Entering and editing data

You can enter, maintain, and find data in any screen that display records. How you work with the fields in a record, depends on the field type and where the record is being accessed.

Recognizing mandatory fields

When you enter information in a new record, you must complete all mandatory fields. Mandatory fields are shown in blue (either the field name or the text box itself).

Entering and editing data

  • You can enter and change data in a field with a white background.

  • You cannot edit a field that has a gray background.

  • You might be able to make a gray field editable by clicking Edit or by selecting a checkbox, for example for date fields. However, some fields are read-only and can never be edited.

Note: You might be able to move your mouse over a field to display a tooltip that provides helpful information.

Entering Unicode characters

Depending on your database, you might be able to enter Unicode characters. To find out whether Unicode characters are supported:

  • Select File > Properties > Database Properties.

If Unicode characters are allowed, then the Use Unicode Data types checkbox is selected.

Note: Unless your database supports Unicode characters, do not enter characters into a record that are not included in the character set for your language group.

Selecting the record owner

Depending on your organization, each type of entity and link record might have an "owner" field or something equivalent. This identifies the person to contact about the record. When adding a new entity or link, the field might display $ as the default value, which means that you will become the owner of the record when the record is saved.

To select a different user as the owner:

  1. Type $ in the "owner" field. This indicates that you are looking for a username rather than a file.

  2. Click the Browse button next to the "owner" field to display the list of users for this database. If you know the first few characters of the name, enter these first - this will then scroll the list to that position in the list.

  3. Double-click on a name to select that person as the owner.

Finding out the field type

To find out the type of a field. For example, the type of a Grade field in a Document entity:

  1. In the Database Explorer view, click the record's entity or link type.

  2. In the Explorer detail window, look up the field type in the Type column.