Assign Default Value

   Perhaps you have created the multiple choice variable [Supreme/Circuit/District/Appeals] referring to the title of a court in which you may appear. But you almost always are going to select District.  You therefore may want to pre-fill that selection as the value of the multiple choice variable when the Instant Database Screen is displayed and document scanned.

   To do so, simple place a hashtag/pound sign (i.e., #) immediately before the choice (and immediately after the preceding slash). E.g., [Supreme/Circuit/#District/Appeals]

   That's it!

   If the multiple choice is called up from an *Alias*, the same principle applies. Just open up your *Alias* table (it's just an Excel spreadsheet) and type the # as the first character of the cell value you want as the default.

    Maybe you don't have, or wish to use, a multiple choice variable, but still want to set a default value. Same concept. Just type the # in front of the value. E.g., [Court#District]. The text 'District' will appear in the 'values' column in the IDB screen. Further, if you want to use just the simple variable [Court] in other locations in the document, it's perfectly okay to do so. Pathagoras will know what you mean, and appropriately replace those shortened variables with 'District' (or whatever value you ultimately assign to [Court]).

  Let's say you don't want to use the # to indicate a default value. You want to keep it as real text such as [Child #1], [Child #2], etc. Well, Pathagoras cannot tell the difference between your different uses of the #. (Either is indicates a default or it doesn't.)  But if you don't want it to serve as your 'default value' indicator, you can easily turn 'off' that feature. The switch is under Pathagoras Features | All Settings | Instant Database Settings | Custom Settings. Uncheck the ‘#’ sets default values box.

    If you want the 'best' of both worlds, might we suggest that you use a different indicator 'real text', e.g., [Child @1], [Child @2]. Those are the incrementor characters we use when the Repeat function is invoked when variables are involved.