ATTN: Lex Users and Librarians
SUBJECT: Append and Edit to Various Destinations

One of our customers was editing records in her database using the
Append/Edit screen. She was getting duplicate records and wondered
why.

To find the answer consider the three options you see to the left of
the dialog box after using the ESC key or cliking the [X] to end use
of the edit screen.

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( ) Save record to Main C:\test\loc.fil <my test file>
( ) Append record to Alt c:\test\new.fil
( ) Save record to destination ...
[ ] [Browse] <Present if 3rd option selected
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OPTION 1
When an edited record is SAVED the sytem will REPLACE the previous
copy of the record with the new. This option is used when a record
is modified in some manner.

OPTION 2
When an edited record is APPENDED, a second copy will be added to
the file, the original is maintiained. This optinon allows you to
enter the first title in a series, and simply edit the first record,
which gets left unchanged.

Our customer was Appending a record obtained from BookWhere in order
to add holdings (barcode, accession, price etc). By selecting
append, the original record was left in the file without holdings,
together with a copy having the holdings.

OPTION 3
The function of Saving a record to another destination, is to allow
a record to be edited in a work file, and then saved to the main or
other file. This was handled by the TRANSFER command in Lexifile.

I recommend librarians create a file such as "new.fil" or "work.fil"
and perform all of the "rough editing" in that file. Only when the
record has passed "final inspection" does it get added to the main
file (usually loc.fil).

Jim Bruce
Product Support