Batch Edit Records
Batch Editing allows many records to be modified at once. The records to modify first must be assembled via a query, and then opened in the workbench interface1. From that interface, edits are made by modifying the content of cells, validating, and committing.
Query for records to modify
First, you must query for records that you wish to modify. For this example, we will look to modify every record with a catalog number between 0-50 to have "modified by batch edit" in the Collection Object remarks field.
This will return 50 records in the results, none of which currently have a value in the remarks field. Notice that there is a Batch Edit button above the results.
Open the batch editor
Press the Batch Edit button to open up the results of the query in the workbench interface. You will be asked if you want to leave the page, you should hit Leave unless you anticipate using the same query again.
Once the records are open in the workbench, simply click on a cell and being typing to edit the value. The cell will appear orange once edited.
Tip
Similar to excel, you can drag from the bottom right-hand corner of a cell to fill its contents to other cells.
After you have made the edits you would like to make, press Save to save your changes.
Warning
Saving will not commit your edits to the database. Rather, this is saving the changes you have made to the dataset. This is similar to the workbench, in which saving does not upload the results.
Validating and checking
It is very important to go through some checks to make sure that what you are doing aligns with the edits you would like to make. The first step is to validate the results by pressing Validate.
Next, you can press Results to get information about which tables are going to be modified, and how many records were modified in those tables.
Errors
Similar to the workbench, Specify will highlight errors and prevent you from committing until those errors are resolved. For example, if you remove the catalog number entirely, you will receive an error because catalogue number is required.
Committing
Committing is the moment when data is actually saved to the database. You have "committed" to making the edits. Before committing, you should have validated the data, ensured there were no errors, and double checked to be sure of all the edits you would like to make.
Click Commit to commit the data. After successfully committing, the dataset will become read-only, exactly the same as the workbench.
-
Although the interface is the same, it is important to keep in mind that the Workbench datasets are kept separate from the batch editing datasets. You cannot batch edit directly from the workbench. ↩