If you can’t find information that you KNOW you’ve entered, check to make sure that you do not have a Query selected in the View window. This restricts the records available to only those matching the Query constraints.
Pick “Show Selection” from the View menu, and then de-select the Query name. Pick “Show Form” from the View menu to get the form back, and try again with “Find First” (or whatever).
If you do a “Find First” type of command and do not see any information, check the View menu and see if the “Delete” option is selectable. If it is, this means that you are looking at a record that has none of the visible fields defined.
Other things to check include:
The Template— to make sure it is the right one, with the right icons.
• Why are “blank” or “empty” records showing up in my form?
Check to make sure that you do not have multiple entry forms in the Relation. Although you may display your data in many ways by using different Templates and their associated forms, you should be cautious about entering information from more than one Template/form. When you enter a record, you enter information in that file position for all the Field icons that exist within that Relation. If a Field icon is not present on the form, you enter a “blank” for it that corresponds to the same file position as the data you typed into the form.
In other words, suppose you had two entry forms (#1 & #2) in your Relation, each using different Field icons. You went to #1 and made an entry. You then went to #2 and made an entry. This second entry becomes the first record entered into form #2. If you now selected ‘Find First’, form #2 would be blank because the “first” entry in this Relation was made with the other form, and none of the Fields on this form were defined at that time. Select ‘Find Next’ and the entry for form #2 will appear.
• Note that, if using the above example you deleted the apparently “blank” records that would appear in either form, you could also be deleting information that you can not currently see. When you Delete, you erase whatever is in that file position from all Field icons in the Relation, whether they are on that particular form or not. [i.e. what is deleted corresponds to the file position of that particular record (the entry order determines the file position).] Deletions under these circumstances can cause information to disappear “mysteriously”.
For these reasons it typically advised to have only one form that is used for data entry per Relation.
• Calculations— an error or undefined fields can cause the answer to be “undefined”. This means nothing will be displayed in the rectangle containing this Abacus icon. Totals & Sub-Totals, for example, will be undefined if nothing is found to total (use the ‘Undefined becomes’ calculation tile to make these return a “0” if no data are present). With complex calculations, it can become a real challenge to track-down tiny errors. Printing-out all calculations (or writing them down on the note pad) can prove to be a crucial sleuthing aid.
• The Relation— make sure you are looking in the right one. With several Relations, it is not unknown for someone to use one Relation to enter one type of information, then later mistakenly look for it in another Relation.
