Sing Along!
Personal Song Library
for Windows 95

Tips for using Sing Along! Personal Song Library

  1. Using "|" in Song Titles and Artist names to influence sorting
    One problem that you'll notice when entering Song Titles is that titles beginning with the words "A" or "The" don't sort the way you'd like them to. You can get around this by moving the "A" or "The" to the end of the title and using a "|" character to separate it from the rest of the title ("|" is usually found on the top row of the keyboard, above the "\" key). For example, "A Place In The Sun" would be entered as "Place In The Sun | A". This will cause it to be sorted under "P" as you'd expect instead of under "A". However, it will be displayed as "A Place In The Sun" above the lyrics as well as in printouts, the clipboard and saved files. You should also use this technique when entering artist names beginning with "The", such as "The Beatles" or "The Rolling Stones". And solo artists such as "Mariah Carey" or "John Lennon" can be entered lastname-first so that they sort by last name ("Carey | Mariah", "Lennon | John"). Some artist names are a bit trickier but the same method applies - divide the name in half such that the word you want to sort on comes first and everything that normally appears before that word is moved to the end, after the "|". For example, you would probably want to sort "The Dave Clark Five" under "C" for "Clark", so you'd enter it as "Clark Five | The Dave". It looks a little weird in the Song Title field but it will appear normally in most other places and the sorting will work the way you want it to.

  2. Packing the Database
    When you delete a record from the database, it isn't actually removed at that time. Instead, it is marked for deletion at a later time. Also, when you make changes to any of the memo-type fields (lyrics, notes and chart notes), the modified data is appended to the end of the file and the old data is marked for later deletion. All of this data that's marked for deletion takes up disk space needlessly. To permanently remove it, select Pack Database from the File menu. You can find out how many records are marked for deletion by selecting About from the Help menu. However, this number doesn't include any data that might be marked for deletion as a result of editing the memo-type fields. It only shows the number of records that you've manually deleted by clicking the delete button.