The AMPR Map Collection Manager User’s Guide
Using Picklists
A picklist is a standard set of values used for a field in your collection database. For example, if you have a field named Quality for which each record should contain one of a standard set of quality terms (e.g.: mint/exellent/good/fair/poor), then you could create a picklist consisting of these five values. You would then associate the picklist with the Quality field in your collection database. As a result, in the data-entry window, the Quality field would display as a text box with an associated drop-down list containing the terms from the picklist:
Note: Picklists can only be associated with Short Text fields.
Picklists are created, modified and deleted via the Manage Picklists dialog, which is invoked from the Options menu of the collection viewer window. The first time you invoke the Manage Picklists dialog, the dialog will mostly be blank (since no picklists have yet been defined for the collection):
Click the Create button to create a picklist. The following dialog will be displayed:
Enter a name for the picklist, and then enter values in the text-entry field at the bottom, and click Add to add each value to the list. You can change an existing value by selecting it from the list, typing in a revised text at the bottom, and clicking Replace. You can delete one or more values by selecting them from the list and clicking Delete. You can re-order the value list by selecting one or more values and using the arrow buttons, at the right, to move the selected values up or down. You can also alphabetize the current elements in the list by clicking on the A…Z button. When the picklist values have been entered, click OK to return to the Manage Picklists dialog. Here is what the Manage Picklist dialog would look like after entering the Quality picklist described at the top of this page:
To associate a field with a picklist, make sure that the desired picklist is selected in to the drop-down list at the upper left. Then select the desired field from the drop-down list at the lower right and click the Associate button. The following shows what the Manage Picklists dialog looks like after selecting Quality from the drop-down list at the lower right and clicking Associate:
In this example the field and the picklist happen to have the same name (Quality). This is not required; picklist names and field names are independent, and you can associate multiple fields with the same picklist.
The Strict checkbox determines whether, during data-entry, a field is required to exactly match one of the values on the associated picklist (or blank: an empty, blank, value is always allowed for any field). If you choose strict behavior, only values that appear on the picklist are allowed, thereby forcing you to use a “controlled vocabulary” for the associated field. By default, picklists are not strict, and in the data-entry window you will be allowed to type into a short text field any value, whether or not it is on the field’s associated picklist.
Other buttons on the dialog allow you edit the values (or name) of an existing picklist, delete a picklist, or remove the association between a field and a picklist. (Since a field can only be associated with one picklist, if you associate a field with one picklist, and that field had previously been associated with a different picklist, the program will automatically remove the prior association.)
If you have set up multiple collections, and you have created a picklist in one collection, which you would also like to use in the second collection, you can use the Copy picklist and Paste picklist buttons. Note that these copy and paste operations do not utilize the Windows clipboard, but are handled entirely within the program. Therefore the Copy and Paste operations must be done within a single session, copying the picklist from one collection, switching the MCM to the second collection, and then opening the Picklist Manager dialog in the second collection and pasting the picklist. This may seem a bit cumbersome, but if you have created an elaborate picklist (e.g. one listing all of the 50 states in the US), it is still much easier, and more accurate, to use this built-in copy and paste capability than re-creating the long picklist from scratch for the second collection.
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