How to display a record id in a diagram
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2002 10:16:42 +0100
Things have been quiet on the mailing list, recently. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But please don't be put off sending in questions or thoughts, just because nobody else has done so for a while. However, it occurred to me that I might in the future send out the occasional 'tip' as an email, when things have been quiet for a while, just to add interest. So here's one:
How to display a record id in a diagram ================================ Essentially all you have to do is to add the text '=RecordId()' (without the quotes) wherever you want the record id to appear. Make sure you don't add spaces and that you enter it exactly as I've written it. Don't forget the brackets at the end.
For example, open a diagram (any diagram), open the Diagram Options dialog and select the Text tab. Click on 'New...' to create a new text scheme, and base it on 'Name, Birth Dates, Birth Places' (just by way of example). Give it a name (you could call it 'Name, Id, Birth Dates, Birth Places', perhaps) and press OK. This will create a new custom text scheme which will now be the current one in the text scheme list. Unless you previously had already made changes to the 'Name, Birth Dates, Birth Places' text scheme, you should find that in the 'Box Type' list, 4 entries have an asterisk next to them, meaning that they are non-empty. If you select the first one, 'Default*', its first line should read
%INDI.NAME:PREFERRED%
Change this to
%INDI.NAME:PREFERRED% [=RecordId()]
In case you're wondering what the square brackets are for, they're there because I happened to think that it looks better in the diagram when the record id is displayed within square brackets. However, if you don't like them, or would prefer some other shape of brackets, change them to whatever you're prefer.
Now click on 'Descendant*' and 'Proxy*' and make the same change to each of those in turn. If you want to repeat the record id for duplicates, click on 'Duplicate*' and change
%INDI.NAME:PREFERRED% (%_INSTANCE_%)
to
%INDI.NAME:PREFERRED% (%_INSTANCE_%) [=RecordId()]
Now click on 'OK' (or 'Apply'). The diagram should be updated so that where a box's first line contained, say, 'John Smith' it might now contain 'John Smith [47]' (say).
For more information about Text Schemes, see the sections 'The Text Tab' and 'Create Text Schemes' in Chapter 7 of the User Manual.
Incidentally, if you wanted to see the 'Last Updated' date and time instead of the record id, simply substitute =LastUpdated() for =RecordId() in the instructions above.
Simon Orde List Administrator and Family Historian designer