How to mark records as Inactive, and what that means

Marking records as Inactive is a way for you to "disable" records without actually deleting them from the database. You might want to do this, for example, if a product is temporarily unavailable; you don't want to delete it from the database, because you expect it to become available again at some point in the future. Records that are Inactive won't be published unless you specifically choose to include them (to do this, go to the Prefs tab in your Publishing Style Sheet and select the Include Inactive Records check box).

There are two ways to mark records as Inactive:

1. Open the record and click the Inactive checkbox
2. Select some records in a list and choose Make Inactive from the Modify menu (CatBase Version 6.74r18 and later)

Open the record and click the Inactive checkbox

If you can't find the Inactive checkbox on your data entry screen, you can add it. Select Form Design Wizard from the Setup menu to do this.

(Version 6.74r18 and later) If the record is in a table which is a "Parent" in a relation (for example Products in a Products-Parts relationship), CatBase will ask if you also want to mark the related records as Inactive.

Mark a selection of records as Inactive

1. Make a list of records
2. Select the record or records you want to mark as Inactive. To select a series of records, click on the first one, hold down the Shift key, then click on the last one. To select random (discontiguous) records, hold down the Command key (Mac) or the Ctrl key (Windows) as you click on individual records
3. Choose Make Inactive from the Modify menu
4. If there are related (child) records in the database, CatBase will ask if you want to also mark the related records as Inactive
5. Click Yes to proceed

Records that are marked as Inactive will be highlighted in yellow in list views.

To update to the latest version of CatBase, please go to the Downloads page on our website