Report on your field usage

You can run a report on how you use fields in different files with the with Field Usage Count tool. This can be helpful when cleaning up data.

Overview

A Field Usage Count report can show you all the fields in a particular file and how often they are used. This is useful for identifying fields that need to be updated. For example, if the field usage count for the Classification field does not match the total number of records included in the report, this could mean that some records need to have a classification term entered.

The Field Usage Count tool gives you information on:

• The overall number of fields in a file.

• Which fields are being used.

• Which fields are not being used.

• The number of records using each field.

• The total number of records in the file.

• The internal field name of each field.

You can output your report to the screen, the printer, or a table. We recommend a table, as you can then copy the table to Excel to analyse the data more easily.

You can find the records that are have incomplete fields by searching for an absence of data.

Reviewing your data

There are number of questions to consider when reviewing a Field Usage Count report, such as:

• Are there required fields that have not been completed for all records?

• Are there any unused fields you would like to re-purpose by changing the field name?

• For the Person file, do all records have a Record Type and Person/Corporate Type specified?

• For the Photo/Audio-Visual file, do the total field usage counts for Non Digital Reference and Digital Filename add up to the total number of records?

• For Activity files, do Item Count and Item Description have the same field usage count?

• For Inward Loan and Outward Loan records, do the Start Date and End Date fields have the same field usage count?

Steps

1. Go to the Tools menu, then Utilities, and then click Field Usage Count.

2. In the File Name field, enter a file to run the report on. For example, Object.

3. Optional: In the List Name field, enter a list. Leave this blank if you want to report on the whole file.

4. Optional: Tick the Show Unused Fields check box.

5. Under Send Report To, choose to send it to the screen, the printer, or display it in a table.

6. Click OK to run the report.

7. If you chose the table option, you can then copy the report to Excel. Go to the Edit menu and click Copy Table to Excel.