Version 5.1

• In some cases, the calculated Country for any given Location is incorrectly set. You can now manually reset the Country field in any Location, using the Location Editor, to whatever you like and it will stay. v5.1.100
• Corrected issue for Multiple Species Abundance Graph was duplicating rows for species. v5.1.99
• Corrected issue where all possible report column names (e.g. Trip Name for Sightings Reports) were not showing up in the Output Columns dropdown. v5.1.98
• eBird exports for all protocol types were modified in Build 89. This was incorrect. Return export logic for Incidental and Historical to previous logic. v5.1.97
• In the Export Sightings to eBird feature, if you are exporting multiple sightings of the same species (e.g. 1 American Robin, 4 Blue Jays, 3 Warbling Vireo sightings), on import eBird throws away all but the first record of each unique species. Updated the export feature to combine multiple sightings of the same species (e.g. if you have 4 x Blue Jay sightings to export) into one row in the eBird export file. Such that if you have 4 Sightings of Blue Jay that you are exporting, with counts of 2, 4, 6, and 8, then one row will be written to the export file for Blue Jay with a count of 20. So that the sum will be used and not lost on import. Comments are also appended across multiple sightings. So that the one row for all 4 Blue Jay sightings will contain the combined comments from each. But, only the first Location, Date, Latitude/Longitude will be used for the upload record. Build 89.
  
• If you have a photo/image/bitmap in your Windows Copy Buffer, you can now press Ctrl+V to add that image to your sightings documents window. Build 89.
  
• Added count of unique Species and Things to bottom of View & Edit Sightings window. Before, you just count the count of records/rows. Build 89.
  
• When exporting Reports to Text format, if no headers were specified, an error occurred. Fixed. Build 87
• Updated Export Checklist for BD Mobile to ignore subspecies. Build 87
• Fixed bug with Orphaned Sightings window that allowed you to shrink it so small that you could never access it again. Build 86
• Fixed bug in the Counts form where it was incorrectly counting SPUHs in Big Day/Month/Year counts. Build 85
• Fixed bug wherein the “+” button on the Keyboard Sightings Entry Review window did not work. Build 83.
  
• Change made to “Singe Species Sightings Graph” in Build 81 below, has been removed. The total count is now shown in the status bar of this graph window, and the total is based upon the count chosen to be reported on. Build 82.
  
• Added “Record Count” to both Single and Multiple Species Abundance graphs. This indicates the number of sightings records used to build the report. Build 81.
  
  
• Managing Sighting Comments in RTF format causes users some issues in certain circumstances. A new feature on the General Tab of the View | Options window allows you to convert all of your sightings to plain text. So that you can start with this as a default. Build 80.
• Fixed bug in Sightings Report wherein a sighting for a Hybrid, Slash, etc. would have been counted as a Lifer when asking for Lifer highlighting. Build 80.
• Added option to Output Columns pane of Report Designer to clear all Column Header fields. This results in no column headers being output, and a cleaner report. Build 80.
  
• Fixed issue when selecting multiple files for sightings import or photo attachments. Buffer Memory Exceeded. Build 79.
• Fixed date/time formatting issues for computers with non EN-US settings. Build 79.
• Date format corrections with MS Access changes due to year 2020. Build 77.
• Performance improvements on taxonomy import. Build 75.
• Fixed error in Checklist Entry when choosing an option from the Grid popup menu, it would fail with RTE 483 if the mouse is over the Common Name Column when your right-click for the popup menu. Build 74.
• Performance enhancements when double-clicking on the Outings grid. Build 72.
• Updated support for importing sightings from CSV file to allow for embedded line-feeds in CSV fields. Build 72.
• Performance improvements and better name matching for Sightings Grid. Build 70.
• Performance enhancements in the code that determines if new sightings are World/Location/Annual lifers. Also, performance enhancements in areas of Sightings Entry. Build 69.
• With many users using in-the-field mobile apps to record sightings and then import those sightings into BD after the fact, it would be nice if BD would notify the user of Lifers in the import file when importing. This feature has been added. It is optional on the Sightings Import window. Build 68.
  
