Sometimes it can be pretty useful to have an option on your datasheet that lets you select entries from a list. For this purpose you can place combo boxes on your datasheets. The set-up of this helpful tool, however, is somewhat tricky. Now, with these step-by-step instructions you can do it in a few minutes.

Subject area:	Data maintenance
Target group:	Project Managers / Data entry personnel at the pump manufacturer
Product:	Spaix Classic/Online + Spaix Database
Version:	2.1 or higher

First you open the datasheet editor Data sheets and load the datasheet to be edited.

In the tool menu, on the index card Operating data click on the element Operating data edit keys – text and place it as usual on the datasheet.

With a right mouse click on the new element you open the Inspector and there you change to the page called Technical info.

The entry List determines the display of the combo box on the datasheet later. The difference between the two possible settings is that under List / input data only just the available entries can be selected whereas under List / input allowed you can also enter any text you like into the editing field.

Picture 1: Combobox in use
By using the Separator it is possible to edit coded values to make them user-friendly (see picture 1). In this case it is necessary to enter the separator and to determine if text should appear before or after the separator on the datasheet. In our example the code letter is placed before the equal sign, which is why we use an = as separator and Display text before separator is set on Yes (picture 2: Settings in the Inspector).


Now let’s move to the interesting part of the job – the entries. The entries are, of course, language sensitive just like any other text in the program. That means they will appear in language that was previously set. The program takes the entries from the table for text translations. In the Inspector you enter the short term of the text conserve in the line Data fields.

Then, in the Spaix Database program open the Translate text table for long texts and create a new entry Combo_Test. Here you enter the text the same way (if necessary with the selected separator) as it should later appear in the list.

If you don’t have a Database program but only the Spaix PumpSelector, there is still a way of inserting the necessary entries into the text table. Click on the button Text, which can be found under the Graphic tab in the tool menu bar and place a simple text field on the data sheet. In the Text table chose the property Multi lingual for this text field. Now open the text editor (picture 3) by clicking into the line Text. Using the plus sign adds the new entry Combo_Test and you can edit the text for each language as needed. After all entries have been saved the text field can be deleted again.

Picture 3: Text Editor (Summary)

Save the datasheet.

To see the result of your work in action, select View in the menu bar of the datasheet editor and select Data sheet view and now the first combo box that you generated yourself is ready for use!







We hope this information is helpful when working with Spaix. If you have questions on this or other subject matters our expert software support team is here to help you. Simply send an e-mail to:
support@vsx.net

About Spaix Inside
Spaix Inside is a series of white papers by developers, members of software support and power users for the efficient use of the Spaix product family to select and configure pumps and to generate quotes.

Spaix® is a product by VSX - VOGEL SOFTWARE GmbH