Getting Started

When you open iNACHI Reporter, you may see this Security warning at the top of the work area.  Click on "Options". 

Then, click on "Enable this content".

Click on the large "Start-Edit" button to begin working in iNACHI Reporter.

MS Office 2007 has a completely new look.  The area above the work area is called the "Ribbon".  The Ribbon is on by default but can be turned off or minimized.  Select the "Add-Ins" tab to display the "iNACHI Reporter Command Bar", the "iNACHI Reporter Pages Sets" toolbar, the drop-down "iNACHI Reporter Menu", and the "iNACHI Reporter Go To Page" toolbar. 

Hundreds of additional features are available to iNACHI Reporter users via the Ribbon but, all of iNACHI Reporter's custom commands and features can be accessed from the iNACHI Reporter Command Bar, the iNACHI Reporter Menu, and the iNACHI Reporter toolbars.

The "iNACHI Reporter Page Sets" toolbar will appear below the "iNACHI Reporter Command Bar" and the "iNACHI Reporter Go To Page" toolbar will appear below the Pages Sets toolbar. 

The drop-down "iNACHI Reporter Menu" will appear to the left of the "iNACHI Reporter Command Bar" and the toolbars.

The iNACHI Reporter Command Bar and the toolbars may not entirely fit on your screen, depending on the size of your monitor and the resolution.  There may be a small arrow following the last item on the Command Bar or on the Page Sets toolbar.  Click on the arrow to reveal buttons that are not visible.

The drop-down "iNACHI Reporter Menu" provides an alternative method to invoke some of the iNACHI Reporter  features that are available from the Command Bar.  The iNACHI Reporter Menu also includes some iNACHI Reporter features that are typically accessed less frequently than those on the Command Bar such as "Copy Current Page", "Delete Current Page", Maximize Work Area", "Change Company Name", "E-mail BestInspectors.Net", "Activate iNACHI Reporter", "Info-Help", and "About iNACHI Reporter".

The pre-defined Page Sets in iNACHI Reporter are: Omission Guard, Field Set, Legacy, TREC Basic, TREC Expanded, Ancillary, Photo Albums, Four Point, Templates, and Library.  Selecting "All Sets" reveals all report pages, including all custom pages that you have created, the Library, the Library Index, Instructions, and the End User License Agreement. 

All Page Sets except "Library" include the Cover Page.

The "Omission Guard" page set page tabs

The "TREC Expanded" page set page tabs

The Page Sets toolbar can be turned off by selecting the "Close Toolbar" button at the far right of the Page Sets toolbar.  The Page Sets toolbar can be turned on by selecting the "Page Sets" button on the iNACHI Reporter Command Bar at the far right.

When you select "All Pages" from the Page Set toolbar, all available report pages, including any custom pages that you have created, will be listed in alphabetical order.  Selecting a page is as easy as scrolling to the page name and clicking on the page name.

The entire iNACHI Reporter program, the Comments and Descriptors Library, and all page sets are contained within a single file.  When you work in iNACHI Reporter, you are working in the Master Program and Report file. 

Once you have activated iNACHI Reporter, you can create multiple instances (copies) of iNACHI Reporter within the same "Program Files" folder.  Each copy of iNACHI Reporter can be treated as a template that can be tailored to specific building types.  Even the libraries in each tailored copy of iNACHI Reporter can be different.  For example, you can have one Template for single family homes, another for duplexes, one for restaurants, one for office buildings, one for manufacturing plants, and so on.

The icons that iNACHI Reporter installs on your desktop and Quickstart Bar always point to the Main program file.  When you create custom Template files, you can also copy the icons that launch iNACHI Reporter and have them each point to an iNACHI Reporter Template file.

Copy the iNACHI Reporter icon on the Desktop and paste the copy to the Desktop.  Right click on the icon.  Click on the "General" tab to rename the icon.  Enter the new name where "iNACHI Reporter" appears next to the icon.  Click on the "Shortcut" tab, then click on "Find Target..." 

Click on the file name of your Template file.  check to make sure that the name appears in the "Target:" box under the Shortcut tab, then click on "OK".

Vista requires a much more powerful PC than Windows XP.  It requires much more memory than XP and it seems to have some very serious bugs.  Microsoft has issued several updates addressing a variety of problems.  One such update, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941649, caused one of our test PC's, a custom built high-performance PC running Vista Ultimate Edition, to crash and it would not boot up after the "fix" had been installed.  Windows Vista Ultimate Edition had to be repaired  using the Vista DVD.  The update had to be removed in order to get the PC to work again.

We installed Vista on a second PC, a mid-priced Dell PC that was less than a year old at the time.  We attempted to upgrade the PC from Windows XP to Vista Home Premium Edition.  The upgrade attempts failed repeatedly.  After four attempts to install the upgrade, we finally had to do a fresh clean install.  Everything on the PC was lost.  Fortunately, we had backed up all the data that was on the PC but all the programs had to be reinstalled.

PLEASE NOTE: The problems we experienced with Vista were BEFORE iNACHI Reporter was installed on the test PC.  In fact, there are fewer problems with iNACHI Reporter running than with most other software that has been tested on our test PC.

MS Office 2007 runs well under Windows XP.  iNACHI Reporter runs well under any combination of any Windows XP or Vista Editions and Office 2003 or Office 2007 so iNACHI Reporter does not need to be a factor in your decision of which version of Windows you choose.

Our recommendations:

If you are using Windows XP now, do NOT upgrade to Vista.  Our customers who have experience with both PC's that have been upgraded to Vista and PC's that came with Vista already installed have told us that the PC's that come with Vista already installed seem to work much better than those that have been upgraded.

If you are shopping for a new PC, buy the most powerful PC you can afford.  You won't regret it.  Get at least 3GB of high speed DDR2 RAM and a high-performance video card.  Do NOT attempt to run the Aero interface unless you have a high-performance video card.

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