• Enhanced code to support importing Sightings Import File from Birder’s Diary Mobile Android App. 3-DEC-2019, Build 68.
• Fixed bug which occurs in non-licensed database introduced in Build 67. Build 68.
• All things that Clements marks as extinct will be removed from Checklist Locations so that they no longer show up on Checklist reports. Build 67.
• If you use IOC instead of Clements, you were stuck with the Clements English Family descriptions. In build 67 and later, it will detect whether you have a licensed Clements or IOC installed and correctly set the family names. If you happen to have both installed and licensed, it will set the family descriptions based on the last one installed. Build 67.
• With Build 56, on Sightings Entry Checklist, Alt+X was replace with Alt+S for the Search Hotkey. Now both Alt+X or Alt+S will work. Build 67.
• Importing eBird sightings into Birder’s Diary, for an observer with extended ANSI characters such as “Ö” would result in creating a new observer without that character and assigning the sightings to the new observer. This has been fixed. v5.1.66.
• Since the beginning, if you selected more than one taxonomic list that classifies the same things during View Sightings Setup, you would get duplicate sightings (and a warning) for each sighting you had that was classified by each tax list you selected. That is no longer the case. Only unique sightings will be shown. For example, if you asked to show all your sightings of an American Robin, and selected both ABA and Clements taxonomic lists, both of which contain the American Robin in their list, you would see each sighting of an American Robin twice, once for each tax list selected that contained American Robin. This will no longer happen. v5.1.64
• When importing eBird exported sightings, BD would not correctly translate non-US-English dates on import. For example, with a setting of “English (Canada) dd/mm/yyyy” the imported records would be read as mm/dd/yyyy. This has been fixed in v5.1.63.
• eBird changed its file format when downloading sightings from eBird to your computer. It changed the Comments field header to “Details”. This broke the BD import process and Comments are not imported because that column could not be found. Fixed in build 62. v5.1.62.
• Build 60 fixed some Trip performance issues and introduced a bug. The bug has been fixed and Trip rebuild and display performance has been improved even more. v5.1.61.
• With approximately 2,000 Trips defined (yes some users have 2,000+ trips defined in BD), loading the TreeView Trip window could take 5-8 seconds; while adding/editing a trip – which forced a hierarchy rebuild – would take about 20+ seconds, plus a TreeView refresh would total about 28+ seconds. It now does this in < 3 seconds! This does depending on your Trip hierarchy. If it is relatively flat (no trip descendants), you will experience the most gain. But even with some trip descendants the time will only increase above a flat hierarchy by 5-10%. v5.1.60.
• Fixed bug when sorting Sightings by Country in the new v5.1 View/Edit Sightings Grid. v5.1.60.
• Fixed bug where exporting from Multiple Species Sightings Graph (new name) the data didn’t align with what you see in the graph when using week/’2-weeks’ summing periods. This has now been corrected. v5.1.59.
• Upon startup, Birder’s Diary now opens and appends statistic and performance data to a file in C:\Birder’s Diary\BD<major><minor><build>.log. For example, for v5.1.58, the file name would be BD5158.log. This file contains information that may be helpful in troubleshooting performance issues should any arise. You can view the file whenever you like. It is not auto-uploaded anywhere and only you have the privilege to share it with support if asked for. v5.1.58.
• Fixed bug when exporting to CSV file from Multiple Species Abundance Graph. The CSV data had many errors. v5.1.58
• Improved load time of ‘Latest Sightings’  and ‘Latest Outings’ grids for large databases with more than 50k sightings. You won’t notice more than a 1 second delay with fewer than 50k sightings normally. But BD has been around for so long, many users have large databases with 100k+ sightings. The ‘Latest Sightings’ grid and the ‘Latest Outings/Checklists’ grid have been improved to < 1 second load time. With over 100k sightings, it could take 10+ seconds. What I did was to limit these grids to only the last 4 years worth of sightings. This seemed to make sense as these are convenience grids to see what you have seen lately, and not convenient for scrolling through years of data. The performance gains for startup and runtime when updating these grids is huge, from 19 seconds to 0.2 seconds in cases of large databases! But, I also made this configurable on the General TAB of the Options form.  From 1 year to 9 years. If you specify 10, you get 200. And if you hide either grid, then neither incurs any load time penalty unless visible. v5.1.57.
  
