Tip of the Month (September 2008)

Recording Which Handheld Created a Record

If you are synchronizing several handhelds to the same desktop table, you may want to be able to identify the handheld that created each record in the table. This is real easy to do.

In the table, create a column of type Text called CREATED_BY. This is where the identity of the handheld that created the record will be stored.

Then, on your form, create a calculated control. When asked if you want to the result of the calculation to be saved, say YES and select CREATED_BY as the column. For the expression, use @devicename.

Before you close the properties of the calculated control, there is one more thing you have to do: turn off the Recalculated property. Why? Because if you didn't, if the record was ever viewed on a different handheld, CREATED_BY would be set to the name of that other handheld...which is not what you want.