Copy Alpha Four Expressions to Alpha Five

Copy Alpha Four Expressions to Alpha Five

by Ken Herrold

I’m converting two Alpha Four v6 Apps to Alpha Five, and wanted to find some way to transfer 15 fairly long expressions, without having to key them in from scratch. Not only would this have been a pain, but it would have left open the possibility of making a mistake.

Using the technique described below, I easily copied them all to Notepad, then took them one by one and pasted them into the expression builder in Alpha Five’s report layout editor. The bonus here is that the expressions, their syntax, and workability have been debugged and tested in the Alpha Four app for many years. Better to copy something that works than to try to recreate it.

Here’s how to copy anything from DOS to Windows:

1. Open the DOS app in a window.¹

2. Make sure that the expression or other text that needs to be copied is completely visible on the screen.

3. Left click the Icon in upper left corner of the DOS Window at the left end of the top banner. You will see a menu appear.

4. Select Edit and then Mark. A square cursor will appear just below the icon.

5. Using the arrow keys, move that square cursor to the first part of the text you’re copying (you can also use your mouse to click on the beginning of the text).

6. Hold the SHIFT key down, and use the arrow keys to move the cursor. This will highlight the text. You can also use the mouse by clicking and dragging across the text. (If the expression extends past the DOS screen, use [F8] to show the complete expression). Even if you highlight more than one row of text, everything will be copied.

7. When everything you want is highlighted, press ENTER. This will copy the text to the Window's clipboard. Turn off Notepad’s Word Wrap, and then paste it into it. Now you can copy it from there into Alpha Five.

Since I converted the app by using the same DBF's from Alpha Four, the expressions worked just fine!²

¹ If you have a DOS app that fills the entire screen, press ALT-ENTER to toggle to a window (and the same to toggle back again).

² Remember that there are a few expressions that are not exactly the same between the two versions of Alpha.

1.	Open the DOS app in a window.¹
2.	Make sure that the expression or other text that needs to be copied is completely visible on the screen.
3.	Left click the Icon in upper left corner of the DOS Window at the left end of the top banner. You will see a menu appear.
4.	Select Edit and then Mark. A square cursor will appear just below the icon.
5.	Using the arrow keys, move that square cursor to the first part of the text you’re copying (you can also use your mouse to click on the beginning of the text).
6.	Hold the SHIFT key down, and use the arrow keys to move the cursor. This will highlight the text. You can also use the mouse by clicking and dragging across the text. (If the expression extends past the DOS screen, use [F8] to show the complete expression). Even if you highlight more than one row of text, everything will be copied.
7.	When everything you want is highlighted, press ENTER. This will copy the text to the Window's clipboard. Turn off Notepad’s Word Wrap, and then paste it into it. Now you can copy it from there into Alpha Five.