Icon tasks in ChessBase 10

A long time ago I once wrote of ChessBase in one of my columns that "right-clicking gets you everywhere". That still holds very true; there are lots of features in ChessBase 10 which can easily be reached by clicking the righthand mouse button; in fact, that's the only way to get to a few of them.

A really convenient way to get to a lot of commonly-used database tasks in CB10 is to right-click on a database's icon:

Let's take 'er from the top and look at what the commands do:

Open -- this is an easy one, as it simply opens the database's game list in a new window.
Search -- brings up ChessBase's Search mask, allowing you to search within that database. (This is a shortcut I use all the time, by the way, instead of opening a game list before performing a search. It just saves a step.)
Opening reference -- this functions in the same way as clicking on the "Reference" tab at the top of the Notation pane, except that it bases the information on every complete game in the database rather than just ones containing a particular board position.
E-Mail database -- compresses the database and attaches it to an e-mail. As we've discussed before in prior columns, this works only with e-mail clients which support MAPI 2 (basically anything made by Microsoft, as well as e-mail clients produced by a few other sources).

Let's move on to the contents of the "Edit" submenu:

There's not a lot of stuff here, but it's important stuff which requires a little bit of tangental explanation a bit further on.

Copy -- selects the entire database for copying, allowing you to...
Paste -- whatever you've previously selected for copying gets pasted into the database. Here's where the "tangental explaining" comes in. Yes, you can right-click on a database's icon and select "Copy", then right-click on a different database's icon and select "Paste", which will copy all of Database 1 into Database 2. That's useful, of course, but here's something I've found to be even more useful. If you're in a database's game list, you can highlight individual games, right-click on them, and select "Copy". Then you can return to the database window, right-click on a different database, select "Edit/Paste", and that relative handful of games is then copied into that second database. That's really danged useful and I use this feature all the time.
Select all -- highlights every database on your ChessBase "database desktop".

The third section of this popup menu contains some commands which should be used with caution:

Delete database symbol -- this will remove the database's icon from your ChessBase database window. The database still exists in its original drive/folder location, but the icon is no longer part of your database display. To put the icon back in the database window, you need to use File/Open/Database. (By the way -- and this'll sound elementary -- but you shouldn't remove a database's icon unless you know where the files are on your drive; it'll be a little tough to find it again; this will be discussed in the next couple of ChessBase Workshops).
Delete physically -- here's where you need to exercise some really serious caution. If you select this command, the whole database will be deleted. Gone. Kaput. Just like that. And there's no "Undo" command in ChessBase 10, so don't trifle with this command unless you're serious about deleting the database from your computer.
Rename -- this is a quick shortcut that lets you change the name of a database as it appears on your database desktop:

As soon as the current name is highlighted in blue, you can type in the new name. (There are at least two other ways to do this, incidentally; one is to single left-click on a database to highlight it, wait a moment, then single left-click directly on the "name" portion of the database's icon.)

The "Tools" menu takes you to the same place as selecting "Tools/Database" from the Menu bar at the top of the database window:

We've discussed almost all of these commands in previous columns, and I intend to return to some of them in the very near future. Most of them require a separate column of their own to fully describe them, so you'll please forgive me if I don't tackle any of them in the present column. The important thing to remember, though, is that you can get to them by right-clicking on a database's icon.

As for "Properties", we're going to discuss that command in our next ChessBase Workshop. Until then, have fun!

© 2008, Steven A. Lopez. All rights reserved.