Validation

Once you have finished a form, you need to validate it by either pressing the <F5> key on your keyboard or by clicking on the Validate button on the toolbar. Validation checks your form against rules set up in the program. From the validation rules, you may see error messages that require you to correct them before the form can be successfully validated. Warning messages alert you to something that could be wrong but may also be correct. They give you an opportunity to review the data to be sure that it’s correct.

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If your form contains no errors or warnings, you will see a screen like this:

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Just click OK. The form will now have a status of Validated.

If the form contains no errors but there are warnings, you will get a screen that looks like this:

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If you click Yes to view the warnings, the validation panel will appear and you will see the errors and warnings on the bottom on the Forms Viewer:

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The bottom portion of the screen shows the warning(s) in a text description. The right-hand portion of this shows the data fields that may be causing the problem. TraCS automatically takes you to the first field associated with the first warning on the list. If this field is not causing the problem, click on the other field(s) shown on the list in the right-hand window and review the data there. In the case of a warning, if all fields associated with the warning appear to be correct, you can disregard the warning and move on. If you make a correction that addresses the warning, it will disappear from the list. If you have addressed all the warnings and there are no errors, click on Validate again and this time when it asks you if you want to view the warnings click No. Your form will then have a status of Validated when you close it.

You address errors in the same manner that you address warnings as described above; however, you will not be able to validate the form until all the errors are corrected.