[ The Main Sections of LavyderCalc ] [ Entering Dates ]

LavynderCalc Help

LavynderCalc is a simple program designed to help you in calculating the age, birth date or death date of someone when only two of these are known.

For example, if you know someone's birthday and date of death, you can calculate how old they were at death using LavynderCalc. Simply enter the known values (birth and death dates) then click the button for the desired information (in this case the Find Age button).

Menu Functions

There are three main menus in LavynderCalc. They are:

The following describes each menu option and how it can be used.

HINT: You can hover the mouse over the program window shown at the right and then click on a function or button to jump directly to that information in the sections below.

File Menu

There are two functions under the File menu. Both of them have to do with general program operation.

Hide - The first function is Hide. This function will cause LavynderCalc to minimize to a tiny icon in the lower right corner of the desktop near the system clock. This area is called the "System Tray". In the System Tray, the LavynderCalc icon will appear as a tiny round clock. This function is handy when you are done using the program for a while, but do not wish to close it and restart it later. LavynderCalc will remain in the System Tray until you need it again.

Exit - The second function is used to close LavynderCalc. You may use this function or simply click the "X" button in the upper-right corner of the program window. Either method will close LavynderCalc immediately.

Options

The Options menu controls how LavynderCalc makes certain calculations. There are two methods used to calculate the Age At Death, either when finding the age from the birth and death dates or when using the age to find one of the other dates. One technique calculates the number of months using a fixed 30-days per month calendar, the other uses a standard calendar where the first month has 31 days, the second 28, the third 31, etc. Which method you use depends on what type of calculation you are doing and, more than likely, the method used in the historical source you used to find the known information.

Whichever option you select, a checkmark will appear next to it to indicate that it is the method currently in use. LavynderCalc will also remember your previous selection from run to run. To change the method used, open the Options menu and click on the preferred selection.

30-Day Months - This option selects the use of 30-day per month calculations. When determining the Age At Death, the age in months is determined by dividing the number of days since the prior birthday by 30. Any remainder is the age in days. For example, if the prior birthday was 127 days after the most recent birthday, the age in months would be 4 (127 / 30 = 4 ) and the age in days would be 7.

Calendar Months - This option selects the use of a traditional calendar to determine the number of days in each month. The first month has 31 days, the second 28, and so on. This is not quite the same as a true calendar calculation .. but it's the closest I can get right now. (Hey! I'm working on it. LOL)

Help

There are two functions under the Help menu: View Help and About. The View Help function is how you got here. The About function displays the information shown at the right.

The LavynderCalc program is written and provided free of charge by GreyFace Productions. We also have a PC Technical Support site on the Internet. You may visit our site by clicking on the link shown at the bottom of the About box.

The Main Sections of LavynderCalc

The image shown to the left will help you understand the various sections of the LavynderCalc program. Please refer to this to help you determine what values to enter and how to use the other features of LavynderCalc.

There are four main sections to the window: Date and age entry (the white boxes to the center-left), calculation buttons (Find etc. to the center-right), Internet hotlinks (the blue underlined words near the bottom), and the email link/menu (the pink words at the bottom of the window).

Normally you will enter the information you know (such as the date of death and age at death) then click the button that corresponds to the information you need (such as the Find Birthdate button.)

LavynderCalc has several unique features that can ease entry of dates and other information. Most important (and probably most confusing) is the Date Picker calendar entry used to enter the birth and death dates.

Entering Dates

LavynderCalc uses a handy Date-Picker to ease the entry of birth and death dates. You can easily enter a birth or death date by manually typing in the months, days and year, or you can use the built-in Calendar to select a date. Either method works the same.

To the right of the Birth and Death date fields is a small down-arrow button. When you click on this button, a calendar appears below the field. An example of the calendar is shown to the right. The day circled in gray is the date currently selected in the field. At the bottom of the calendar is today's date.

At the top-left and top-right corners of the calendar window are two arrow buttons. Clicking on the left button will move to the prior month; clicking on the right button will move to the following month. You may also click directly on the month name to show a drop-down list of the month names. You can then simply select the desired month from the list.

You may also click on the year shown. Two more arrow buttons will appear, one pointing up and one pointing down. Click on the up button to move to the following year or the down button to move to the prior year.

When you are done selecting the desired date, click on the day desired in the center of the calendar and it will close and enter the selected date into the date entry field. If you do not wish to change the date entered, you may click on the same down-arrow button to the right of the date entry field as you used to open the calendar window.