There may be times when you want to display a list of choices for a particular field in several different tables or even across separate applications. For example, say you have a list of status choices, like "started", "on-hold" and "complete"—all of which apply both to projects and tasks. Or maybe you'd like to take the list of cities that customers entered in one field and make it a dropdown list of choices in another field. When you create a shared mutliple choice field, you take the values that live in a regular text field and turn them into a multiple choice list in anther field. You can even do so across applications, if you want. This feature not only eliminates the need to manually type in values for each record, but also makes it easier to maintain the multiple-choice list because you make updates in only one location, not in separate tables and applications.
Use this feature when different tables or applications need to access a finite list of identical choices. DO NOT use this feature to create a dropdown list of records from another table that have additional information associated with them. For example, don't use this feature to populate a list of customers. If you want users to choose from records that live in another table, you must create a relationship between the tables. When you do so, the relationship's reference field becomes the dropdown list of choices. (Read more about relationships.) Shared multiple-choice fields are useful for tapping into an existing list to populate minor fields like City Name, Project Phase or Category.
If it doesn't exist already, create a table to hold the choices you want to display. You can create this table wherever you want. If you want to share the multiple-choice list across applications, you can create a new application for the table, or place it an existing application, if appropriate. Once you have your list, then you can configure other fields to display or "share" it.
To use this feature:
Open or create the application where you want to store your multiple-choice options.
Create a new table and add a field or find the existing table and field you're interested in using. This field must be either a Text (but NOT a multiple-choice field) or Numeric type of field.
Within this table, create
a new record for each choice that you want to appear in the list.
To check your work, click the table name and select List All.
You should see a list of all the choices you have created.
If you are displaying a multiple-choice list across applications, you need to share your new field with each application that you want to access it. You do this from within the source application. To share a field:
Near the bottom of the field properties page, locate the SHARED MULTIPLE CHOICE ACCESS option and turn on the checkbox titled "Allow other applications to access this field as the source for a shared multiple choice list".
NOTE: If this field is already shared with multiple-choice lists in existing applications, those applications appear listed here instead of the checkbox.
Click the Add Application button
that appears.
QuickBase then displays a list of applications to which you have access.
Click the radio button to the left of the Application
with which you want to share the multiple-choice list and click OK.
The application you chose appears within Applications that may access this field.
If you want to share the field with additional applications, repeat steps 3 and 4 for each one.
Open the application in which you want the multiple-choice list to appear.
Create or open a field to display the list.
To create the field, select Customize > Create a new > field and select the table that should contain the field.
To access an existing field, In the table bar on any application page, click the table containing the field. Within the menu that appears, select Customize --tablename-- table > Fields.
Open the field's properties page by clicking on its name.
Within the Text Options section of the properties page, locate the Data Entry option and select Multiple-choice, shared.
Within the Draw Choices From option that appears, click Select Source to display a list of applications you can access.
Click the radio button to the left of the application
which contains the multiple-choice list you created at the beginning
of these steps and click OK.
A list of fields within that application opens.
Select the field that contains the entries you
want to convert into a multiple-choice list and click OK.
QuickBase displays your new setting within Draw Choices From.
Select how you want to sort the items in the multiple-choice list, and then click Save.
If you want the items in the list to be arranged alphabetically, select Sort this field alphabetically.
If you want the items in the list to be arranged by record number, select Sort this field in the order specified in the target table.
Click Save to finish.
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