I have an existing contacts database for an alumni association, and I would like to create several catagories for the contacts. The primary one will be Alumnus of course, but I would also like to be able to change it to Friend or Family.

So I am assuming that this should not therefore be a global text field. And I would like to populate the current records with the default value of Alumnus.

How can I do this?

Hey there,

If you show all the records and type in "Alumnus" in the text field of any record and then go to the menu "Record" and click on "Replace Field Contents". Click Replace and it should change all the fields to "Alumnus".

In the future be careful with this step, because it changes the data in all fields and it cannot be undone.

Also, if you want the word "Alumnus" to always be the default, go to the field definition enter "Alumnus" for Text.

Brilliant! Thank you!

Now going forward- if I define the database field as auto-enter Data: Alumnus will the default be set as Alumnus and it can be changed by using a value list of Alumnus, Family, or Friend?

Yup!

Any time a record is created it will automatically say "Alumnus" but it will be changeable by the user.

Martha