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Graham Tebb 
Posts:95
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| 02/26/2010 5:18 AM |
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Dear Jeff,
I'm not sure this is still on the same topic but I felt like contributing to a thread for a change rather than starting a new one. I just wondered whether you - or anyone else - had had any bright thoughts on the problem that's been vaguely bothering me for as long as I can remember: how can I print out a list of birds that I've seen (at a particular location, over a particular timespan etc.) as opposed to just heard? Like (presumably) most of us I enter my "hearings" and sightings together and distinguish "heard only"s from sightings by means of one of the user-defined fields. I can find no way of eliminating the "heard only"s from life lists.
The problem, of course, is that a UDF can be negative (such as "heard only", i.e. don't count in certain types of list) or positive (e.g. "gripping photograph obtained", "evidence of breeding" etc.) and the program can't know what's what. But given that most, if not all, of us will use a UDF for "heard only" I hoped that it would be possible to find some work around. I'm clearly not bright enough to do so but that doesn't mean that nobody else is!
The reason for the request is that I still like seeing birds, especially new birds. It gives me at least as much pleasure to "upgrade" a "heard only" (or a "BVD") to a genuine sighting as it does to see a new species. But when I print out checklists of places I'm planning to visit, everything I've heard or seen is ticked (well, crossed) and this means I have to rely on my fading memory to remember which species I didn't even glimpse.
Any thoughts would be welcomed, although I guess I'm too late for V 3.7.
Best wishes,
Graham |
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SteveO
Posts:413
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| 02/26/2010 8:04 AM |
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Graham,
I am not sure I understand. I believe it is possible to use a Boolean (Yes/No-True/False) UDF in the selection criteria for a report. Is that what you mean?
In the Sightings report selection form, click on the Icon that looks like a pencil and paper pad. That will open up the UDF Query form.
Then select the UDF you want to select on, click the sideways arrow to populate the "selected Field" box, Leave the "operator" as an equal sign, and click either "Yes" or "No", depending on whether it is a positive or negative field. Then click "Add" to add it to your selection criteria.
You can build some highly complex logic, but I have not really played with it since the beta-test days.
Then again, maybe I did not understand your question. If so, try again and I will try to do better. |
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Regards,
Steve |
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jjones
Posts:3886
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| 02/26/2010 9:53 AM |
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Hi Graham,
No problem creating new topics - as this one deserves its own topic. So I moved it to General Discussions.
You can certainly generate reports or use View/Edit to see which sightings have Heard Only or which sightings do NOT have Heard Only checked. See Steve's response above and let me know if you have any questions there.
As for generating checklists and having it ignore Heard Only when checking them off as already seen, the only way to do that currently is to mark Heard Only as a "Life List Disabler", so that any sighting with Heard Only checked will not count as a lifer.
Jeff |
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Graham Tebb
Posts:95
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| 03/01/2010 7:05 AM |
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Dear Steve, dear Jeff,
Thanks for this. It seems that what I really hope to do is actually not as difficult as I thought. My aim is to be able to produce a life list (or year list, country list etc.) that indicates which species I have only heard (or where I coulld do with better views etc.). This might look something like:
Cetti's Warbler (h)
Grasshopper Warbler
Savi's Warbler
Aquatic Warbler (bvd)
Sedge Warbler
Paddyfield Warbler (h)
and so on. If I interpret your replies correctly, the way to do this would be to generate a full list then run a list with "heard only" checked as "life list disabler" (I'd missed this function completely). Anything on the first list but not on the second should be marked with an "(h)" and I guess Bill Gates can do this part for me.
I'll go away and play with it and let you know if I have any more questions.
Thanks again, and best wishes,
Graham |
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SteveO
Posts:413
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| 03/01/2010 10:13 AM |
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I cannot think of a method to write a query that would show only species where there is a BVD or H sighting but no sighting without those flags.
What I would probably do is to run a lifelist report with thise fields set to LifeLisdt Disabler, then run a sightings report with a UDF query something like (BVD = YES OR H = YES).
Then your hit list would include everything on the sightings list that is not on the lifelist. Or maybe that is what you said in your note.
