Hello Thomas sorry to hear you are having frustrations with OO here's the approach to deal with what I understand is your issues with Base
1. the issues which I understand you have resolved with the ID fields and elimination thereof is really a learning curve thing that you appear to have worked your way through so I won't comment further other than to say that the use of IDs, typically auto filled IDs, is considered by many database designers to be good practice - Base supports these functions well (just as MS Access does in the Office suite) but as you have already found you can switch them off if you want to. 2. on the design modification issue - you have spoken of working through the forms wizard - in general the wizards are there to ease one's way when initially setting up an object be it a table, query, form or report. Once you have done this then further changes can be made by editing the relevant object. If you wish to alter the design of a table then first up click on the Tables icon in the left hand column. Then go to the icon for the table you wish to alter in the lower panel in the second column and right click on it - the menu list that pops up has 10 or so items on it so choose the "edit" entry about half way down. This opens up a tabular view of the design of the table with field names in the first column and field types in the second. Treat this display rather like you would a spreadsheet - to insert a new field just type in on the row at the bottom - to do other cut and paste type editing things just select the relevant row for the field you wish to change and delete and/or edit as necessary you should find you can accomplish what you need that way good luck -- Mike Moller Lallybroch Alpacas New Zealand www.lallybroch.co.nz On 9/14/08, THOMAS E CRAWFORD SR <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > To Whom it May Concern: > > Being an "expert" user who can crash a CPU by looking at it, some of the > following is actually repetitious BUT unfortunately I mistakenly erased the > prior message. Thus kindly bear with me. > > Overall I find Open Office close to yet no cigar yet to Microsoft (and I > have such high hopes with OO.) > > A) Writer v. Word: while the general layout of letter writing is compatible, > scanning and email is not. If I leave the Doc as OO the other end user can > either not open it or it opens extremely slowly. Too slow to sit and wait > for. Further with Word pages can be moved around and inserted easily. Not so > in Writer which apparently does not allow page insertion to a particular > area. As an example I scanned in a number of pages but, for whatever reason, > page one came out as page two and when I tried to correct it it simply would > not move the page. Also in using the "text" box of the draw toolbar, the box > would only work if I used it on the first page of the document it WOULD NOT > inset on the desired page. > > B) dBase I find easier to use yet I have some issues here as well. To wit, I > drew up a rather decent sized table ot be utilized in a Form. Upon using the > Forms Wizard it automatically inserted an "ID" field that I didn't want (I > figured out how to leave it out eventually) and when it came to inserting > missing fields I found that to be a no go. I trust that eveytime I build a > table, particulary a large table, I don't have to start from scratch if I > need to add a field. > > More to follw! > > Regards, > Tom Crawford, Sr. > Mineola, NY > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
