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Concordance Tips and Tricks

Topic: Creating New Cases using a Template

A really handy feature in Concordance helps save time when creating new cases that are similar in structure to other cases. For example, if you have a lot of medical-related cases, you probably have very specific types of information you want captured, differently than you might want from a construction case. That's where this tip comes into play. Once you've identified a database structure you'd like to use as the basis for another case, you can copy that structure to a specific place within Concordance's folder structure. Then it will always be available when creating a brand new case. This is how it's done:

  1. Open the case whose structure (i.e. columns) you would like to base a template on.
  2. With that case open and focused, go to Documents, Export, then Structure.
  3. Once there, you'll need to browse to the location you want to save that structure. You specifically will want to browse to where the Concordance program resides, either on your network or on your local computer.
  4. You'll want to find a folder called Templates where you'll notice there are both folders and files. The folders correspond to the the tabs you see when you create a new case. At this point you could either create a new folder and save the structure to the new folder, or save it right where you're at. In our example, we'll create a new folder called Medical Cases and save the structure that we'll call MedMal.
  5. Click Save and you're done.
  6. When you want to create a new case using that saved structure, create a new case like you normally would, only now you'll see a new tab called Medical Cases. When you click on that tab, you'll see an item called MedMal. When you click on it, give the new case a name and you won't have to reinvent the wheel when it comes time to Modify the structure of this new case!
  7. Note: This tip applies to both Concordance 8.x and Concordance 2007

Topic: Tally (or as I call it, a tip that's a two-fer)

What's a two-fer you ask? Two-fer-the-price-of-one! This tip is used when working with coded or indexed data, most specifically data that you tend to have only one item entry for, or a list of items. For example, the Document Type field is a great field to Tally. The Tally will help in two ways: 1) It accounts for all unique items entered (or loaded) into that field. Thus when you Tally the column (field), you will see all the good and bad (i.e. misspelled) versions of any given word. 2) By double-clicking on any entry in the tally, Concordance conducts an immediate search based on that item (from that column). This is particularly useful when reviewing documents within a subset. Here's an example:

I tally the Document Type field, and notice there are many emails I want to take a look at. Once the tally is done, I double-click on the entry for email. All the emails are now culled down for me to take a look at. But I'm not done. Not all emails are important to me, just certain individuals. So I then conduct a tally on the Author field. Now I can pick and choose what Authors I want to take a look at, from the set of emails. I call it 'doing a search, but you're not doing a search, yet a search was done'. Here's how it's done:

  1. Make sure you are looking at the Table view of your database, and you have the column displayed that you wish to Tally.
  2. Right-click anywhere directly underneath the column header. Find the item that says Tally and click on it.
  3. Concordance immediately begins a count of all unique items in that column
  4. In Concordance 8.x you'll see the tally contents appear at the top of your screen, above the data. In Concordance 2007, you'll see the Tally Folder appear to the left of your screen, above the Database bar.
  5. Double-clink on any item within the tally and the database immediately is culled down to just those documents.
  6. You can continue to tally within tallies until you get to just where you want to be.
  7. Note: In both versions on Concordance, you have the ability to roll back one level. The Tally screen itself won't change, but the database will reset. In Concordance 2007 you'll click on Reset right below the tally. In Concordance 8.x you'll click on the Reset button to the far right.

Copyright © 2010 Bob Meyers

Any questions on anything at all, please feel free to contact me directly: bobmeyers@concordancehelp.com

Or give me a call: +1 (424) 35-HELPU (424-354-3578)

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