I use portal to auto-fill some fields in the database. I also do "allow entry" on those fields so users can change the values of the fields. However, when a value is changed in the form, the value in the related database is also changed, which I do NOT want. I only want the value to be changed in that one record, and not touch the original value in the related database.

How do I do that?

A portal might not be the best way here, what you descripe is the behaviour of Lookups. Is the desired a sort of only to allow entry on the virgin-voyage of the portal row, while the alterations shows up in the portal but actually lives only in the parent record ...but are pulled via an opposite directed relation???

It might help the understanding of this topic, if we could know something of the nature of the data entered.

--sd

One database "Papers", which contains records of paper type, size, weight, price. This is the lookup db.

Another database "Form", which also contains paper type, size, weight, and price fields.

I have "Paper Type" set as drop down list, retriving data from Papers db. When user select, for example, Paper Type 1, I want to have Size, Weight, Price "auto-populated" accordingly. Then users can change the values of size, weight, or price in the form for the current record, and not affect the values in Papers db.

make sense? Can you tell me how to link them this way?

thanks.

I got it.