In article ,
Steve Silverwood wrote:

In article telamon_spamshield-7A5939.17221325112003
@news.sf.sbcglobal.net, lid
says...
If you are going to load up the Micro$oftware anyway why not just
use Excel? If I was inclined to start logging what I heard Excel
would appeal to me because with datum in different columns you
could sort on the data for one thing. I would otherwise be inclined
to use a database program where the loggings could be generated as
reports sorted in different ways depending on what I was looking
for at the time.

It all depends on your needs. (And of course, not everyone HAS a
copy of Excel. g) For simple logging purposes, a spreadsheet
program is probably just fine. If you need more -- and personally I
love having as many bells and whistles at my disposal as possible --
then a more specific application is useful. For example, here are
some of the features in SWLog:

- Associates an audio clip, such as a .WAV or .MP3 file, with a
log entry
- writes up a reception report and QSL request in multiple
languages
- Lets you scan images of the QSLs you've received (front and
back), to store with the logbook records
- With data imported from various sources, it can help you
identify signals based on their frequency and time of day,
including telling you if the Radio Netherlands signal you're
hearing is from Europe or from the Netherlands Antilles.
- Publish a web page with images of your QSL cards

In short, there are a LOT of things that Bob's put into this
particular program which I might never have thought of doing, and
certainly would have had difficulty doing with something like Excel.
But again, it's all a matter of what your needs are.

Well SWLog sounds like a mighty fine program. I had no idea there was a
program that did all that SWLog does. Whenever I perused logs in printed
media it seemed to me that a spreadsheet would be all that you would
need. Hopefully SWLog can save data (or export) to a common file format
like CSV so if the program becomes unsupported you don't loose your data
in the future.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California

You can export your logbook from SWLog in a variety of ways:

* XML - this is the preferred method as it's the most portable
* CSV
* B-Log
* MS Word DOC
* Adobe PDF
* Excel XLS

The DOC/PDF/XLS exports are through the report writer and are really
more of a printout than a data export; however, it's still a way to
get data out of the program.

If you have Access 2000 or later, there is no need to even export your
data since you can use Access to directly open and manipulate the
database.

You can download SWLog from http://www.sillett.us.eu.org

- Bob


Telamon wrote in message ...

Well SWLog sounds like a mighty fine program. I had no idea there was a
program that did all that SWLog does. Whenever I perused logs in printed
media it seemed to me that a spreadsheet would be all that you would
need. Hopefully SWLog can save data (or export) to a common file format
like CSV so if the program becomes unsupported you don't loose your data
in the future.