Update or write default values in a AW 6 DB

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Update or write default values in a AW 6 DB

Postby Jorge Lucas » Fri Apr 15, 2005 6:55 pm

Hello,

I have an AppleWorks DB with 255 fields (the maximum allowed): it is the place I put presences, absences and the test results.

This first DB has 180 fields for presences and absences; all are of the type "Value list" and all have 3 initial options: ".", "f" and " ". The default value is ".", of course.

As one can see, it is a dynamic DB: it counts the absences and calculate the final grade (0~10) of each 3-month period.

The second DB, that I made for the others teachers, and print one layout for each class, with the number, the name and 60 "value list" fields, exactly like mine.

It is a static DB: the teachers fill the data by pen.

Although my exclusive DB is more complete than the school’s, in this year I fill first (with the names of the students)I the school’s DB and after I selected and and copied the groups of students that I have to my DB.

Since the 60 "presence/absence" fields have exactly the same name and are of the same type, they are copied with no problems.

But the other 120 "presence/absence" fields that did not exist on the school DB will not show the default value that I need: "." .

I can get inside each of the 120 fields and select the value that I need: “.” , but I have around 90 students; so I would have too much entries to make by hand: the total changes will be 10,800 .

The first 60 “Value list” fields for presences and absences I named ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’, ... ,’60’ and the others 120 fields of theis sama type, were named:

'2.1', '2.2', '2.3', ... ,'2.60' and '3.1', '3.2', '3.3', ... ,'3.60' .

What I want is a way to "update" the fields '2.1', '2.2', '2.3', ... ,'2.60' and
'3.1', '3.2', '3.3', ... ,'3.60' to show the default value ".", based upon another "Value list" field named 'Position2' that has the options "Regular", "Cancelled", "Transferred", ...

IN EACH RECORD it should look at 'Position2' field and if the student was classified as "Regular", the fields '2.1', '2.2', '2.3', ... , '2.60' and '3.1', '3.2', '3.3', ... , '3.60' should show the default status that is "." (Present).

There will come the other problem: when the class arrives, and I verify that some student is not present, I need to be able to change that to "f".

Maybe this way is not the ideal; problably there is a AppleScript that write for me the default values in those 120 fields.

If you know how to solve this, I thank you in advance; if you don't, thank you for reading this,

Jorge Lucas ( Not the "Star Wars" guy)
Jorge Lucas
 
Posts: 38
Joined: Fri Jan 14, 2005 12:47 pm
Location: Santa Maria, R.S., Brazil

Re: Update or write default values in a AW 6 DB

Postby Barry » Sun Apr 17, 2005 2:16 am

Hi Jorge,

There is an AppleScript that will fill in a default value to a given field in selected (or all) records. It's part of the AppleWorks Enhancement Pack, and can be downloaded from T&B (www.tandb.com.au/appleworks)

You should be able to do this 'manually' as well, using a spreadsheet as an interim step.

After filling in one of the smaller DBs, Select All, Copy, then Paste into an empty spreadsheet. Make sure the spreadsheet is large enough to accomodate the contents of the larger DB (one line for each record, one column for each field)

Locate the first empty cell in the top row (corresponding to the 61st presence/absence field) and enter the default value for this field. Select this column and the 119 columns to the right, then press command-D, then command-R to fill the default value Down and Right into the full block of cells.

Select the block of cells containing all the rows and all the columns with data, and Copy.

Open the large DB, Select All Records and go Edit > Clear to clear out old data, then Paste.

This should give you your large DB fully populated with all of the data copied from the smaller DB, and with default values entered into all the presence/absence fields.


In future, you might find it more efficient to enter the initial data into the large DB, then use this technique to transfer the data to the smaller DBs.

Or, as the smaller DBs are used to print hard copy lists to be filled in with pen, it might be easier to simply create a layout (for the large DB) that contains only the first 60 attendence fields (and the student info fields). There seems to be no actual need for the small DB files themselves.

Regards,
Barry
Jorge Lucas wrote:Hello,

I have an AppleWorks DB with 255 fields (the maximum allowed): it is the place I put presences, absences and the test results.

This first DB has 180 fields for presences and absences; all are of the type "Value list" and all have 3 initial options: ".", "f" and " ". The default value is ".", of course.

