I tried to post this tip last week, but had some problems with the blog and ended up losing the post. Anyway, this week we’re going to get into a somewhat obscure feature of Home Inventory 2: Text Receipts.
Being a true geek I try to buy anything and everything online, wherever possible. When I was developing Home Inventory 2, this presented a bit of a problem. Many times my purchase would arrive with only a packing list inside. The receipt for the order would be sent via email or displayed as as web page when I completed my purchase. Home Inventory allows you to add receipts (and photos) in several different ways: through image files, by dragging and dropping images from an external application into Home Inventory, by taking a still picture with your Mac’s iSight camera, or by scanning them in with a scanner. I could use the first method to add a receipt for an online purchase by selecting the Print option under the File menu in my email client and then saving the receipt to a PDF file, which I could then drag and drop into Home Inventory. This works, but seems a bit clunky to me.
These receipts were really just rich text, for the most part, and what I really wanted was to be able to select the receipt contents in my email client or web browser and copy and paste or drag and drop them into Home Inventory. Thus, the idea of text receipts was born.
To add a text receipt to an item in Home Inventory, click the Receipt button in the Bottom Button Bar of the Item Information Area:
This will bring up the Text Receipt Panel. Next, select the contents of the receipt in your email application, web browser, or wherever else the receipt is stored. To get the receipt content into to the Receipt Area, you can take one of two approaches: copy and paste the receipt contents or drag and drop them.
To copy and paste the contents, choose the Copy option under the Edit menu in the source application (this would be your email application, web browser, etc). Next, click the box immediately below the text that says Paste or drag your receipt contents to the box below in the Text Receipt Panel in Home Inventory to make it active and then select Paste underneath the Edit menu in Home Inventory to paste the receipt contents.
To use the drag and drop approach, click on the selected receipt contents in the source application and, while still holding down the mouse button, drag them over to the box immediately below the text that says Paste or drag your receipt contents to the box below of the Text Receipt Panel, then let go of the mouse button. The receipt contents should appear in the Receipt Area:
Once you’ve added your receipt content and (optionally) given the receipt a label, click the Add button to add the receipt to the selected item.
