At 1:19 PM -0800 12/15/00, Lisa Easley wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I am writing as a favor for our sister organization, the Land Trust of Santa
>Cruz County. Their database person moved away, so their new person is
>learning Ebase and deleted the Home Screen Layout. Their data is still
>there but when you click home screen it goes to the data entry screen.
>
>What is the easiest way out of this problem? Should we try to copy and
>paste a new layout into their database or transfer the data to a blank
>version of Ebase?
The easiest solution would be to revert to your most recent backup.
You're in for some work to transfer the data to a new copy of ebase,
and some risk in creating a new HOME layout. If you have a backup
that's pretty recent, that would be the way to go. If you don't have
a recent backup, I'd suggest you visit the ebase web site and look
over the guidelines for backing up the ebase suite of files.
Second, I'd check to see if the HOME layout is really gone. It is
possible that a script has gotten misdirected.
- You'll need to be using FileMaker (not the runtime) and log in with
the master-level password
- get into the names file (the Data Entry screen is in the name file,
so if you're looking at that layout, you're there.
- go to layout mode
- pull down the list of layouts in the upper left, above the rolodex icon.
- You should see a stack of letter label, and custom layouts, then a
divider line, All Fields, HOME, Data Entry 1, etc. If the HOME
screen is present in this list, it's still in the file. Stop here and
let us know. The easiest way to recover from here is to find out what
script is directing you to Data Entry instead of home, and fixing
that.
If it is missing from this list, it would be possible to copy the
HOME layout from a new copy of ebase and pasting it into a new blank
layout. BUT, from what I understand of how FileMaker handles layouts,
you would be in for a lot of grief re-directing scripts to point at
the new layout.
Not necessarily the easiest, but certainly the most secure, would be
to transfer the data to a new copy of ebase. This is pretty
complicated, and you don't want to dive into it uninformed. In
effect, you would import all your data from the current files into a
new set of ebase files, Then reset the index of auto-enter fields to
keep from duplicating record numbers on new records.
--
Dave Shaw Northwest Classics, Inc
tel: 206-954-7526 fax: 206-625-1338
