Be sure to convert dates from Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to text before poking transactions into Peachtree. Spreadsheets store dates as serial numbers, which Peachtree won't accept. (Our thanks go to Sherri Yates, who got paid for submitting this tip.)

You can't access Peachtree's Purchase Order journal via DDE. Sales orders are available, but purchase orders can only be accessed by import/export or PawCOM.

To extract the Sales Rep ID from the Sales Journal, use the field name SALESREPID. Peachtree's documentation erroneously lists this field name as SALESREP.

All information returned by DDERequest is in the form of an array. To use the data in the array, you must either write the array to a cell, or use MyArray(1) to access the first item in the array, such as the current period number. In the case of distributions, which consist of 8 or 10 fields, you can use MyArray(3) to access the Item ID (the third item in the distribution), for instance, rather than post the whole array to a range of cells.

With regard to poking transactions, you must use the CLEAR command to indicate that you're starting a new transaction, and the SAVE command to indicate the last line of a distribution. Without the SAVE command, Peachtree won't record the transaction.

For more information about using DDE, download Peachtree Software's DDE Manual. Keep in mind though that this manual is best looked to as a list of field names. There is very little actual code in this manual. You should, however, also refer to the software manual that comes in the box with Peachtree. It includes a somewhat helpful chapter on DDE. This Word document is contained in a 79KB self-extracting archive.

To determine the short ID for a Peachtree company (which is how you reference the company via DDE), launch Peachtree, then choose Help | File Statistics. The short ID will be displayed on the title bar of the dialog box that appears. FYI, this ID is the same as the directory name where the company's data files are stored.

To poke data, you must either open the desired company, or have no company open at all. To launch Peachtree without opening a company, use PEACHW BLANK where as long as the short ID for a company isn't called BLANK, the Peachtree will load without any active company, enabling you to poke data into any company. Sample code:
q = Shell("C:PEACHWPEACHW.EXE BLANK", vbMinimizedNoFocus)

Use the Shell command to launch Peachtree. However, you must preface this statement with the ChDir ("C:PEACHW") command. To retain the current directory settings, use CurDir to return the current directory, then pass the result to a second ChDir command. Otherwise, C:PEACHW will become the default directory for Excel, and users may inadvertantly save spreadsheet files there. Sample code:
x=CurDir
ChDir ("C:PEACHW")
q = Shell("C:PEACHWPEACHW.EXE", vbMinimizedNoFocus)
ChDir (x)

You can't poke the Sales Tax Authority into Peachtree. Thus, even if you poke the sales tax amount, you'll still have to manually edit the invoice in Peachtree to add the Sales Tax Authority. Without the Tax Authority, you can't print the invoice. Hopefully, this will be corrected in a future update to Peachtree.