Unique value

[Hans Puype]

Hi,

I downloaded the trial version in order to find out if Tap Forms could replace Filemaker for me.
I will test it for the next 10 days.

First small problem I’m struggling with (I couldn’t find an answer anywhere in the support pages): how do I set up a field so that it can only have a unique value?

And another question: what’s the best way to get help? Support pages, support email, … ?

Thanks in advance,
Hans

[Brendan]

Hi Hans,

There’s no flag to ensure that a field has a unique value in it. However, if you enable the Use Auto-Complete option, then Tap Forms will display a popup menu of values as you type into the field. That way you’ll know if you’ve used a previous value or not already.

You can either post here or email me at support@tapforms.com

Thanks,

Brendan

[Brendan]

Oh, also if you need a unique randomized value when you create a new record, you can add a Calculation field to your form and use the formula UUID(). Enable the one-time-only calculation field option so that unique value gets generated only once.

[Sam Moffatt]

If your question isn’t too sensitive then I’d encourage posting on the forum for a couple of reasons. The first is that the forum has a bunch of folk who can respond in different time zones so you might get a slightly quicker answer (though Brendan is rather quick on the email as well) and different perspectives on solving the problem. The other is that when you post on the forum you help the next person who might have a similar question towards solving their problem quicker.

[Roger Lambert]

I just want to add to this topic because I have a similar situation. I am an attorney. I moved my Filemaker database to Tapforms about a year ago. In Filemaker, you could set a field to require a unique value. Basically all I want is for each client to have a unique number, so should I ever want to use that as a tag for things relating to that client, I can do that. I have a number field set to autocomplete and incrementing by one number. But as others have encountered, I have had a couple duplicate values when creating a new client record on my iPhone and another one on my mac before syncing it. A relatively easy way to quickly check this is to simply export the relevant field to a csv file, open the csv file in excel, and then use conditional formatting to highlight duplicate cells in the column.

[Lane Robinson]

I also like the comfort of having a ‘unique value’ forced on a record field, but I can live without it with auto incrementing or the UUID option. Having dug into Tap Forms enough, I bet a person could write a Script that does this. Once I’m further along in converting my old database into a Tap Forms version, I’ll revisit this and will post my solution on the forum.

[Author]

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