Summary

Changing the type or lowering the width of an index card field may cause data loss. Only documents associated with the modified index card template are at risk. Data loss occurs when the field data assigned to a document contains a value that is incompatible with the new field type or data that exceeds the new field width.

Tip: Before proceeding make sure that you will not lose index card field data as a result of the structural change to the index card template.

More Information

There are two different possible causes for index card field data loss, which are incompatible data information and insufficient field width. We will discuss each case.

The first case is incompatible data information. This occurs when the type of data that can be stored by an index card field is changed. For example, if an index card field that was originally configured to store characters was changed to store date values, then this change would probably cause data loss. The data loss would occur when pre-existing field data is not formatted in short date format (mm/dd/yyyy). In other words, a date stored as January 01, 2004 would be fine for an index card field of type character. However, it would not be acceptable for an index card field of type date.

The second case is when data exceeds the field width. This occurs when the field width is lowered. For example, if an index card field that was originally configured to store up to 20 characters was modified to only store 10 characters, then this could possible cause data loss. All pre-existing data assigned to the modified field that exceeded 10 characters would be affected. In other words, if the value "1234567890123456789" was assigned to the index card field prior to the change, then after the change it would be truncated to "1234567890".