When changing the value “WIDTH” in the field blueprint of a selected date sheet column, it doesn’t “stick”. When subsequently selecting the “AutoSet Field Value” or the “AutoSet ALL Field Values” the value I had entered in the field blueprint isn’t used. Both of the menu choices above return data sheet column widths which are different from each other (as noted in the UI as the column width changes after the menu selection) and different from the “WIDTH” value in the field’s blueprint.
I’d like to have control of the data sheet field width, which I thought was available in the field blueprint. Is there another place to set that value?
In a similar fashion, if I hide a field named “A”, and then choose “AutoSet Field Value” after selecting a data sheet field “B” to the right of the now hidden field “A”, the field that is autoset is field “C”, not field “B”.
You mean Autoset Field Width and AutoSet ALL Field Widths (not values).
These commands look at the data in the database and attempt to set the width to approximately fit the actual data. So if the field contains mostly just cells with two characters (for example State abbreviations) the width will be narrow, if there is more data (for example street addresses) it will be wider. The main purpose of these commands is to quickly set up approximate field widths after importing text.
If you want to control the width yourself, don’t use the AutoSet commands! The whole point of these commands is to set the width automatically.
Jim, thank you for the explanation of the workings of Autoset Widths and the related bug fix.
I like to have control of my data sheet column widths across file closing and reopening, which is useful if ‘more’ fields (~ > 5 to 10) are needed. From my experience, and not using AutoSet Field Widths, I lose the changes I’ve made to the data sheet columns between closing and re-opening a database file. Given your explanation of how Panorama controls data sheet field width, that makes sense.
I’d vote for a way to retain the user’s data sheet field widths between closing an opening a database file!
Panorama does retain the data sheet field widths when you close and open a database file. The only exception would be if you changed the width of a field and then immediately closed the database without saving. But whenever the file is saved, all of the field widths are also saved.