Incremental Collection ID

teacher24_70 · Post by **teacher24_70** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 9:56 pm

It's been awhile since I visited the forums, but I remember that one feature requested was for the Collection ID to increase automatically when adding a new book. I now notice that when I add a new book, the field is filled in as "1" instead of being blank as it used to be.

Does this mean that the feature was added? If so, how does it work? Is there a way to set where it starts from? For example, I'm already in the 1000's--I'd want the ID to start from there versus 1.

Maybe I'm mis-interpreting the presence of the 1 in the field now.

DreamStatic · Post by **DreamStatic** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 10:03 pm

Hello teacher24_70,

You are correct the feature has been added. If you click on the "Advanced" menu item and scroll to second from last entry in that menu you will find "Incremental Collection ID." Once selected you will be able to edit the starting point and turn it on and off more less. Hope it helps. Enjoy.

~DreamStatic

teacher24_70 · Post by **teacher24_70** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 10:09 pm

I just found that before you replied. However, I'm still having one problem. It's adding the number one off from where it should. The last book that I added should have been 1548, it used 1547.

I must have used the wrong # when I set it up--maybe using the number for the current book instead of what the next book should have been--or visa versa.

How can I fix this.

teacher24_70 · Post by **teacher24_70** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 10:22 pm

Noticed something else--not sure if this is able to fix itself intuitively.

If I have to manually correct a collection ID that (as described in previous post), then the next auto-increment is off by 2--since it's still going by the built-in incorrect #. If I manually correct another, the next add is off by 3, etc.

Also have another situation that I'd like the auto-increment to change the way it's working. Example. I'm adding 5 copies of an identical book (small pocket dictionaries). They have no ISBN's, so I manually added the information. I have a custom field for copy #, but the other information is identical. To achieve this, I selected the first copy (in Table View) and copied/pasted. It's won't auto-increment them correctly--as described above. The other thing that it does that'd I'd prefer it didn't is that it adds "(copy)" to the end of the title. This would be fine if I didn't already have a field for this. The 2nd copy/paste adds "(copy)(copy)", etc. This is easy enough to delete the added text, but kind of a pain.

Sorry for the rambling. Just posting as I notice things.

teacher24_70 · Post by **teacher24_70** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 12:45 am

I think I've got the # worked out--just had to enter the # that I wanted the NEXT book to have. This will work until I have to do a copy/paste for a duplicate book--this will break the numbering system again and I'll have to back up to the preference and change the # again.

Maybe we could add a feature that will allow a copy/paste to count as a "new" addition--which SHOULD allow it to incrementally increase also (instead of the ID # to be copied as the other fields).

Post by **Conor** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 4:21 am

Copy/Paste act as new additions for the auto increment feature (make sure you have the auto increment check box checked in the Incremental Collection ID window). If it's still not working download a new copy of the program to make sure you have the latest version.

It add copy to the title so that you can easily tell that you did a paste of an entry (paste has different behaviours depending on what is on the copy clipboard); however it should not duplicate the word (copy). You only need to do copy once and then use paste each time to duplicate the original entry.

You can also use the Incremental Collection ID to update collections ID on a selection sequentially with the apply to selection button, instead of manually changing the IDs.

teacher24_70 · Post by **teacher24_70** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 5:21 am

I'll try downloading again to make sure that I have the newest version. It didn't open and say that there was a newer version, but I know that you both do a lot of silent updates (which are great for us!).

I bet that I just forget to hit paste, paste, paste, paste, instead of copy, paste, copy, paste. Thanks for the reminder.

Thanks for your help.

teacher24_70 · Post by **teacher24_70** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 5:32 am

Okay, just downloaded them again and my versions (BP & DP) were about 5 weeks behind the current silent update.

However, it brought up a question because earlier this evening I had installed two of the "interface addition" extras. I notice that those aren't applied to the updates that I installed. Do these need to be redownloaded and installed each time we update the app? I assumed that it was something that was stored in the library folder and would be applied to any updates to the application--guess not. Not a big deal--it's not that hard and takes only seconds--just didn't realize that's how it worked.

teacher24_70 · Post by **teacher24_70** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 5:47 am

The updates fixed the issue of copy/paste items not following the incremental ID. Thanks a million.

By the way, thank you very much for adding the incremental ID feature! This makes it much quicker to add new books to the library

Post by **Conor** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 8:29 am

I notice that those aren't applied to the updates that I installed.

They have to be applied once more for the time being. The program does remember that it changed those images as we would like to incorporate an automatic update that would download and install the update as well as preserve the interface addition changes in the future.

Thank you, we are thrilled that your happy with Bookpedia.