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

Alpha 4 feature in Alpha 5 ?

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

    Alpha 4 feature in Alpha 5 ?

    Greetings

    I am new to this forum. I have been maintaining a few large databases in Alpha 4 since that program came out, but now I want to transfer the .DBF's over to a Windows based DBMS, and would rather like to continue using Alpha Software (partly because it uses DBF as the native data format, and partly because its form and report interface looks pretty straight forward).

    My question is actually "pre-sales" since I don't want to buy Alpha 5 until I know the answer. I hope some of the more experienced folks on this forum can provide that answer.

    Specifically, Alpha 4 had a built-in feature during data entry, where if you selected a field and pressed the F4 hotkey, the data that was most recently entered into that same field in previous records would be pasted in...no need to re-type the repetitious data. This is important to me since my databases include long fields that contain difficult-to-type strings of characters, and many records that are entered at the same sitting tend to have the same data in certain fields. This "field copy/memory" feature is a real time saver and avoids a lot of typographic errors during data entry.

    Does Alpha 5 already have such a feature that can be simply used without additional programming? If not, is it something that can be easily implemented, perhaps with a simple script, by a non-programmer (me!).

    I do this work as a vonunteer for a small charitable organization, and don't have a lot of extra time to give to study database programming, and we don't have the funds to hire a programmer to configure the software. Alpha Software tech support was said they will not answer this question or assist me in implementing this feature should I need to do it myself.

    Please advise if you have knowledge on this issue...thanks!

    #2
    Re: Alpha 4 feature in Alpha 5 ?

    Hi Paul,

    Yes you are right in thinking that you will need some code for this.

    The code is very simple to put together, it was shown to me on this massage board. Once shown the logic was right in front of me all the time.

    Go ahead, get your app into the 21st century. To start with do the download, it is free for 30 days. I'm sure you will have other questions.

    One word of warning, the regret you will have for not making the move sooner!!!
    Regards
    Keith Hubert
    Alpha Guild Member
    London.
    KHDB Management Systems
    Skype = keith.hubert


    For your day-to-day Needs, you Need an Alpha Database!

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Alpha 4 feature in Alpha 5 ?

      Unless I am missing something you don't need a hotkey or any code. You can set up in the table's field rules to have Alpha fill in the previous value in a field as a default.
      There can be only one.

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Alpha 4 feature in Alpha 5 ?

        Paul,

        CTRL SHIFT F will Copy field value of last viewed record into the current record and
        CTRL SHIFT R will Copy all field values from the last viewed record into the current record

        If you wanted to trap a hotkey, its also relatively simple to programme the onkey events on a form or apply a shortcut key to a button so you don't have to sprain your fingers getting the key combination.


        Or as previously mentioned, you can set up a field rule to set default to previous value, or use a lookup that remembers previous values (self populating). The field rules are simple to set up.
        Chris Tanti
        Technical Support

        Nuance & Fathom Ltd - The data-driven marketing agency

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Alpha 4 feature in Alpha 5 ?

          Stan, you are quite right about Previous Values in field rules.

          To prevent typographic errors during data entry, you could consider a lookup or using Speed Typing Glossary.
          Regards
          Keith Hubert
          Alpha Guild Member
          London.
          KHDB Management Systems
          Skype = keith.hubert


          For your day-to-day Needs, you Need an Alpha Database!

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Alpha 4 feature in Alpha 5 ?

            Originally posted by 4user View Post
            My question is actually "pre-sales" since I don't want to buy Alpha 5 until I know the answer. I hope some of the more experienced folks on this forum can provide that answer.
            Why not download A5v9 and take it for Alpha's 30 day test ride.

            kenn
            TYVM :) kenn

            Knowing what you can achieve will not become reality until you imagine and explore.

            Comment

            Working...
            X