Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook

Announcement

Collapse

The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
  • Spam.
  • Vulgar language.
  • Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
  • Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
  • Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
  • Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less

HELP for a dummie!

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    HELP for a dummie!

    I have just begun using Alha 5 and need help with some expressions. I want to make a date field which will automatically change to the current date each time the record is edited. I do not know how to do that.
    Also, I would also like to have another field (memo) into which any changed data would be copied without haveing to do copy/cut/paste. Can anyone help me?

    #2
    RE: HELP for a dummie!

    Change the field rules for the specific field.

    Make it a calculated field. The calculated field expression should be - date().

    That will do it!!

    BE careful with memo fields. Their stability can go south on occasion.

    Do you want to take a snapshot before or after the change? Whichever, you will need to create a field rule for each field to copy either the before or after image of the field to the memo field.

    I don't particularly think that this is very efficient, and it might just slow things down to a crawl.

    Tom

    Comment


      #3
      RE: HELP for a dummie!

      THANKS! I am working on the date field now, and will test it probably tomorrow. What is / how do you take a "snapshot", and what would the rules be for the fields to copy to the memo field?

      Comment


        #4
        RE: HELP for a dummie!

        By "snapshot" I mean an image of the field. Do you want to keep a "before change" image, or an "after change" image, or BOTH? None of this is easy, as I stated before. In the field rules of the database, there are events where you can capture data and do things with it. You MUST, however, write it in x-basic. This is not an easy job for someone just starting out with Alpha Software.


        Just a question. If you are just starting development, why are you using an old version that is no longer supported instead of version 5?

        Tom

        Comment


          #5
          RE: HELP for a dummie!

          Thanks! Well, so much for the snapshot idea. That is WAY beyond me. I purchased the version I have about 5 years ago, and have only played with it. My husband is in the ministry and we are sub-poverty level. So----no $$ for upgrades. We are hoping eventually to develope a web-site where people can reference the database we are working on, but that is down the road

          Comment


            #6
            RE: HELP for a dummie!

            Did you, at least, update to ver 1.02?? if not, and Alpha doesn't have the update anymore,I will send it to you. This version is NOT anywhere close to being accessible via the web. It is true that we have done more with ver 1 than I think Alpha ever imagined, but it does have its limitations.

            We can certainly help with your database, but it will only be accessible by the screens and menues you develop.

            Tom

            Comment

            Working...
            X