As one can see, it is a dynamic DB: it counts the absences and calculate the final grade (0~10) of each 3-month period.

The second DB, that I made for the others teachers, and print one layout for each class, with the number, the name and 60 "value list" fields, exactly like mine.

It is a static DB: the teachers fill the data by pen.

Although my exclusive DB is more complete than the school’s, in this year I fill first (with the names of the students)I the school’s DB and after I selected and and copied the groups of students that I have to my DB.

Since the 60 "presence/absence" fields have exactly the same name and are of the same type, they are copied with no problems.

But the other 120 "presence/absence" fields that did not exist on the school DB will not show the default value that I need: "." .

I can get inside each of the 120 fields and select the value that I need: “.” , but I have around 90 students; so I would have too much entries to make by hand: the total changes will be 10,800 .

The first 60 “Value list” fields for presences and absences I named ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’, ... ,’60’ and the others 120 fields of theis sama type, were named:

'2.1', '2.2', '2.3', ... ,'2.60' and '3.1', '3.2', '3.3', ... ,'3.60' .

What I want is a way to "update" the fields '2.1', '2.2', '2.3', ... ,'2.60' and
'3.1', '3.2', '3.3', ... ,'3.60' to show the default value ".", based upon another "Value list" field named 'Position2' that has the options "Regular", "Cancelled", "Transferred", ...

IN EACH RECORD it should look at 'Position2' field and if the student was classified as "Regular", the fields '2.1', '2.2', '2.3', ... , '2.60' and '3.1', '3.2', '3.3', ... , '3.60' should show the default status that is "." (Present).

There will come the other problem: when the class arrives, and I verify that some student is not present, I need to be able to change that to "f".

Maybe this way is not the ideal; problably there is a AppleScript that write for me the default values in those 120 fields.

If you know how to solve this, I thank you in advance; if you don't, thank you for reading this,

Jorge Lucas ( Not the "Star Wars" guy)
Barry
 
Posts: 1390
Joined: Mon Sep 30, 2002 12:54 am
Location: 48°50' N 123° 30'W

Re: Update or write default values in a AW 6 DB

Postby haumann » Sun Apr 17, 2005 12:21 pm

Jorge Lucas wrote:Hello,

I have an AppleWorks DB with 255 fields (the maximum allowed): it is the place I put presences, absences and the test results.

This first DB has 180 fields for presences and absences; all are of the type "Value list" and all have 3 initial options: ".", "f" and " ". The default value is ".", of course.

As one can see, it is a dynamic DB: it counts the absences and calculate the final grade (0~10) of each 3-month period.

The second DB, that I made for the others teachers, and print one layout for each class, with the number, the name and 60 "value list" fields, exactly like mine.

It is a static DB: the teachers fill the data by pen.

Although my exclusive DB is more complete than the school’s, in this year I fill first (with the names of the students)I the school’s DB and after I selected and and copied the groups of students that I have to my DB.

Since the 60 "presence/absence" fields have exactly the same name and are of the same type, they are copied with no problems.

But the other 120 "presence/absence" fields that did not exist on the school DB will not show the default value that I need: "." .

I can get inside each of the 120 fields and select the value that I need: “.” , but I have around 90 students; so I would have too much entries to make by hand: the total changes will be 10,800 .

The first 60 “Value list” fields for presences and absences I named ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’, ... ,’60’ and the others 120 fields of theis sama type, were named:

'2.1', '2.2', '2.3', ... ,'2.60' and '3.1', '3.2', '3.3', ... ,'3.60' .

What I want is a way to "update" the fields '2.1', '2.2', '2.3', ... ,'2.60' and
'3.1', '3.2', '3.3', ... ,'3.60' to show the default value ".", based upon another "Value list" field named 'Position2' that has the options "Regular", "Cancelled", "Transferred", ...

IN EACH RECORD it should look at 'Position2' field and if the student was classified as "Regular", the fields '2.1', '2.2', '2.3', ... , '2.60' and '3.1', '3.2', '3.3', ... , '3.60' should show the default status that is "." (Present).

There will come the other problem: when the class arrives, and I verify that some student is not present, I need to be able to change that to "f".

Maybe this way is not the ideal; problably there is a AppleScript that write for me the default values in those 120 fields.

