Creating Pick Lists for Fields

In this video, we’re going to look at how it can create pick lists for fields and Tap Forms 5 on the Mac. With picklists, we can easily select what we want to have in a field. This works great for keeping your data consistent in a form and a database. Let’s see what I mean. Let’s go to my Mac.

So I’m looking at my form Grocery List. We have here a field called Grocery Store. This field is going to contain the same data across multiple records. For example, I have milk here, I buy this over at Meijer, so I just click here, and I type in Meijer. Now I want to create a new record. I click on the plus here, and we have my new record. Let’s just call this eggs. This is also over at Meijer. So I click in here, and I type in Meijer. Let’s go and add one more. We’re going to click on the plus here. We’re going to call this one coffee. Again, I get this at Meijer.

So as you can see, I have to type in Meijer here each time. Wouldn’t it be great if I could just select it from a picklist? When I choose it from a picklist, it’s going to keep my data consistent. In other words, I can’t have a typo in it because I picked it from a pick list, a dropdown menu, a checkbox, or radio button. So how do we do that?

Well, the first thing we need to do is we need to create our pick lists. To do that, we go up under Tap Forms 5 in the menu bar, and then we go over to our Preferences. We have a new window that opens up, and we need to make sure that we’re looking at our Lists. Under Lists, we have Pick Lists.

From here, we just go down to the plus, and we create our first picklist. So let’s call this Grocery Store. I just click on the plus, type in here Grocery Store. This is the name of the picklist.

And then I choose how I want to have it displayed. Right now, it’s going to be as pop over, but from here, I can select it to be a multiple value pop over, which means I can select multiple stores. I can make it a pop-up button. I can make it radio buttons. So let’s just go with a single value right now. I select this, and now I just enter in the values. You can also use existing values. You’re going to see; we have used values from field; I select this, I select the form, which will be my grocery list. And then I select my field. What field do you think we’re going to select? Grocery Store. And then I click on Done.

Now, what I need to do is I need to tell Tap Forms 5 that I want to use a picklist. If I click in here, you’re going to see it doesn’t have that pop over. It doesn’t allow me to select from my picklist.

I need to tell Tap Forms 5 that I want to use a pick-list in this field. So how do I do that? Well, we need to edit our form. So I go up under Form, make sure this is blue, and then we go over to our Fields. Under Fields, we select the field that we want to modify. In this case, it’s going to be Grocery Store. If recall, this is where I can go and change the name and change the field type. But down towards the bottom, you’re going to see we have another option here, pick List. All I have to do is just select which picklist we’re going to go with, the Grocery Store, and now you’re going to see that I have a new icon here. When I click on this, I’m able to select Meijer.

Let’s go and add a new record here, a new item. I’m going to click on the plus here; let’s go with hamburger. I like to get this over at Family Fare, so let’s just go with aisle two, and I’m going to go with Family Fare. If I wanted to choose Meijer, I could just click on this, but I don’t want to choose Meijer. I want to add a new store. So now I just click in here and go to Family Fare. Now, when I click on this, you’re going to see that I can choose from Family Fare or Meijer. Why is that? If you recall, when we went to our Tap Forms 5 Preferences, we went to lists. I wanted my values for that pick-list to be from my Grocery Store. So as I add different grocery stores, the picklist is going to pre-populate.

You’re going to see that it has them in there already. It has Family Fare and Meijer. If I add D& W, that’s another grocery store here; if I go and add that to one of my grocery items, it will add it to here automatically because I’m having it add the values from my field.

Now, if you don’t want to do that, what you can also do is just use values from a list, and then you can go and add your records. So you can have it populate automatically. Based on what you have in your field, or you can just create your picklist manually. So let’s go and click on plus here. We’re going to go with D&W; I click on Done. And now, when I click on this, you’re going to see I have D&W.

Let’s change how this is displayed. Maybe what I want to do is I want to select multiple stores. We go back over to our Tap Forms 5 Preferences, and then we go over to our Lists. Again, we go to Pick Lists, and then we select our Grocery Store. Now instead of a single value pop over, let’s go and make the same multi-value pop over. Select it. I click on Done, and now with my hamburger here, let’s say I want to get it from Meijer or Family Fare. All I do is just select this, and I select Meijer, and you’re going to see I have two checkmarks there. So both of those entries are going to be in there. I just click outside, and you can see I can get this at Family Fare or Meijer.

So that is how we use picklists in Tap Forms 5 on the Mac. With Pick Lists, what we can do is we can choose what we want to populate a field with. We set up the picklist through our Tap Forms 5 Preferences. We can have it auto-populate based on the values in our form, or we can enter the values and manually. When we’re in our Preferences, we can set how we want to select our picklist. We can have it as radio buttons, checkboxes, multi-form select, or just select a single item.

So that’s how we use pick lists and Tap Forms 5 on the Mac.