Method Community

Greetings,

I created numerous customer fields in my custom screen. I was a bit hurried and would like to convert some of the field types, i.e., from "text" to a calendar or text to "yes/no." I thought I messed up by having added the field to the wrong table (i.e., the default but not my custom screen). No matter where I look, there is NO WAY I can change the properties of my custom fields. The fields do not contain any data, so I cannot understand why this is a problem. Also, I am not trying to change QB fields, only my new Method fields.

Please don't tell me I have to delete them and start over.

Thanks for your help.

Shelley,

Also, I cannot change the data type of the additional fields I have added in Method (Not QB Custom Fields).  I can change the field length, but not the data type.  There does appear to be a drop down arrow indicating this widget might allow changes, but no luck getting it to work.

About your Custom Screen.  I would think that for Customers, all your changes would need to be to the Customer table, regardless of which screen you are using.  As I understand it, you must create a new screen to make changes to the Method designed screen and the new screen will automaticaly point to the same shared Method table.  New fields are added to the table, then available to be used on the new screen or any screen that has the Customer table as the primary table.  Fields from other tables are available if there is a link from the primary table to the detail table.

It would be nice to change data types on the fly, but there might be a good reason this function isn't working.  Luckily it's pretty quick to delete and add fields.

Something to consider is that any screen that is using a field may have some data type dependent functionality, so even though the field may not have any data in it, there may be a screen created that is using the field.  So, when the data type changes in the table, some data in the screen definition may need to change.  Method may be choosing to avoid the issues of this cascade of changes to the screens which depend on the table table definition, even though data is not changed.

Of course, this is only speculation on my part, I'm sure one of the Business Consultants will give you a better answer.

Cheers,

James

James, thank you for jumping in - you hit that one right on the head :)

Shelley, James is right in his explanation. There is no way to modify the type of field once it has been created. You would have to add new fields. Keep in mind if you would like to reuse the same field names then you would first have to delete the existing fields and then add the new ones with those names. You'll also have to ensure that the fields are not on any screens when you are deleting them.

Thanks James!

I am so happy I am just in the design stage!

Shelley

Amanda,

Thanks for confirming -- I get it now! 

It seems to me that if I want to make a change after entering data, I will need to export the data and re-import it to the correct field name? Is it possible to simply delete data (in a moment of madness) by deleting field names? Also, I do plan to re-use field names. I need to remove them from the table, correct, not the screen designer?

 Hi Shelley,

If you delete a field from a table then the data is lost. On the other hand, if you were to remove a field from a screen and re-add it then the data would still be there. In your case, you would have to remove the fields from the screen and table because you wish to reuse the field names. If you wish to capture the data, then yes, its a good idea to export it out of Method. In terms of importing it back to Method, you may want to be careful with that if you are changing the field type; for instance if the original field type was text and then the new field type is integer then that wouldn't work.