If you know how to solve this, I thank you in advance; if you don't, thank you for reading this,

Jorge Lucas ( Not the "Star Wars" guy)

Jorge,

I must commend you on your diligence and attention to detail, but what you've described sounds like an incredibly unwieldy document. The data you've described strikes me as more appropriately presented/interpreted in spreadsheet form, but as you've obviously already invested a great deal of energy in the DB, it occurs to me that you could drastically reduce the number of attendance fields from 60 to 12 (or 13) for each 3-month period by simply employing a 5-digit sequence (using the digits 0, 1. and 2) for each week.

The default weekly entry for a student could be a text string like "00000"; a Tuesday and Friday absence would appear thusly: "01001". Accumulated absences for the 3 month period is(are) found by just counting the "1" present in all the attendance fields with a straight-forward formula. Zero's and/or two's could be accumulated in a similar fashion.

To answer one of your original questions about default values, could you not just establish the default value for any (each) particular field using the "Define Database Fields" dialog? Any newly established record will display these default entries.

John@was
haumann
 
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Location: San Antonio

Re: Update or write default values in a AW 6 DB

Postby Jorge Lucas » Sun Apr 17, 2005 8:44 pm

Barry wrote:Hi Jorge,

There is an AppleScript that will fill in a default value to a given field in selected (or all) records. It's part of the AppleWorks Enhancement Pack, and can be downloaded from T&B (www.tandb.com.au/appleworks)

You should be able to do this 'manually' as well, using a spreadsheet as an interim step.

In future, you might find it more efficient to enter the initial data into the large DB, then use this technique to transfer the data to the smaller DBs.

Or, as the smaller DBs are used to print hard copy lists to be filled in with pen, it might be easier to simply create a layout (for the large DB) that contains only the first 60 attendence fields (and the student info fields). There seems to be no actual need for the small DB files themselves.

Regards,
Barry






Barry,

Thank you again for the suggestions: I will try them later; I already got from Yvan Koenig (of France) a very extense AppleScript but there were some errors in my file: the script ran well putting the "." in 37 students and stopped in the 38th.

Just to explain three things about your comments:

1) it sure would be easier to copy from the DB with more fields to the DB with less fields; the fields that the second did not have would be desconsiderated (?), but I did not this because at the beginning I was not suppose to have those classes of the students: so, there was no need to have those in my personal DB;

2) my personal DB has 255 fields and the school's DB around 80, but I could not have just one, because I have only 3 groups of the students and the school has more than 50.
Mine would not support so many students.

3) Now that looks Apple is abandonning AppleWorks, and I am beginning experiencing problems with AppleWorks, comes another one: I got 2 groups of students that have 5 classes per week and that comes to the need of 75 fields of "presence/absence" for each 3-month period, instead of the 60 that I have with the other students.

For my colleagues that have 5 classe a week, I put an extra 15 classes in the back of the hard copy, but for my personal DB there is no way to have 45 extra fields and I can not delete more than 10 not so important.

So I am thinking about going to the MAMP (Macintosh, Apache, My SQL and PHP), if I find someone that send me some template to begin studying.

After 6 years of an intense use of AppleWorks, if I have to go to a more powerful DB I know that will not be as easy as AppleWorks.

Thanks again,

Jorge Lucas (Not the "Stars Wars" guy)
Jorge Lucas
 
Posts: 38
Joined: Fri Jan 14, 2005 12:47 pm
Location: Santa Maria, R.S., Brazil

Re: Update or write default values in a AW 6 DB

Postby Barry » Sun Apr 17, 2005 10:24 pm

Jorge Lucas wrote:Just to explain three things about your comments:

1) it sure would be easier to copy from the DB with more fields to the DB with less fields; the fields that the second did not have would be desconsiderated (?), but I did not this because at the beginning I was not suppose to have those classes of the students: so, there was no need to have those in my personal DB;


You should be able to remove these fields by creating a layout that does not include them. (eg. Duplicate the full layout, then delete the unneeded fields.) After printing, you could either delete or deselect the students not needed in your personal DB.


2) my personal DB has 255 fields and the school's DB around 80, but I could not have just one, because I have only 3 groups of the students and the school has more than 50.
Mine would not support so many students.


1500 records (50 groups of 30) doesn't come close to the maximum number of records in an AW DB. You can create the individual classes and combine the ones that are in your DB or put everything in your DB and copy oout the ones for each teacher.


