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| Has this happened to
you? You’re designing a database or application when you realize you need a
technique or piece of program code you spotted in The Quick Answer. Problem is, you’re clueless about the issue it was in or the tip or article title. It’s happened to all of us. But it doesn’t have to—not any more! Quick Answer issues from 1995 to date are now available in Acrobat Reader portable document format (PDF). (Printed copies of The Quick Answer are still available from the inaugural June 1990 issue through the December 2001 issue.) With your Quick Answers in PDF documents, you’ll have a tremendous advantage when you need to find something but can’t put your finger on exactly where or what it was. PDFs provide far more powerful search capabilities than The Quick Answer index database (which you can download from the Freebies page at this site) or even this site’s comprehensive Keyword Topic Index because with PDFs you can search entire documents by any word or phrase, just like you can search a word processor document. Even if you're a newcomer to The Quick Answer, having back issues in PDF files makes sense because you can use our Index database or Topic Index to to get in the neighborhood, then search your PDFs to really zoom in. Chances are you'll find the solution you're after. We store our Quick Answer PDFs in year/month order in an Acrobat subdirectory. For example, the October 1997 issue is named QA9710.PDF. This makes it a snap to move down the directory, quickly checking issues using Acrobat Reader’s Find command, until we hit on the particular topic, word, or phrase—or precious snippet of program code—we need. We also index each volume year using Acrobat Catalog. This way, we can use Acrobat Reader with Search* to search an entire year as though it were a single document! Now you can have that same leverage with Quick Answer issues dating all the way back to January 1995—long before Q&A 5.0 arrived! Current Quick Answer subscribers can receive The Quick Answer back to January 1995 in PDF files for just $5 per issue or $49 per annual volume (12 issues). That’s nearly half the price of printed back issues. But you must be a subscriber to take advantage of this offer. (You can subscribe and take advantage of this special offer at the same time.) When we receive your order, we’ll send you the key codes so you can download the issues from this site. (Be sure to supply your email address.) Or, we can mail you the files on diskette for an additional $5 per disk (three issues per diskette). To order your back issues in PDF format by credit card, call or fax us at the numbers below, or use our online Order Form. If ordering by mail, send your check to the address below. The Quick Answer in PDFs—a smart idea for Q&A users at all levels of expertise! |
| * You can use Adobe Acrobat Catalog to create an index for each annual volume of Quick Answer PDF files. You can even create a Master Index if you have all your Quick Answers in PDF files from 1995 to date. This way, you can search across the year's issues (or all issues from 1995 onwared) for any word or phrase. Acrobat Catalog is included on the Adobe Acrobat CD along with other Acrobat products. The CD costs about $185. |
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Last modified: December 11, 2006
