Newbie trying to old V4 database with V9

[gskelton]

Built my sales and repair database about 12 yrs ago with Alpha V4 so I have forgotten most of what I had learned. Decided to upgrade to V9 because I had heard about compatability problems with earlier versions of Alpha & Vista. Not using vista yet, but who knows when I might have to. Anyway, when using my database with V9 two things work differently than they used to. When entering a new sales or repair invoice, I use a table lookup assigned to the customer id to see if the customer is already in my database. It shows last name, first name, address and phone. The reason I have it show this much info is because in this little town there are several people with the same first and last name. It is sorted by last name, then first name. I look down the list, if the person is found I click on them and return to my form and finish the invoice. If the name is not there, I click enter new record, and enter customer info into the form that pops up. I X out of the form and it goes back to my table with the name I just entered selected. In V9 it goes back to the table, but the new customer I just entered is not selected. Another random name is selected and I have to do another find to select the customer I just entered. That's one difference. The other difference is when I do a find by index in V4 it always uses the index that I had previously selected. In V9 it always goes back to record no index and I have to select the index I want to use again. I am having to do more steps with V9 to do the same job that I did with V4. I also tried using V5 once upon a time. I don't recall having the index problem with it, but, it had the other problem. There is probably something I am overlooking,so is there any suggestions? There are also some quirks about data not showing up on some tabbed forms that I use to look up these sales and repairs. I'll leave that for another post. This one is getting long.

[forskare]

Re: Newbie trying to old V4 database with V9

I'll take a stab at this but others may have better ideas.

When entering a new sales or repair invoice, I use a table lookup assigned to the customer id to see if the customer is already in my database.

I use a progressive lookup which shows the info as I type. It's faster that scrolling through a list of names. A multistate button could also be used. There is an example in the AlphaSports database.

I X out of the form and it goes back to my table with the name I just entered selected. In V9 it goes back to the table, but the new customer I just entered is not selected. Another random name is selected and I have to do another find to select the customer I just entered.

If the person I'm looking for is not in the database, I close out the progressive find and click a button to add a new record. Actually, I could put a button on the progressive find window to not only close the progressive find window but to open the form to enter a new record, saving 1 click.

The other difference is when I do a find by index in V4 it always uses the index that I had previously selected. In V9 it always goes back to record no index and I have to select the index I want to use again.

You could create a button to find a record which sets the index.

With the form in design mode, create a button and use action scripting to do what you want. It is a fantastic learning tool.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

kenn