Noob with Tutorial Checkbook issues

My first post. I am doing the checkbook tutorial. Strange issues are:
the date field has the Default Value “today” in the properties window. Panorama shows December 30, 2018, but it is November 30, 2018, and my Date and Time pref in the OS is set correctly.

This made me think I might have a non-current version of Panorama X so I tried to update and I get the message that it cannot be updated when running from optical drive or disk image, and that I should copy it to my Applications folder. When I inquire of the Dock to show (my running) Panorama X in the Finder it shows me that the application is in the Applications folder. I don’t have an optical disk inserted and am not running it from a disk image. Baffling.

The reason I was doing the tutorial was to learn how to calculate the balance. In my copy of the SampleData the balance of each transaction is already calculated and has been inserted as a numeric value. In my new sample checkbook, there is no formula to calculate the field in the properties window and new entries remain blank in this field even after values have been assigned to them.


one other minor thing, tutorial 302 makes a couple of mentions in the text of the “mailing list database” but I think they should be to the checkbook database.

This program is very smooth and enjoyable to work within, I hope there is a simple fix to the problems I encountered. Thanks

You most likely have the current version of Panorama. However, the message you are getting about not being able to update is because you copied the PanoramaX.zip file to the Application folder, and then unzipped the file there. When you run an app from the folder where it is unzipped, Apple’s Gatekeeper feature automatically runs it inside a temporary, read only disk image. This doesn’t cause any problems for Panorama, except that the updater can’t work. The solution is to throw out your copy of Panorama, then download a new copy, unzip it in the Downloads folder, then copy PanoramaX.app to the Applications folder.

Thanks, I found one incorrect reference and submitted a correction.

Panorama has a special trick it does when importing the canned sample database into the checkbook – it automatically adjusts the data for the current year. If you ran this again next year, you would see dates in 2019 from January to December.

If you add a new record, you’ll see that the Date field is in fact filled in with today’s date. The default value only applies when manually creating a new record, not to imported data.

Unfortunately, the tutorial doesn’t cover that topic. This can be done automatically with this short program.

field Balance
formulafill Credit-Debit
runningtotal

It can also be done manually by

  1. clicking in the Balance field
  2. Choose Field>Morph>Fill with Formula
  3. Enter the formula Credit-Debit and press the Fill button
  4. Choose Field>Analyze>Running Total

If you run the recorder while you do this, you’ll come up with the same program I listed above. Here are a couple of useful help pages about creating and recording procedures (programs).

Thanks! Welcome to Panorama :slight_smile:

  1. Thank you for the info. That is news to me about Apple Gatekeeper, that fixed it.
  2. My date issue is for new records created after the import was complete. The date is incorrect (advanced) by one month for new records. The properties of the field says “today”. The autofill check number correctly increments for new records.
  3. Thank you for the balance formula I will also study the procedure editors.

that boo-boo also bared its teeth in 302, second para.

There were two occurrences of “mailing list” in that paragraph. The first one was wrong, and I corrected it (it now reads “assign data from the imported text to specific fields in the checkbook database”).

But the second one I believe is correct – it refers to “earlier during the Mailing List tutorial”, it’s referring back to “104 - Importing Data into the Mailing List”, so “Mailing List” is correct in that instance. I don’t see any other occurrences of “mailing list” on that page, did I miss another one?

I think we’ve got it now. I’ve got blistas on my fingas!!

FYI, if in the future you see more errors and you feel motivated to do so, the Help wizard has a built in system for submitting corrections. You just open the corrections window, make the edit, and press Submit. In many cases it is easier than sending an email or posting here to describe the needed correction. In the past 3 years there have been nearly a thousand user submitted corrections, we accept about 97% of them, so it’s very helpful to us and other Panorama users. See Advanced: Submitting Corrections on this page.

Still learning the ropes here, will do, thanks