3) Now that looks Apple is abandoning AppleWorks, and I am beginning experiencing problems with AppleWorks, comes another one: I got 2 groups of students that have 5 classes per week and that comes to the need of 75 fields of "presence/absence" for each 3-month period, instead of the 60 that I have with the other students.

For my colleagues that have 5 classe a week, I put an extra 15 classes in the back of the hard copy, but for my personal DB there is no way to have 45 extra fields and I can not delete more than 10 not so important.


As John has noted, this is a problem that could be avoided by rethinking the design of the database. Currently you have a field for each day's attendance. Assuming a five day week, you could replace five fields with a single field containing a five digit number (or a five letter string) showing attendence over the full week.


So I am thinking about going to the MAMP (Macintosh, Apache, My SQL and PHP), if I find someone that send me some template to begin studying.


An application is obsolete only when it doesn't do what you need it to do. While looking ahead and exploring MAMP (or FileMaker Pro) is a reasonable course of action, I don't think it's yet a necessary one.

Regards,
Barry
Barry
 
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Re: Update or write default values in a AW 6 DB

Postby Jorge Lucas » Mon Apr 18, 2005 7:28 pm

haumann wrote:Jorge,

I must commend you on your diligence and attention to detail, but what you've described sounds like an incredibly unwieldy document. The data you've described strikes me as more appropriately presented/interpreted in spreadsheet form, but as you've obviously already invested a great deal of energy in the DB, it occurs to me that you could drastically reduce the number of attendance fields from 60 to 12 (or 13) for each 3-month period by simply employing a 5-digit sequence (using the digits 0, 1. and 2) for each week.

The default weekly entry for a student could be a text string like "00000"; a Tuesday and Friday absence would appear thusly: "01001". Accumulated absences for the 3 month period is(are) found by just counting the "1" present in all the attendance fields with a straight-forward formula. Zero's and/or two's could be accumulated in a similar fashion.

To answer one of your original questions about default values, could you not just establish the default value for any (each) particular field using the "Define Database Fields" dialog? Any newly established record will display these default entries.

John@was




John,

I had to go to the Omni Dictionary to see the meaning of "unwieldy" and now I know one more English word. Thanks John.

That permits me to disagree with you:
The final layout looks like a spreadsheet at most, but there is a head with several informations about the school, the group of students, name of the subject to be teach (Mathematics, Português, English, Physics, Chemistry and so on) and even some draw that I did in AppleWorks; in the footer there are another informations, with dates and signatures.

The reasons why is not in a spreadsheet is to be able to get the data in a great variety of layouts and the possibilities to add fields and layouts in order to obtain special selections if needed.

The main reason of the school DB is a sheet for the teacher write who is present (default "."), who is not ("f"), the subject thought and the dates but the number of the students in the sheets varies a lot.

So I have layouts for 26, 31, 34, 37, 40, 43, 46, 50 students, each with 60 classes; I have some other layouts special (for other purposes) and I am planning to make some with 50 classes for the teachers that have 3 or less classes a week with a group (that will permit a larger space for each "presence / absence" field (better to lessen errors).

Depending of the number of the students in the same class, I put the size of the font; each student in each layout has one light line to guide the teacher and there are around 70 vertical lines.

At the top of each "presence / absence" field, I put a space to the teacher write the date of the class (in my personal DB it is in the field's label).

So I think that the DB is a better way to maintain the data, very more agile than a spreadsheet.

About the default values, in the "Define DB fields" they are for new records and since I copied some records of a 60 "presence / absence" fields to a 180 "presence / absence" fields and started using it, putting absences and only one month after I realized that 120 "presence / absence" fields were blank, I ask for help trying to learn AppleScript by templates.

I could, of course, copy the name of a student, create a new record, paste the name there and fill some other field; it would be less work than get inside 120 "presence / absence" fields to choose the option "." .

But I was sure that people like you, Barry, Yvan, Peggy and so many others, with much more knowledge, would come with brighter solutions and I could learn something new.

About your suggestion of strings, for my personal DB, nothing related with completing the default value, it sure would permit me to add some "presence / absence" fields that I need and can not add, because I am already at the limit of 255 fields, but would not be easy to maintain up to date.