• Improved performance and display when refreshing main window counts (e.g. Lifer counts in status bar at bottom of main window, LiferBar counts on background, All Sightings Grid on the right, Lastest Outings on the left, Charts and Graphs on the bottom, photos on the top). If any of the left/right/top/bottom windows are hidden, those are not refreshed. You can disable the auto-count refresh after sightings entry from View >> Options | General TAB. See 2nd screenshot below.  v5.1.57.
  
  
• Added a button to the Sightings Entry (Keyboard Mode) Review Window. This button will open the Sighting Attachments window for that sighting allowing you to easily edit your attachments/photos after adding the sighting. Build 57.
  
• In setup for Sightings Entry, Keyboard Method, you can now exclude subspecies names from the search list if you want. Your setting will be remembered. Build 56.
  
• For Sightings Entry (both Keyboard and Checklist) the name list is cached in order to speed up the window load times. Under some events, that cache can be missing some names. I have added a new button to refresh that cache when the user finds names are missing. Also repositioned the Search box; and the accelerator key has changed from Alt+X to Alt+S. This new Refresh button has been added to Keyboard Entry mode as well for the same reason. Build 56.
  
• When double-clicking on the Latest Outings Grid in BD, the code attempts to pre-select taxonomic lists in the View Sightings Setup window to match all things in that outing. It could attempt to select non-licensed taxonomic lists and sometimes take 2-8 seconds. The new algorithm omits non-licensed taxonomies from consideration and completes in under 0.1 second. Build 55.
  
• When downloading sightings from eBird to be imported into Birder’s Diary, if eBird Comments contained carriage return and/or line feed characters it produced a questionable CSV formatted file. Such a file would truncate the comments to the first line when importing into Birder’s Diary. I have updated this import process to properly deal with how eBird formats such Comment fields on download. Build 55.
• Added two new features to popup menu in Ebird Search window. 1) Display BarChart Checklist for Search Location, and 2) Extract grid data to Excel. Build 54
• Fixed rare bug in Sightings Document window when drag/drop’ng files from connected Smart Phone. Build 54
• Corrected a bug introduced in Build 52 when the user selects multiple rows in the Sightings View & Edit window. The grid was repositioning incorrectly after selecting new rows in some circumstances. Build 53
• Corrected behavior when in View & Edit Sightings and adding photos/attachments to a sighting. It now correctly updates the photos in the new v5.1 pane. Build 52.
• Added Append checkbox to the Mass Edit window where you edit more than one sighting at the same time. Sometimes you may want to edit multiple sightings just to add an additional comment to each of the sightings; but you don’t want to lose the original comments on each of those sightings. Checking this checkbox will append the new comment to the existing comments for each sighting. Build 51.
• If you are running Birder’s Diary in the background while attempting to upgrade it, you will be notified to exit Birder’s Diary before proceeding with the installation. Build 50.
• Whenever importing Checklist Data, either manually or via the Auto-Import feature, any Checklist records marked to be removed (if ‘Overwrite Things’ or ‘Overwrite Locations’ is selected) will first be written to C:\Birder’s Diary\ChecklistItemsRemoved_yyyymmdd_hhmmss.csv. If you had previously modified any of your checklist records and wish to recover some or all of them, then you can import this file after the fact using the various settings in the Checklist import feature. Import this file using the settings shown below. (Note: Select the correct Taxonomy for your situation.) Build 50.
  
