This information was provided by Richard Adamek from deepest Norfolk.
For those of you who have Access but maybe do not know how to use it so well, a simple search engine can be made by going to the 'design query' tab, pull in the table which contains the ME index, highlight and pull in all the fields you want to search and in the criteria box under each field insert the following Like [*Input Search String *] move to the next field along and paste this in but one row lower until all are done when you run the query a little box will come up saying 'Input Search String, anything you put in this box will then be searched for, spaces, punctuation and all - I use it by putting an asterisk at start and finish of the string which gives the old DOS equivalent of a wildcard search - anywhere the string appears in the field you have added it to will be found (only as good as the raw data and we all make typo's....) - 524 records feature with 'LBSC' for instance For convenience, drag a shortcut to your desktop by right clicking on the query and using create shortcut, you want to know if it is about, this is the easiest way.
If you have struggled amalgamating the various 'releases' of the index and now have more than one table, these can be amalgamated, alter any field names and field positions in table design view so that they are the same,(it doesn't matter that the earlies volumes do not have so may fields as the later) Ctrl & A to highlight a whole table, Copy to copy it and then Paste Append in the most recent volumes index table (as no doubt more will appear in time using the same field and field headers)
Richard Adamek
The Old Engine House - Riches and Watts steam engines and the Phoenix Publications Website old Engineering books and catalogues available on CD ROM) http://www.phoenixbooks.org mailto:enquiries@phoenixbooks.org