There are many ways to encourage users to fill out fields... Here's a very non-draconian and non-invasive way to encourage the users to fully fill out a record. This method will make the field label red if the field is left blank, therefore drawing attention to the field!
In our example we'll use the Company field; however, this can be done for any field in the top-half of the screen or the Fields tab. First, do a Right-Click | Properties on the company field while logged in as a user with 'Master' rights. Then go to the Color tab.
Click on the Expression radio box under Label Color and enter this:
iif(trim(company) < ' ', 255, -1)
If you are using a different field you'll need to substitute that field name for 'company'. The 255 is the color red while the -1 is the default label color.
Then OK.
So now it's red:
Now it isn't!
Happy GoldMining!
Comments (3)
Hi, Great tip - but...
Is there any reason why this wouldn't work on a user designed field. I enter iif(trim(UDOB)
Any ideas? Thanks.
Posted by Daniel Flach | December 12, 2006 4:59 AM
Posted on December 12, 2006 04:59
Reference the field by the table name and field name, e.g. contact2->udob. This is not necesasry for contact1 fields, however, would be for contact2 fields.
Posted by Chad Smith | December 12, 2006 4:40 PM
Posted on December 12, 2006 16:40
Hi Chad thanks for the reply.
Yes this works! Except - (and please tell me if I am wrong) when the contact2 field is Date formatted (ie Type D). In this case I get the same error - dBase expression is invalid.
Can you check this and let me know if there is any work around. (One of my fields is a user-defined date-formatted custom field and I would love to have this behave like the others).
Thanks for your help.
Posted by Daniel Flach | December 19, 2006 4:18 AM
Posted on December 19, 2006 04:18