It would be very easy to make mistakes; I use the computer at the class and put the absences at the beginning.
If I have a string like "....." or ". . . . ." and want to change the 2nd or the 3rd '." by a "f" I could easily erase the all string and if in that was already another "f" I could be lost.

But technically it would attend one difficulty that I am facing.

Well, I thank you so much for your time.

Jorge Lucas (Not the "Star Wars" guy)
Jorge Lucas
 
Posts: 38
Joined: Fri Jan 14, 2005 12:47 pm
Location: Santa Maria, R.S., Brazil

thanks

Postby haumann » Mon Apr 18, 2005 8:06 pm

Thanks, Jorge, for clarifying. You are certainly using the DB on a far grander scale than I had imagined. After your description, I'm inclined to agree with your choice of DB over spreadsheet -- the spreadsheet would never give the layout flexibility you've described (at least not in a single document).

John@was
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Re: Update or write default values in a AW 6 DB

Postby Jorge Lucas » Mon Apr 18, 2005 8:59 pm

Barry,

First you said:

"1500 records (50 groups of 30) doesn't come close to the maximum number of records in an AW DB. You can create the individual classes and combine the ones that are in your DB or put everything in your DB and copy oout the ones for each teacher. "

I can not have just one DB for the two things, because the school's DB has more than 6 Mb with more than twenty layouts (and counting) and my personal has more than twenty and 255 fields and needing more fields.
My personal DB's size is 2.5 Mb, by the year's end.

Maybe you are right, Barry, but I read several times that this 6.2.9 version of AppleWorks has some problems and I feel afraid of put it all in one file.

I have another 2 large personal AppleWorks 6 DBs: one that has around 1700 records and the other that has around 4400 records, but they have But they have around 20 fields each.

I would have problems with my own students, because I would need to have duplicated, because, when I make the sheet for the others all the students have the 60 "." (that is default), but if they have some absences with me and I erased to print for the others, those absence could be lost.

So I would need another extra field to distinguished "Julia Roberts", that is my student of group 73 (with "." and "f") from the same "Julia Roberts", that is a student of group 73, only with "." . And I am already in the limit.

Then you said:

"As John has noted, this is a problem that could be avoided by rethinking the design of the database. Currently you have a field for each day's attendance. Assuming a five day week, you could replace five fields with a single field containing a five digit number (or a five letter string) showing attendence over the full week."

My DB is been growing as my hardware permits and I already ask about a script to write all the fields names, types and formulas to rethink it, but nobody answer me.
Even though I have it almost all in my mind, almost is a detail that can matter.
About John' suggestion of a string it could improve errors of bad operation, as I already answered him.

At last you said"

"An application is obsolete only when it doesn't do what you need it to do. While looking ahead and exploring MAMP (or FileMaker Pro) is a reasonable course of action, I don't think it's yet a necessary one."

I agree with that. I consider myself an power user of AppleWorks, although I have not the expertise to do the things the more proper way I do the things.

I have several AppleWorks spreadsheet files that I use to operate with "matrices and determinants", all by hand, with no AppleScripts.

But I am feeling insecure this last month because of several times that it quitted and people wrote that this version has problems and Apple is abandoning it.
And because the need of more fields.

Here, at the school the number of classes a week depends on the subject and the grade. So, in High School, taking for example, Math (my subject), there are 4 classes a week in the first year, 3 in the second and 4 in the third.
But has 5 in the Junior High.

For the students I have at the first year of the High School (4 classes a week) my DB is perfect but for the students I have in the 7th grade of Fundamental School (5 classes a week) it will be insufficient.

I also have another not so good way to handle this ( I use to do this five years ago, when I created this in ClarisWorks 4.0 in a PowerPC 5500/250 MHz, with only 32 Mb of memory).:

I can use the 75 fields of “presence / absence” in the first of the 3-month period; then I take the value of the field that calculates all the absences of each student and put that value in a number field, by hand.

Then, I make a copy of the layout I give to the school and reuse those 75 again for the second 3-month period.

For the third 3-month period, I would have the sufficient fields and memory to calculate everything I need.

But is not so cool to use a DB beyond it's limit, having to compensate it by hand.

Well, maybe Apple releases one more version to correct the quitting problem, before abandoning it for good.

