Each issue of Astro*Talk will include tips on current astrology programs. If you've discovered any special tips or tricks to get the most out of your software please contact Jeff@thenewage.com. This month tips come from Jeff Jawer of Matrix Software:

Jeff Jawer, Matrix Software
Program:   Win*Star Plus

Win*Star Plus adds a suite of powerful tools to the already considerable resources of Win*Star. These include a unique ephemeris generator, a graphic ephemeris generator, a publishing assistant package, the freestanding Kaleidoscope program, the complete Matrix ACS American and International atlases of over 200,000 places and the Win*Search research program. Among its many virtues, Win*Search allows you to export chart data to other database programs. You can choose exactly which fields (columns) you want to export. I recently used this to help my astrological practice. I've just created birthday cards to send to clients. I used the simple database in Microsoft Works for my clients' addresses, telephone numbers, etc. I created a field in this database for "Birthday." I was then able to export just the month and date of birth (I didn't need the year) from Win*Search into Works. Now I can easily find all the clients born in the same month and print labels for them.

Getting the most out of Win*Search (and Win*Star, for that matter) involves learning to use the databases in the program. While the Current Charts area of Win*Star is limited to 100 charts, you can keep as many charts as your hard drive can hold in Win*Star databases. I've created several: for family, clients, famous people, etc. It's easy to move charts from any database to Current Charts (click "Current") and back again. When you copy or move a Current Chart to the database it goes to the last database you had open. Check these out from time to time to see what you've been collecting. You can also organize the data in several ways. You've even got a "Notes" field to write any notes you have for a given chart. In fact, I just recently discovered that the "All" layout in Search Show (results of a transit/progressed search) also has a Notes field. This means that you can include notes with any transit, progressed or directed hit. And, if you haven't discovered this already, you can change the layout (location and size of columns) in any Search Show. To move a column click on the top, hold your mouse key and drag it right or left and let go when you've got it where you want it. You can eliminate any column by clicking on the edge of it (at the top) and dragging it to the other edge, it will then disappear. Save any special layouts you've created under Layout and call them up when you want them later.