• Fixed bug in Sightings Documents window. If you selected a photo/document to add to a sighting that was in a subdirectory of where your photo directory was set to (View | Options, More Tab), you could not successfully add that photo. Build 49.
• You can now select one or more eBird import files from the Open File dialog and have them imported together. You are prompted whether to import each of the selected files; you can skip individual files or Cancel the import from this point on. After an import file is completed you are prompted as to whether you would like to Delete the import file from your computer. Build 48.
  
  
  
• Birder’s Diary will now search your \Downloads directory for any eBird import files on startup. If found, it will prompt you as to whether you want to import this file. If you click on the Yes button, you will be taken to the Import window and setup to import from eBird. Configure any specific options you want for the import and click the Import button. Only eBird import files (downloaded from ebird.org) will be shown by default. After the import is complete, you will be asked whether you would like the import file deleted. Since users can configure their browsers to download files from the web to directories other than the \Downloads directory, BD will remember your latest import location for eBird files and use that location to search on startup. Build 48.
  
• Fixed bug in, yep you guessed it, eBird Search window which manifested itself in many ways. Just one of which was showing no sightings when asking for sightings of a particular species when that sighting was just shown. Build 47.
• Fixed bug in eBird Search window which allowed you to click on the “X” to clear a region that was already clear and produced an error. Build 47.
• Fixed intermittent bug in View & Edit Sightings window where it will sometimes show garbage data or empty rows. This was due to a timing issue in the code with the database. Fixed. Build 46.
• When choosing the first 2 items from the eBird Search window’s popup, if “Notable Sightings Only” is checked, it is temporarily unchecked to complete the requested search as Notable doesn’t pertain in these situations. After the search completes, it is returned to its previous state. Build 45.
  
• The eBird API is in constant flux. Recently, they made the submission Id associated with sightings returned form their API available in some instances. These instances seem to vary. However, a new item in the Search window popup has been added to take you to the submitted checklist at ebird.org. When using the Notable Sightings Only option, the submission Id is usually returned. Also, if you choose “Show Most Recent Sightings for This Row’s Location” from the popup menu, that list is returned with a submission Id. Build 45.
  
  
• More robust error checking on the eBird Worldwide Sightings Search window. Users are finding many ways to trip up the expected data in some of the fields. Builds 43 and 44.
• More robust error checking on the eBird Worldwide Sightings Search window. Lat/Long checked for proper range of values; previously reporting errors when incorrect. Radius slider correctly reporting current value. Build 42.
• Allow user to Sort on Column contents in the new eBird Worldwide Sightings Search window (just like in View & Edit Sightings window). The list initially starts out as sorted by Date of Sighting in descending order. Clicking on a column header forces a sort by that column. Clicking a second time on the same header reverses the sort order. Build 42.
• Fixed bug in Compare Sightings window that sometimes produced an RTE 3044. It was rarely seen as it was a timing issue on faster computers. Build 42.
• Fixed bug in eBird Worldwide Sightings Search window where the location it searched did not match the locations chosen in the eBird Region section under certain circumstances. Build 41.
• Change user interface of new eBird Worldwide Sightings Search a bit. Sections are now enabled/disabled depending on whether the option is selected. Added clear location button for the Lifer Location field. Gone is the ‘For this Location’ checkbox. If you want World, simply clear the Location dropdown, or choose World from the dropdown. The Sightings Grid now has focus after any Search. Build 41.
• Fixed bug when selecting Output Column for report. The dropdown incorrectly cleared after pressing the Delete key. Introduced in v5.0. Build 39.
• Long awaited feature request is finally here! Added new feature that allows you to set the Font and the Color for Title, Counts, Column Headers and Footers on Sightings, Checklist, Life List and Trip reports. See View | Options, Colors Tab. A few miscellaneous other enhancements to Reports as well, such as a background color for column headers, or if no headers are specified, then only a line. Build 39.
  
  
• Another fix for the 401 Error on startup. Build 38.
• Fixed bug in Duplicate Sightings window when looking for duplicate sightings based on Date and Time. Build 38.
• In the View & Edit Sightings window, you can click on the column header to sort by that column. A small arrow appears on the right side of the column header indicating the direction of the sort. A second click reverses the order of sort. However, if you click on the small arrow which occludes part of the column header, nothing happens. This has now been fixed. Clicking on any part of the column header, including the small arrow, has the same effect. Build 38.
  
