If the new database has room, you can add new fields by clicking on the Add button. A dialog will pop-up to allow you to define a field name, add an optional field name alias and indicate its properties. For more information on this see Entering The Database Fields. Click on OK to enter the new field. The ID badge software will notice if you try to add a field name which already exists and display a message asking you to create a unique name.
A new field can be deleted by highlighting in the right-hand table and clicking on the Delete button. You can also delete all new fields by clicking the Delete All button.
The underlying syntax of ODBC (SQL) uses a number of reserved words which cannot be used as field names. These include such words as "LIKE", "INTEGER" and "DOUBLE". If you attempt to use a reserved word the program will alert you and require you to enter a different name. In general, use names which mean something specific to your database like "FirstName" or "PhoneNo" and no conflict will occur. You can use Field Name Aliases to display field names in the program of any content if the real field name is not what is desired.
Note that the OK button will not become available until one of these 2 conditions has been met:
1. The is at least one field name checked in the left box
2. There are no fields checked in the left box, and at least one field in the right box.
This effectively means that the operation cannot continue unless at least one field is active, either an existing one or a new one.
Before pressing the OK button you might want to check the Set all “Badge Changed” flags box. This will mark the entire database as changed. The Changed flag is used to select upon, to allow only those badges which have changed (or not changed) since the last printing to be selected. For more information on this flag, see the Badge Selection section of the Operation chapter.
When you are satisfied with the field settings, click on OK to continue the process. The operation will proceed, with a bar graph to show its progress. It may be necessary to copy over the database (but not the photographs) to modify the field structure. The resulting database (or in ODBC terminology, table) files will have a number added to them to indicate that a revision has taken place. For example, the sample database files will be called SAMPLE1.DB and SAMPLE1.PX after the first revision. Note that the SAMPLE.IDC file does NOT change name, nor do the photographs or the sub-directories they are stored in. Not all database types require this copying process and in this case the names will all remain the same.