I am already praying for this.

My sincere thanks for all the efforts at this forum helping AppleWorks' users.

Jorge Lucas
Jorge Lucas
 
Posts: 38
Joined: Fri Jan 14, 2005 12:47 pm
Location: Santa Maria, R.S., Brazil

Re: Update or write default values in a AW 6 DB

Postby haumann » Mon Apr 18, 2005 11:08 pm

Jorge Lucas wrote:About your suggestion of strings, for my personal DB, nothing related with completing the default value, it sure would permit me to add some "presence / absence" fields that I need and can not add, because I am already at the limit of 255 fields, but would not be easy to maintain up to date.

It would be very easy to make mistakes; I use the computer at the class and put the absences at the beginning.
If I have a string like "....." or ". . . . ." and want to change the 2nd or the 3rd '." by a "f" I could easily erase the all string and if in that was already another "f" I could be lost.

Jorge Lucas (Not the "Star Wars" guy)

Jorge,

I'm inclined to think that a more sophisticated DB (like FileMaker Pro or 4-D) would ease your burden. It would seem that your implementation has stretched the AW database to its practical limits.

I don't want to side-track you, but I'm a bit puzzled by the extensive detail to which you are tracking attendance. My classes typically have from 45 to 75 class meetings in a regular semester, but once a student has missed as many as 20% of the class meetings, further absences are pretty much irrelevant. I have 10 date fields reserved in each student's record to accomodate the dates that an absence occurs. Do you really need 60 attendance fields for each 3-month period?

John@was
haumann
 
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Re: Update or write default values in a AW 6 DB

Postby Jorge Lucas » Thu Apr 21, 2005 11:26 am

haumann wrote:Jorge,

I'm inclined to think that a more sophisticated DB (like FileMaker Pro or 4-D) would ease your burden. It would seem that your implementation has stretched the AW database to its practical limits.

I don't want to side-track you, but I'm a bit puzzled by the extensive detail to which you are tracking attendance. My classes typically have from 45 to 75 class meetings in a regular semester, but once a student has missed as many as 20% of the class meetings, further absences are pretty much irrelevant. I have 10 date fields reserved in each student's record to accomodate the dates that an absence occurs. Do you really need 60 attendance fields for each 3-month period?

John@was


John,

If I was living in the USA, I would already be using FileMaker 6, that FileMaker offered for free for US residents some time ago.

It looks that you are College teacher and that your DB only register the absences; here we register also the presences and that is the reason I do need so many classes per each 3-month period sheet.

Each 3-month period has around 14~15 weeks and so you multiply this by the number of classes a week. So I have to design the layouts for the maximum, that is 75 per sheet. For my colleagues I did a sheet with 60 classes and putted an extra 15 in the back (what I called "technical reservation", by the side of the subject's registration. This I have been using for the fourth year in a roll, with little changes.

Now I am planning to add some layouts with 50 classes (for the techers that have 3 classes a week, or less than 3) . This would permits a slightly better sheet for work and not get lost. I think I already said that the size of the font depends on how many students has the class (the numbers vary from 26 to 50 students).

But my personal DB's layout needs to have the all 75 classes in the front because it will be just one layout for this.
I have another layouts for each trimester, that I do not pass over to the school in paper, to put the grades. It calculates the average grade of each student and permits me to change that calculation. This grades and the final result of each trimester will appear in the layout with presences and absences that I give to the school.

For an extra period for the students that did not get the minimal to pass without final examination ( 7 of a 0~10 scale), I have another layouts with similar look. If the students go to the extra period (the majority), they will bring the average of the 3 trimester grades as 1 grade and will have one second grade of the extra period. The need will be an average of 5 of a 0~10 scale in order to be promoted of grade.

In Brazil the system of promotion of the students can vary from school to school but the 5 of a 0~10 scale is a final reference; to pass to the next grade without final examination varies from 5 to 8 of a 0~10 scale.

I use my iBook at the classroom and if the student is absent I put an "f" at the beginning of the class and it is already computerized and there will be no need to count the absences in the end of each trimester.