• Fixed 401 Error when computer not connected to the internet. Contains code to display Timeout Error without failing if no Internet is connected. Build 37.
• Updated Taxonomic Filter window. Replaced non-intuitive checkboxes with a slider control for selecting the taxonomic branch to filter on. Build 37.
  
• Updated the What are my species Counts? window to include location counts for Order, Family and Genus now when a location is specified. It used to just show xx/zz, where xx was the number of species seen in that rank and zz was the total number of species defined by the selected taxonomic list for that rank. Now it is xx/yy/zz, where yy is the total number of that rank known at the location specified. Build 37.
  
• The View Sightings Window now displays all Band Codes known in the database for each species, instead of only one out of possibly many. Build 35.
  
• Fixed bug in Sightings Entry – Checklist mode, Review window, where it forgot to bold the unseen species. Build 35.
• Fixed bug in new v5.1 eBird Worldwide Search window where it would throw an error “Oops!” if you clicked on the Close button while it was searching for Lifers. The Close button is now disabled until the search completes. Added a Cancel button during the search to cancel the search. Build 34.
• Added new feature for the new v5.1 eBird Worldwide Search window. Added an option that Only Shows Lifers based on a specified location. For example, if you are looking to add to your County or State list, you need to know if what is being seen would not only be a World Lifer for you, but a State/County lifer for you. Build 34.
  
• Fixed bug in Sightings View Setup where it incorrectly remembers the last location or name you specified in rare situations. Build 34.
• Fixed bug introduced with new Band Codes column in Build 32 that duplicated lists of sightings with more than one associated band code. Build 33.
• Fixed bug in Sighting Attachments. When you have a non-photo attachment first in a list of attachments, an error is produced. If a photo was first in the list, then no error. Build 32.
• Added Band Codes column to the new v5.1 View Sightings window. Build 32.
  
• Fixed bug when selecting location during Sightings Entry by clicking on the Location button and choosing a location and/or creating a location from the Locations window. Build 31.
• Fixed bug in Duplicate Sightings window that showed no results in lower grid when clicking in upper grid. The problem concerned date conversion for non-US date formats. Build 30.
• Improved usability of eBird Export window for Country/State dropdowns. Build 30.
• Improved usability of the new eBird World Search Window when using the Country/Region/SubRegion dropdowns to choose search locations using the Mouse instead of Keyboard. Build 29.
• Fixed bug when upgrading to v5.1 from a version of Birder’s Diary prior to v5.0.x. The error was usually “Run-time error: 3061. Too few parameters, Expected 2”. Build 28.
• Fixed bug in Duplicate Sightings window when Comments were specified as duplicate criteria. Build 27.
• Fixed bug in Orphaned Sightings window where the information displayed was incorrect when choosing All Sightings option. Build 26.
• Added option to manually update eBird data over the internet. Prior to this, eBird data was updated every time Birder’s Diary was updated. This process can take many minutes (10-40) depending on internet speed and would not be necessary just because a BD upgrade was performed. If you feel the eBird data is stale, you can manually update it via View | Options. Build 25.
• Fixed bug in new eBird Worldwide Search window where it doesn’t correctly remember and set your State and Subregion values. Build 25.
• Added the ability to set the Font Size to the Comments Editor window. Find this in View | Options, General Tab. Build 24.
• Fixed recently introduced bug with eBird exports from Birder’s Diary. It was exporting country code with state code; when only state code is needed. Build 24.
• Added the Ability to color the 4 seasons in the Multiple Species Abundance chart. (Build 20)
  
• A whole new way to find new birds, new lifers and stay on top of what is being seen around you or in your area of interest! Search Worldwide eBird Sightings from within Birder’s Diary! Find only those sightings that would be lifers for you! Search based on political region or Latitude/Longitude specification. Search for specific species anywhere in the World. Have this window come up automatically when you start Birder’s Diary to alert you to new lifers, interesting sightings, see what others are seeing and many other uses!
  
