Steward

I really hoped to use this app for serious work. Field creation is easy. There is a form layout view as well as a spreadsheet view. I especially like the "advanced find", which identifies records that satisfy search criteria applied to different variables. However there are some issues that prevent me from buying the program now ($25). Some of them are:

• Sporadic Bugs
- The "advanced" search is supposed to limit the number of shown records to those that satisfy search criteria. It doesn't always work.

- In spreadsheet view, there is an option to show for any field a count of observations with a valid value for that field. That count is sometimes inaccurate.

- Export to CSV sometimes fails to export a chosen field.

I reported the first two of these bugs, with screen shots of a simple data set, to the developer, but got no response.

• Export is poorly designed. You must move fields one at a time to an export column. The mac standard would be to use shift or control to select multiple . items. . One cannot save export profiles: Want to do another export? Start from scratch. Thus regular export is impractical.

• There's no way to create a compact layout for data entry. The standard vertical layout has the virtue of simplicity, but it does mean that a form with many fields is unwieldy to navigate.

• Strange design All data are are saved inside a single file located deep inside user system folders.

Backups (of that single file or of extracts) can be located anyplace. They can be opened by double-clicking, but the opening is accompanied by a message that "The document cannot be opened" and that "Steward Backups cannot be opened by "Steward".

• GUI problems: Some controls (sidebar with table list, top controls including choice of view) are hidden unless one enters the shortcut for "advanced find". "Update" and "Save" buttons appear unpredictably.

I hope that the program will be improved. For simple needs (no advanced search), I now use the free program EagleData.

The interface is kind of a ripoff of Tap Forms. Developer, please come up with your own ideas!

Wow, it's a treasure for a perfectionist! Now everything you have on your Mac can be sorted, organized and ordered. I've found this app very useful for real, it has a a wide range of categories. The interface is so smart and nice-looking. You can even organize a wine collection. Steward has also a function of importing, exporting and backup that is important too. I recommend this app to everyone who dreams to have excellent shape of a Mac.