OK, found an email that was circulated locally here. A bit long, but should be of help to those new to Mapmate
Entering records using data entry. (if there are a lot of records then importing will most likely be quicker)
For any of the fields, Taxon, Site, Stage, Method, etc, you don’t need to type the full name each time. Just type a few letters of the name and press Enter. This will bring up a list that matches what you typed and you can select the correct one. E.g. by typing ‘thor’ in the Taxon field all the Thorns will be listed as well as any other species with ‘thor’ in the name. As you go along you’ll learn what’s likely to bring up the shortest list but still give you what you want. For the Date you just need to type e.g. 310107 and it will recognise it as 31st January 2007 or 31/1 which will also be recognised as 31st January + current year, which in this case is 2007. Other options for Date are "today" and "yesterday"
When you’re entering the Method used, e.g. Robinson trap, Skinner trap, daytime observation, etc, there is already a complete list of methods available from a drop down list. In the Data entry screen, right-click on Method and click on List Possibles. Alternatively you can just start typing in the Method box e.g. Skin, and press Enter. This will bring up a list of all the Methods with ‘Skin’ in it and you can select the most suitable one.
You may not be aware of the ‘Get Common Settings’ facility. If you regularly trap at one site with a particular trap you can set up these entries as Common Settings and retrieve them for each session.
Open the Data Entry window and enter the
Stage – usually Adult,
Site,
Status – enter Unknown if you don’t know,
Recorder, Determiner – usually the same as Recorder but if you need to ask someone else to identify something they should be entered as the Determiner,
Method,
Reference – something like ‘Your name" personal records’ and a Comment if you wish.
Click on Records at the top of the window and click Save Common Settings.
When you want to enter data with these settings just go to Data Entry, click Records and click Get Common Settings. Next enter the date – in the case of light traps this is traditionally the date you switched it on, not the date you emptied it. Then click on Fields and click Lock all Valid Fields. This means that for that session the only fields you need to enter are the species(Taxon) and Quantity. This makes data entry very quick. Likewise for any one off sessions you can enter all fields except Taxon and Quantity and then Lock all Valid Fields.
You can change any field at any stage during data entry by Right-clicking the heading, e.g. Date or Method and clicking Unlock. This will allow you to change the entry. Then Right-click the heading again and click Lock.
You can also change your Common Settings at any time. Retrieve them by clicking on Records and Get Common Settings, make the change and then save them as above.
Data entry is also a handy way of retrieving data. If you want to see all records for a taxon, simple enter the taxon, click "query" and select "Records for all valid fields" from the drop down list. if you want to see all species recorded on a date, enter the date and select "Quick Species Summary" from the drop down list under "Query".
I'd also like to make you aware of the properties you can set from Data Entry. You find them under "Records". In particular you should set your "Defaults" to be as concise as possible. This cuts down on the number of options in the drop down list when filling in taxon etc. Though, note you will not be able to enter a micro-moth record if your default is set for macro moth, though there is a way to override this for the occasional records, though how escapes me for now. It is detailed in "Help".
You may find that you've entered a batch of records with an error, say a wrong date. There is no batch edit facility in Mapmate. Editing can only be done record by record. If there are a lot of records to be corrected, then there are a couple of round about ways that may work.