• Fixed bug in Taxonomy Viewer when elevating a subspecies to species level using the Edit function. The bug resulted in things being placed out of order and creating duplicate branches in the Taxonomy Viewer tree. This bug has been around since v4.0/4.1, and only now figured out and fixed. v5.1.6
• The Multiple Species Abundance Graph has been updated to allow for pagination during printing. This is to facilitate printing these charts out without having the page breaks occurs on a given row and losing data. You have to use the Page Setup and Print Preview in MSPaint in order to correctly size your chart and determine the proper rows to page break on.
  
• Fixed positioning on Location popup info windows that show you the full path to a location when your mouse rolls over a location name in a grid. v5.1.1
• Redesigned “View & Edit Sightings” Window for easier and faster use.
  • Displays records 2X faster on big queries!
  • You get one layout to maintain, but modifying and maintaining the layout is much easier, more intuitive, and quicker.
  • There is a new toolbar button for setting options. Use this to hide or show columns or groups. The options panel shows/hides based on this button.
  • Thumbnails of selected sightings, if any, auto-display in options panel when visible.
  • You can move columns around within a group to achieve the order you want by dragging on the column header.
  • You can sort on any column by clicking on the header. Click a second time and it reverses the order of sorting.
  • The popup menu still has context-sensitive features for selected records.
  • Your settings are remembered when you close the window and restored the next time you open it.
  • You can have multiple copies of this View & Edit Sightings window open by start anew with the Setup window.
  • Click on the button in the “Pics/Cnt” column to display and work with selected sightings files.
  • It no longer forces all columns to display on the screen at the same time. Letting you have many columns off the right side that you can scroll into view. You get the column widths you want.
  • There are shortcut keys (single key press) to most of the toolbar buttons. For example, “O” opens the new Options panel.
  • Buttons to quickly resize or reset columns after changes you don’t want to save.
• Reorganized View Sightings Setup Window. Some fields are reordered for those most used.
  
• Drag-n-Drop Locations! You can now drag-n-drop locations in the Location Maintenance window Treeview to re-parent a location and its descendants. You can move as many locations as you like. The location performance table is not rebuilt until you close the Location Maintenance window. So if you need the new hierarchy to take effect (e.g. for Reporting) close the Location Maintenance window after re-parenting in order to have a correct representation.
  
• Duplicate Sightings – how to find and remove possible duplicates in your database? This topic has come up at one time or another over the years. With the ability now to import and export between many sources in Birder’s Diary, duplicates can creep into your database. Welcome to a new tool to Find and Report Duplicate Sightings.
  This new feature gives you plenty of options for editing, deleting or cleaning up your entire database with the press of one button (be careful with that much power!). You get to determine the matching criteria used to determine if a set of sightings are duplicates.
  
  
• Orphaned Sightings window update. When you reconcile sightings to a new taxonomic list a copy of the old sighting is made and the new one is attached to the new taxonomic list. If you delete the older taxonomic list, those sightings become orphaned. It is Ok to delete those sightings or leave them there. This window allows you to remove those sightings. However, it is possible to create orphaned sightings that are not copies of reconciled sightings. For this purpose, the window has been updated to edit those sightings and reassign them to a proper taxonomic list so that they are now usable. This new windows takes care of this.
  
• You can now Drag-n-Drop files onto the Sightings Attachments window! A big time saver when adding many files to many sightings over and over. You can simply keep Windows File Explorer open and drag and drop your attachments onto the Sighting Attachments window to add them. Add one or multi-select many.
  
• The Cross Reference window (reached from the Rosetta Stone feature, among other places) has new popup menu choices. Designed as a quick access to the places you might want to go from this list.
  
• Fixed bug when using Checklist Entry with “Show only things sighted at this location” feature checked. Introduced in v5.0 with new performance enhancement feature, it was not selecting the correct things for your search list. This is now corrected.