Once again I am appealing to the great gurus on this site who have been sooo helpful in the past.

I have a table that contains 2 types of records: Sales and Returns and 2 layouts; one to enter/modify sales, one to enter/modify returns. My problem is how to permanently hide sales records when using Returns layout for data entry and vice versa permanently hide Returns records when using Sales layout.

One solution would be to change the structure to 2 separate tables (1 for sales and 1 for returns); however reporting is so much easier with one table.

Thanks for any pointer/suggestion.

What do you mean by "permanently hide" the records? Why not just have a script perform a find for the type of records you want?

Hello Mr. Vodka:

Both layouts are based on the same table which contains both types Sales and Returs. My objective is to prevent the user from seeing (and manipulating) Returns when on the Sales layout and vice versa, from seeing Sales records when on the Returns layout.

Yes, I can have a script to hide the records in questions when the user switches from one layout to the other but it is easily possible to display all records (returns and sales) from either layout. By permanently I mean preventing the user from seeing/accessing Returns when on the Sales layout and Sales rcords when on the Returns layout.

Well use you can some trickery with account privileges to only display certain records (ie in your case one type or the other). However, most developers will lock down the menu and customize user navigation. Therefore, show all from the menu would not even be an issue.

It may be an issue when the user searches though, if this is the case - create an 'enter find mode' script, which enters find mode and then sets a hidden field on the layout to ≠ [attribute that the 'permanently hidden record' has]

no need for a script just add the search criteria to the 'enter find mode' command on the button

Edited September 12, 200718 yr by Guest

Unless there is a compelling reason that I don't know about, I'd NOT have separate layouts for sales and returns. Since they are in the same table they are similar records. What differentiates them apart? A status field, or a negative sales number? Either way, the layout could be designed so that "Sale" or "Return" is prominantly displayed on the layout, and even background colours can be conditionally changed to further indicate the difference.

For the user the experience of scrolling through records in the database will therefore be one of seeing sales and returns intermingled.

If the sales and return records are so different, I might consider putting them into separate tables. This would have a whole load of other implications that would need to be investigated, and it might not be best practice (I seem to have avoided having to build invoicing systems for some reason so I don;t know what best practice is).

my solution isn't working now, how do i actually enter a 'does not equal' symbol in the find mode?