There is one spare field in the database that can be defined by the user. You may for instance want this field to be the artists’ web site or maybe the lead singer. Don’t forget other information can also be entered in the Notes section of the Input screen.

To change the user defined field name, go to the Input screen. From the Format drop-down menu select ‘Name Spare Field’, you can now enter a field name of your choice up to 15 characters long.

This change will be reflected in the Database Search screen i.e. the column title will change as will one of the search parameters and other relevant sections.

You can also use the spare field as a date. There are two possible date formats.

dd/mm/yyyy

mm/dd/yyyy

23^rd October 2001 would either be

23/10/2001

or

10/23/2001

You must enter the date using one of the above formats. If you don’t you will have problems ordering the database by the spare field. See separate topic on Order By.

To enable the spare field as a date field, click on the check box and select which date format you require. The date format can be converted from one to the other by selecting the data format you require and clicking on the ‘Format Date ‘ button.

If you have date information in the spare field but you have not defined it as a date field don’t worry. This may happen if you have imported from another database or have entered date information in the spare field without specifying as a date field. The spare field can be initialised as a date field by clicking on the Initialise Date Button.

Initialise Date Button

This function will check the spare field for all entries in the current database and try to initialise it as a date field. The initialisation will only work properly if the date in the spare field is the same as the selected date format. If the format is incorrect you may have problems ordering the database by the date.

NOTE: The Value field can also be defined by the user. You may, for instance, want to change the description from Value to Weeks At No 1. The change of description only applies to the Input/Edit screen. Other screens will keep the description of ‘Value’