Coming back to the initial post I made, I just discovered that when I copied my students from the school's DB to mine, the data of some value list fields that I do not have in my personal DB, where putted in some "presences /absences" value list fields, others than the 60 existents in the school's DB. In the fields '3.40', '3.41' and '3.42'

I am imagining that is the cause of so many unexpected quitting of AppleWorks, when I try to open the layouts of the others trimesters (we are currently in the first trimester), because I have fields that counts the fields that has "f" and if a field suppose to have ".", or "f" shows "EF_7ª série" (Fundamental Teaching_7nd grade), the programs get lost.

The way I created this to prevent errors, if I use some "presences /absences" value list fields to put the message that the student was transferred, one field for each letter, I write "t r a n s .f e r i d o".

So, now, trying to save some changes I made in the last year's DB and not have so much work lost in my personal DB, I create one extra "New Record" (with 180 "presences /absences" value list fields) for each existent student (with only 60 "presences /absences" value list fields); then I put the numbers that they didnot have at first, ordered all "by class, name", copy the absences to the students with numbers; then I reordered again "by class, number" and delete all that did not have the number.

The result: all the students stayed with the default values and I could open all the layouts with no quitting.

Although it is looking OK now, I am a little apprehensive about it. And since I can not add more fields I would like to go to a more powerful DB; as I said before FileMaker would be easier but is not free for people living in Brazil and MAMP is free and I do not have someone to start it for me. So, I will probably stay with AppleWorks this year, compensating by hand the impossibilities of adding more fields.

Since you were curious about my DB I will send you two copies: one with each student putted twice and the final one, after I erased those without numbers; you will be able to test both and see how the first one quits when try to open some layouts.

Thank you for your time,

Jorge Lucas (Not the guy from "Star Wars")
Jorge Lucas
 
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Location: Santa Maria, R.S., Brazil

Re: Update or write default values in a AW 6 DB

Postby haumann » Fri Apr 22, 2005 7:58 pm

Jorge Lucas wrote:::: snip :::
But the other 120 "presence/absence" fields that did not exist on the school DB will not show the default value that I need: "." .

I can get inside each of the 120 fields and select the value that I need: “.” , but I have around 90 students; so I would have too much entries to make by hand: the total changes will be 10,800 .

The first 60 “Value list” fields for presences and absences I named ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’, ... ,’60’ and the others 120 fields of theis sama type, were named:

'2.1', '2.2', '2.3', ... ,'2.60' and '3.1', '3.2', '3.3', ... ,'3.60' .

What I want is a way to "update" the fields '2.1', '2.2', '2.3', ... ,'2.60' and
'3.1', '3.2', '3.3', ... ,'3.60' to show the default value ".", based upon another "Value list" field named 'Position2' that has the options "Regular", "Cancelled", "Transferred", ...

IN EACH RECORD it should look at 'Position2' field and if the student was classified as "Regular", the fields '2.1', '2.2', '2.3', ... , '2.60' and '3.1', '3.2', '3.3', ... , '3.60' should show the default status that is "." (Present).

There will come the other problem: when the class arrives, and I verify that some student is not present, I need to be able to change that to "f".

Maybe this way is not the ideal; problably there is a AppleScript that write for me the default values in those 120 fields.
::: snip :::
Jorge Lucas ( Not the "Star Wars" guy)

Jorge,

To get back to your original question, you can avoid making the 10,800 entry changes entirely by hand, but not by a calculation field. The reason being that the field can be a calculation field or a value list field (in your example), but not both.

To automate the entry process (at least somewhat), one option is to record a macro. Of course, the only problem with this course of action is that AW6 has no macro capability under OS X -- BUT -- one can force AW6 to open it's Classic version, where macro recording is available.

You can then record the keystrokes to make the change in the first record's field "2.1", tab to "2.2" and change, tab to "2.3" and change, etc., until the first record is done. Stop recording and temporarily assign this macro to a convenient but unused keystroke, then use that keystroke on each successive record after first placing the cursor in the next record's "2.1" field. You can even automate the placement of the cursor into the subsequent record, but you'll first have to set your tab order to include only those fields you are changing (then after changing the first record's "3.60" field, don't stop recording until you've recorded an additional tab stroke to put the cursor back in field "2.1" and also recorded a command-down arrow to select the subsequent record).

To minimize distractions, set up a temporary layout that has only the fields you want to change, and nothing else.

John@was
haumann
 
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Joined: Sun Aug 25, 2002 8:16 pm
Location: San Antonio


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