Question

Change field type

Asked by: shuboarder

I have a names field (type: 1074) which I have changed to a text field (type: 1280) in the form design.
I have an agent which runs against all fields of type 1074 which still recognises my changed field as a names field.

Does anyone know how I can update the documents so that they have the new field type?

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Asked On
2009-08-18 at 06:05:26ID24661217
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Answers

 

by: mbonaciPosted on 2009-08-18 at 06:14:29ID: 25122808

Have you tried something like this:

Dim strVal As Variant
 
strVal = doc.GetItemValue( "YourFieldName" )
Call doc.RemoveItem( "YourFieldName" )
Call doc.ReplaceItemValue( "YourFieldName", strVal )
                                              
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Select allOpen in new window

 

by: SysExpertPosted on 2009-08-18 at 10:06:23ID: 25125304

also if computerd


How to refresh computed fields on a form, quickly?
Last Modified: Wed, Jan 13 1999

If you frequently change the design of a form, especially making a few fields computed from editable, you need to know this (maybe you know this already!).

Details

Computed fields on a form won't get computed unless you open the document in the UI and refresh it.  If you have changed the design of a field from editable to computed and if you had a lot of documents already in the database, it is a nightmare to open each document, edit it and save it.   Instead there is a short-cut to recalculate the computed fields.  Here is how:

Create an agent which would run Manually from the Actions Menu / Run Once.  In the formula for the agent, simply use the following @functions:

@Command([ToolsRefreshAllDocs])

or

@Command([ToolsRefreshSelectedDocs])

When this agent is run from the view, the former @Command will refresh all documents in the view and the latter will refresh only the selected documents in the view.

Remarks

Be careful doing this, because many times you might have a computed field which stores the last modified date and user name, which may get recalculated to your name and the current time!!  The workaround in this case is to write an agent which will only update the fields that you need to update. (Even in this case, you can't prevent Notes from writing the internal field $UpdatedBy ;-))

 

by: sjef_bosmanPosted on 2009-08-18 at 14:52:17ID: 25128030

Why do you want the type to be changed? Do you want "neat" documents because you hate sloppy coding? I gave that up long ago, it's hardly possible. You can just wait for accidents to happen: one fool ruins the database, and you have to go back to some database backed up before your field change. In between, the alcohol distributed during your last bash managed to wipe out 50% of your and your colleagues' braincells. Who remembers the field update??

Convert the field before you use it, everywhere in the code.

 

by: GregBusseyPosted on 2009-08-19 at 17:23:11ID: 25138488

'get handle to doc...
Dim item As NoteItem
Set item = doc.GetFirstItm("YourFieldName")
item.isnames = false
call doc.save(true, false)

 

by: shuboarderPosted on 2009-08-20 at 04:06:00ID: 25140982

Hi all, thanks for your input.

mbonaci - I have not tried that approach, but I should mention it is a multi value field so there are multiple items involved.
SysExpert - Thanks, but already know all this and have tried without success.
Sjef - The reason for changing the field type is because I don't want my agent to pick it up. I only want to check names fields in the database (type 1074).
GregBussey - This is exactly right! It seems the isnames property does not always update with a refresh (as you might expect). It needs to be physically set to = false

Points awarded to Greg!

 

by: mbonaciPosted on 2009-08-20 at 04:18:39ID: 25141065

My proposal covers multiple value fields (notice that getItemValue doesn't have dimension specified and that the variant strVal is an array with all field's values) and although less elegant, it would've done the same as Greg's solution.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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