cut copy paste

[Alicia Bailey]

In reading through the forum, I had the impression that cut, copy, paste of records would be addressed with the 2.0 update but those commands remain grayed out. For my use it is essential that I be able to copy or cut an entire record and paste it into a new record in a different form. What am I missing? Thanks – Alicia

[Brendan]

Hello Alicia,

You can duplicate records within a form. But you can’t copy a record from one form and past it into another. What if the source form and destination form have a completely different structure? Should Tap Forms then merge the fields from the source form into the fields of the destination form? That could result in a pretty big mess actually. Especially since fields in one form have completely different unique internal IDs than fields in another form.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Alicia Bailey]

Hi Brendan – thanks for your prompt reply.

It doesn’t sound as though you plan to implement any cut/copy/paste feature between forms into Tap Form, which is unfortunate. Bento has this capability, as does Filemaker, as does every other relational databases I’ve used in the past. Bento, for example, gives a warning that the type of data doesn’t match between the copy from and paste to forms and asks what the user wants to do.

It is on the user to set up the same structure in such an instance, which I have done. The lack of this feature renders Tap Form virtually unusable for me. Too bad since I bought the software and have invested time in importing and customizing my records.

[Brendan]

Hi Alicia,

I just tried that in Bento and it made a complete mess of my form. It seemed to randomly pick the fields to past the data into and then added a whole bunch of Field 1, Field 2, Field 3, etc. extra fields to the library.

I’m not sure how that’s any good. If I were to provide the ability to do that I would prefer preventing a paste unless there was a 100% match in the field names and types between forms. Also what if you’re copying a record that links to other forms? Does it then copy all of the related data too? Does it make a copy of all media and file attachments?

But the thing I have to ask is why do you want to copy records from one form to another? Is it for organizing records into different categories or something? It’s possible to get the same effect as that by using a text field with a Pick List and then create Saved Searches which filter your records by specific values from the pick list.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Alicia Bailey]

Hi Brendan – thanks again for looking into this and your response. The key here is proper set up. I have identical layouts with 3 forms I use. They track consigned goods. One form is for ‘in stock’ – another is for ‘returned to owner’ the third is for ‘sold’. The point is to not have a database with 2000 entries with 1500 of them archived. The db then takes a very long time to complete minor tasks. I suspect I am trying to use an inexpensive, general purpose solution for something ore complex. I appreciate everything else about Tap Forms and will be sorry not to be able to incorporate it into my workflow.

I have tried the saved searches function but, while it works, the database is too large so TF runs slowly and has crashed a time or two with this solution.

[Jon Blackman]

Tap Forms slows with 2000 records? What you are asking for is pretty standard functionality in any db program. A filter, or query, should handle this with ease in one database. I have not programmed with the MAC OS, but the iOS handles thousands of records with no issues. I would be interested in knowing this answer, as I am planning to scale upwards as well.

[Brendan]

Hi Jon,

Tap Forms has no trouble handling 2000 records in a form. It does slow down with say 10,000 records in any one form. I have a form with 12,951 records in it and it takes about 3 seconds to display when I click on it. Mind you, it only has 3 fields. So if there are more fields it would take a bit longer to display. It also depends on whether or not you’re in single-column or multi-column mode. It also depends on the speed of your computer. My MacBook Pro is Retina model with an i7 processor, 16 GB of RAM and a fast SSD drive. Improving performance is on my to-do list for a release next year.

Thanks,

Brendan

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