was bought from and when, how much,
and the author. You can never have too much info on your specimens ;)
I know that you don't want to type them over again...but...with it in
excel it will sort them alphabetically, or by catalog number, or by
whatever data you want. Also, after they are typed you can do a "mail
merge" with the data and create new cards that are typed. Even if
you're not collecting, buying, or trading it makes it so much easier to
manage. It helped my grams when she taught children in local schools
about the "anatomy" of specific shells and when she had them on display
at our local library. 5 years ago she decided to stop buying specimens
and start consolidating by selling a lot of what she had...she was so
glad I had them already cataloged for her. I still have about 3000+
that I inherited when she passed away last year so it's been hard to
figure out her "method" of organizing them outside the catalog. I am
recataloging my grandmother's collection so that I can merge the
information onto smaller cards that I keep with each individual shell
and new cataloging numbers using this method. This will take me months
and depending on how many you have, it may take you some time as
well...BUT IT'S WORTH IT! I promise. If you want, I can send you a
sample file of one of the species I've already completed with the
accompanied mail merge and you can see what I mean.
You can even get fancy later on with Access and import your excel list
into it and you can attach a picture with each entry! The program is
used by lots of businesses so it'll be like keeping inventory of your
murex. If you have a Mac like I do, there's an identical program to
Access called Bento...which in my opinion is easier to use.
IF you want to stick with what you have, basically you'll just have to
highlight each entry individually and drag it into the correct
alphabetic order. Yes, it would have helped to typed them already in
alpha order, but you can still work with it :) It'll be a tedious
process but it IS do-able!
I hope I didn't ramble too much :)
Good Luck!!
Ashley
>>> Jordan Star <[log in to unmask]> 06/01/09 4:04 PM >>>
Hello All
I am typing my Murex card file (yes, all my Murex info. is on index
cards)
into the computer. After much thought, I decided that a spreadsheet or
database wouldn't help me much because shell collecting, trading,
buying, etc.
has almost stopped for me but what I have I want to organize. So, with
that said, after typing all card info. with Murex names listed first
(cornutus, Chicoreus ...., data on shell, this is a typical card) into
Word 2000,
how do I alphabetize the entries by species names after typing them?
Do I
have to alphabetize before typing? Do I make sense? If this is all
too
confusing, forget it and I'll figure out a different way to do this.
Jordan Star
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