Apologies to any who downloaded a link to the prefill file for the ARRL DX CW
contest that I posted a couple of days ago. I was setting up my contest logger
today and when I connected to the prefill file I discovered that it didn’t work
correctly! After much head scratching and trial and error attempts I finally
figured out what the problem is.
In all my previous prefill file releases I used Excel 2007 to generate the text
file from which I created the prefill adi file. One of the reasons is that
Excel 2007 has the ability to eliminate duplicate calls in the data files.
This is essential not only to keep the adi file size in hand, but because
Excel and WriteLog handle duplicates differently. When the file is sorted by
call in Excel and there are duplicates the newest data is sorted first and
older data sorted last. But when loading into WriteLog its data handling logic
is different. If it finds duplicate calls it keeps the last one and ignores
the earlier ones. This can result in old obsolete data being loaded and newer
more current info being ignored. To avoid this I always try to eliminate the
old duplicates first so as to give WriteLog only one record, the most current
one, to load from the prefill file.
I have just upgraded to a new PC in the last week or so and one of the changes,
in addition to running under Win 10, was that I upgraded to Excel 2016.
Unfortunately, I just discovered that Excel 2016 handles duplicate deletions
differently than Excel 2007. This resulted in some severe data issues within
the prefill file. This occurred because Excel 2016 eliminates duplicate calls,
but unless specifically instructed, does not eliminate the associated data for
the deleted duplicate calls. This results in data from a deleted call being
associated with a another random call in the file which results in errors.
Once I figured out what was going on I was able to recreate the base history
file and then correctly use the duplicate deletion sequence in Excel 2016.
This has resulted in a new corrected file that is now available to download
from the following link. If you downloaded the earlier version, please delete
it and use this one instead.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7os60bd41p341nx/ARRL%20DX%20CW%20History_V2.adi?dl=0
Again, a reminder. This file if for DX stations only who will be working US/VE
stations only. There is no prefill file for US/VE stations as they receive a
sequential serial number from the DX stations.
73,
Gary AL9A
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