iData 2.5 has added many new features and improved others. This window includes information on some new features and improvements that don't relate to iData menu items, and that are a bit too simple to rate pages of their own. Many of these features are also treated on their own specialized Help pages. Within iData, in many dialogs or windows, there will be a button that you can click to take you to the appropriate Help page for that function.

New Features:

Datafile Synchronization: Create a duplicate datafile on your laptop or remote machine that can be kept synchronized with the original on your desktop machine.

Save Datafile Changes Automatically: Set any datafile to automatically save any changes every time you go to a different record. This is a datafile-specific option that can be set for each datafile.

Clone Current Window: This feature returns from iData Pro 1.0. It was more difficult to do in OS X, but now we have it. By opening a clone of a window it makes it easier to compare two records.

Apple Address Book Import: Import all the contact information from your Apple Address Book into an iData datafile.

Back and Forward Buttons to navigate through recently viewed records.

New Formatting Tools: We've added a number of formatting features to help with the Freeform Text Area. These are listed under the Format menu.

    1. Add or edit tables and lists (sometimes they are copied from the web and make text hard to manage).

    2. Use rulers and tabs in the Freeform Text Area.

    3. Modify line and paragraph spacing in the Freeform Text Area.

    4. Add links directly to text and/or images in the Freeform Text Area.

    5. Mark text with a new highlighter toolbar icon as though you had used one of those yellow highliter felt pens.

    6. Reset freeform record text to the default font settings.

Plain Text Options: Because styled text copied from Web pages or imported as HTML email can sometimes be difficult to read, iData 2.5 adds several features that make it easy to have simpler text settings.

    1. After copying something like a Web page with images and styled text, choose Paste as Plain Text from the Edit menu (or type command-option-control-V) to have the text come in as plain text with no included images or font styles.

    2. To change all selected text in the Freeform Text Area to the default font settings and to change the ruler settings of the paragraph containing the selected text to the default ruler settings, choose Apply Default Font and Ruler to Selected Text in the Format menu. This lets you limit changes to the currently selected text.

    3. To change all the text in the Freeform Text Area of the current record to the default font settings, without removing any existing images, choose Apply Default Font Setttings to Current Record in the Format menu. You can use this option after pasting, if the Paste as Plain Text option is too extreme.

    4. To change all the text in the Freeform Text Area of all selected records in the datafile to the default font settings, without removing any existing images, choose Apply Default Font Setttings to All Records in the Format menu. This is useful if you already have lots of records that are full of messy-looking text in a variety of typefaces, sizes, styles, and colors, and you want to regularize the entire datafile.

    5. To add a record and paste text as plain text, choose Add New Record with Paste as Plain Text in the Records submenu under the Edit menu. Pressing the shift and option keys while clicking the + button has the same effect.

    6. To copy ruler-related settings from the paragraph containing the insertion point or any selected text, choose Copy Ruler from the Format menu.

    7. To apply the most recently copied ruler-related settings to the paragraph that contains the insertion point, or to any selected paragraphs, choose Paste Ruler from the Format menu.

Show Record Information: View record information, showing when and by whom any given record was created and last modified.

Sum the Contents of One or More Fields: Mathematically totals numeric data in one or more columns in List View, placing the sum in the same column(s) in a new record. This new feature permits the totaling of simple numeric data without having to move it to a spreadsheet.

Move Current Record to a New Location in the Datafile: Choose Move Current Record... in the Records submenu under the Edit menu, and type in the new record number that you want the current record to have.

Use Hidden Links: Just like a web page, you can have a word have a link to a web site without showing the URL for the web site. For example, instead of having http://www.robincasady.com in the Freeform Text Area, you can have Robin as a link to the web site. Such links copied from other sources will be maintained, and you can edit them with a Link toolbar icon.

Drag and Drop Into Fields: You can now directly drop dragged text into fields from other fields, from the Freeform Text Area, or from other applications.

Move Freeform Text Into Fields: Two new commands have been added to make it easier to convert old freeform datafiles to field-based format. (Although the freeform format is very convenient for many purposes, the structure provided by fields can often make manipulation of your data easier.) These commands move the first line of text in the Freeform Text Area into the first field, the second line into the second field, and so on. As a result, they may require some initial preparation of the data in the Freeform Text Area to make it match the field structure of the datafile.

Automatic Phone Number Recognition: Dial phone numbers in text without having to highlight them first. The Dialing Preferences panel now lets you add phone number patterns, which permits iData to recognize phone numbers. iData will search from the current insertion point and dial the first phone number in the current record.

Dial Using Speaker: Use speaker dialing to dial phone numbers when your modem is busy--or if you don't even have a modem.

Create a New Field With Content: Add a new field containing static text and/or sequential numbers.

Show Datafile in Finder: Bring the folder containing the current datafile forward in the Finder, and highlight the datafile. This may be useful if you have a datafile in a non-standard location and don't remember where it is.

Remove Blank Lines at Beginning of All Records: Clean up your imported email and other files by automatically removing any blank lines at the beginning of all records.

Some Existing Features That Have Been Improved:

Selecting Records can now be done on the basis of record creation date or modification date, and text in fields can be treated as dates or numbers, as well as being treated as literal text.

Printing all Basic View records now has two options--the old one (Continuous) and a new one (Individually). Individually will start a new page for each record. When printed to Preview or PDF, each record will become a separate file.

File Links are now inserted into the Freeform Text Area as the name of the file, linking to the file on disk. When inserted into List View fields, they are still inserted as full URLs.

Find and Replace operations can now be limited to the current record. The Find and Replace dialog has a checkbox to provide this option.

Window sizes/locations and splitter bar locations are now saved separately for Basic View and List View windows.