Modifying temporary fields

You cannot change the size of a temporary field (including changing the size of the text string in a text field) if it has been selected to print. To change the size, you must delete all instances of it being printed, edit the temporary field, and then reselect it to print.

Keep in mind that once a temporary field has been selected as a field to print, any changes made to its format (from the Fields to create function) won’t have any effect on that selected field. However, the new format will be assigned to the field if you select it as a field to print after you make the changes. Therefore, if you need to change the format, you must first delete the temporary field from the Print Fields list (see Deleting a field from a report), make your changes, and then reselect the field.

Another way to modify the format is from the Fields to print function. We don’t recommend this method, however, because the temporary field definition still displays the old format, and someone looking at the definition might be confused as to why the field appears differently in the report. We suggest that if you need to modify a format, you always change the format of your original temporary field definition.