Maybe Jeff can figure out a better query |
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Regards,
Steve |
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jjones
Posts:3886
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| 03/01/2010 10:41 AM |
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Let me try to describe what I think you want. Let me know if I miss the mark.
You want a list of sightings, grouped by species, where you have marked as 'heard only' or 'better view desired', either as a UDF or in the Comments field. But, you may also have sightings for these birds later on such that you no longer require a better sighting.
Yes? So, generate a Sightings report where you query on those two values (let me know if you need help with creating this) whether in UDF or Comments. Group by Common Name and order by date seen so that you have all your sightings grouped by species and in date order. Now you have a list of all species that you have tagged as such. You can then individually use the View/Edit to examine all sightings for these birds to see if you have seen some of these birds adequately.
I guess that is how I would go about it, IF I understand what you are after correctly.
Jeff |
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Birder's Diary Technical Support |
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Graham Tebb
Posts:95
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| 03/04/2010 9:18 AM |
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Dear Jeff, dear Steve,
Oh dear, it seems as though I haven't explaiined at all clearly what I'm trying to do. What I really want is to produce a single life list and indicate the species on this that I have only recorded as heard (or BVD or whatever). There are some species, such as Cuckoo (C. canorus, you probably call it Common Cuckoo or Eurasian Cuckoo), that I must have heard hundreds of times but they shouldn't be on the list because I've seen them as well. But there are other species (quite a lot of tinamous and antpittas, for example) that I've heard many times but never seen: these should be marked as such.
The reason for producing a list of this kind is so that I can work out which species to target when I go somewhere. I'll be going later this year to SE Brazil for the third time and so have a relatively small hit list. But I'm having to rely on my memory to let me know which of the "ticked" birds in the overall Brail list I've only heard or haven't seen very satisfactorily.
Perhaps this is what you're both saying. But your suggestion, Jeff, of using a sightings report breaks down for larger databases (I must be getting on for 100,000 records). Your idea, Steve, seems like it should work but I'm struggling to make the life-list disabler work. Pilot error, I guess: I'll keep playing. Even if I can get it to work I'll end up doing an MS-Word-driven comparison of two fairly long lists and looking for differences.
Thanks again for all your help, and best wishes,
Graham
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jjones
Posts:3886
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| 03/05/2010 10:27 AM |
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Hello Graham,
If you changed the Life List Count Disabler value on a Yes/No user-defined field (UDF) - your sightings will not be updated to reflect this change. Only future sightings entered will have the correct Life List Disabler flag set.
For example, if you had a Yes/No UDF field named "Heard Only", which previously did not have the Life List Count Disabler field set, and you edited this UDF and checked the LLCD (LLD) field to true, it will not go back and updated your sightings records appropriately - so that they would not show up on a Life List report. I have fixed this for v3.7.
However, you can get BD to correctly update all of your sightings, by following this procedure in v3.6:
- Open the Registry Editor (by typing Regedit into the Run command on your Windows Start menu)
- Browse to "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Birders Diary\Settings"
- On the right hand side, edit CorrectLLDForAllSightings, and changed its value to "True"
- Exit the registry editor.
- Start Birder's Diary - you will get a message that it is updating the LLD setting for all sightings.
Now your sightings will respond correctly to a Life List report wherein, those sightings that have an UDF checked such that the UDF has the LLD field checked will not show up on a Life List report.
I know that was complicated, so let me know if you have any questions.
Jeff |
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mmunts
Posts:38
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| 05/25/2010 5:05 PM |
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| Would it be possible on your guys end to add a block in the life list report. If we could filter a life list by user defined data this would probably work. In a least in my case I have "heard only" as user defined field. It seems like a block in the Life List report identical to the User defined data block in the sightings tab would solve Graham's problem. I know I would like to do this as well. There are other user defined dat afiels I would like to generate a life list on as well. For example, I also have nesting as user defined field and it would be intersting to generate a life list of birds I have seen on nests. |
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jjones
Posts:3886
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| 05/28/2010 9:30 AM |
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The UDFs for Life List reports is on the To Do list but won't make it into 3.7 Mike.
You of course can select a sightings report for birds on Nest and order by date seen.
Thanks for the feedback,
Jeff |
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Birder's Diary Technical Support |
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