Epi Info and OpenEpi in Epidemiology and Clinical Medicine
Health Applications of Free Software, 366 pages, February 2010
Andrew Dean, Kevin Sullivan, and Minn Minn Soe

Instructions for EXAMPLES.ZIP

Examples.zip contains the program example files for the book. It is freely available for downloading, but is not supplied with printed copies of the book so that changes can be made as problems are reported. EXAMPLES.ZIP is a large file, about 19 megabytes. It contains the programs and data described in the book, and a menu to access and run all the examples. It is assumed that you have first downloaded and installed Epi Info for Windows as described in Chapter 4 of the book.
  1. Download EXAMPLES.ZIP from www.epiinformatics.com by clicking or double-clicking on its link.
  2. Either OPEN the file directly or double-click its icon in the folder where you saved it, which should run whatever unzipping program you have.
  3. Unzip the file to a convenient location on your computer. Be sure that the unzipping program is instructed (usually via a checkbox) to use the folder information when unzipping. The drive where you place the files must be WRITEABLE; the programs will not run from a CDROM disk, for example.
  4. You should now have a folder called EXAMPLES on your computer, with a number of subdirectories, such as exGIS and exARVCalc.
  5. Within the EXAMPLES folder, find the file called EXAMPLES.MNU, the menu file.
  6. Double-click on EXAMPLES.MNU to run it. If Windows says that it cannot find the parent program, indicate that it should be EPIINFO.EXE, which you will find within the Epi Info installation folder ..\Epi_Info\. Tell windows to "always use" this program for MNU files. From now on, you should be able to open the menu merely by clicking on it.
  7. By now, you should be seeing a menu full of blue sky and clouds that gives you access to all the examples.
  8. Use the RUN EXAMPLES menu to see the examples run.
  9. From SEE FILES you can examine each of the folders of sample files. To further examine text files, such as PGMs, right-click on the filename, click OPEN WITH in the menu that appears, and choose NOTEPAD or WORDPAD.
The EXAMPLES menu helps to locate the files for the exercises in the book, but understanding how they work requires reading the text and studying the files themselves. PGM (program) files can be OPENed as text files in the program editor of the Epi Info Analysis program and run line by line with the RUN THIS COMMAND button. Please report errors and difficulties to Andy Dean at the address found at www.epiiinformatics.com