Variables Dialog Box

Use this dialog box to create, copy, edit, or delete variables.

Forms use variables to communicate between themselves, and to save environment information across form executions. Some variables are temporary, but persistent variables are loaded to and from disk. Variables can be global or associated with a particular form. You can use variables for many purposes, including binding them to components and controlling the initial action of a form.

To open this dialog box, perform one of these actions while in Design Mode:

From the Edit menu, select Variable.

Right-click in a form (not on a component), and from the context menu, select Variable.

About the display

This dialog box:

Lists all the global and form variables associated with the current form, indicating whether each is a global or form-level variable.

Indicates whether each variable is persistent or temporary.

NOTE: If you are opening this dialog box from an extended form:

The dialog box also indicates whether each variable is defined for the base form or the extended form. For more information, see About Creating New Forms by Extension.
Variable defined for the base form are grayed out, indicating that they are not available for editing on this form. To edit the variable for the extended form, select it and click Edit. In the Variable Properties dialog box, first set the From Base Form property to False, and then you can edit it like any other variable. This causes the variable to be associated with the extended form.

Dialog box options

This dialog box includes these action buttons:

Button

Description/Comments

Done

To finish working in the dialog box and save your changes, click this button.

New

To create a variable, click this button.

This button launches the Variable Properties dialog box, which allows you to define the new variable.

Copy

To copy a variable, select the variable to copy and click this button.

This is useful when you want to base a new variable on an existing variable, with changes.

This button launches the Variable Properties dialog box, populated with the attribute for the variable you are copying.

Edit

To edit an existing variable, select the variable and click this button.

This button launches the Variable Properties dialog box, populated with the attributes for the specified variable.

Delete

To delete a variable, select the variable and click this button.

Help

To view the help topic for this dialog box, click this button.

Variables Dialog Box

About the display

Dialog box options

Related Topics