Sighting Comments – Rich Text or Plain Text

Since about v4.x, Birder’s Diary has allowed you to create your comments using your own pre-defined fonts, bolding, etc. This is called Rich Text. So, when printing you get those settings used when creating the sighting and entering your comments, instead of those you specify in the Output Columns feature of the Report Designer. All other columns in your report, you can specify the font characteristics you want to use in that column. But not for any Sighting Comments that have been created with Rich Text.

In the report designer, any Sighting Comment entered in plain text will obey the font choices you make for that column in the report output. However, Sighting Comments entered in Rich Text will always use the font choices specified in the comment editor.

To revert all Sighting Comments to Plain Text so that you can specify the report font you want to use for Sighting Comments, follow these steps.

  1. Perform a Backup first to save the current data as is in case you want to revert or have any issues. Save this backup with a special name so that you can recall it in the future. You can delete this backup once you are sure this is what you want.
  2. Convert all Sightings Comments to plain text. 
    IMPORTANT – this will remove all Sighting Comments formatting for all sightings with comments; this includes font, font size, bolding, italics, underlining, and bulleted paragraphs. It will not remove line breaks or capitalization.
    1. View | Options, General – 2 Tab
    2. Click on the Convert All Sightings Comments to Plain Text button
  3. When entering Sightings in the future, be sure to always use the Plain Text option in Keyboard Entry mode. It will remember your setting going forward.

    In Checklist entry mode, entering comments directly into the grid always results in Plain Text. But using the Comment Editor, by double-clicking in the Comments column, will use Rich Text.

NOTE: On the “View | Options, General – 2 Tab” window, you can also define the default Rich Text font and font size to be used when entering Sighting Comments.