I have a Orders form with a SOLines subform.  In some offline development, I was going to work on adding a Quote form to my application.  I thought I would start with copy of the Orders form (and a copy of the SOLines subform) and then tweak them both. 

But when I copied the Orders form (Quotes), it made a duplicate copy of the SOLines subform.  But not just a copy, rather a mirror SOLines form, so that any changes (including deletion) that are made to one SOLines form is made to the other SOLines form (I had very early on in February ended up with two mirrored POLines subforms that I had to eventually rectify by deleting them and building a new POLines subform - I never could figure out how I'd ended up with a mirror form, but this must be how).

So my question is, how can one copy a layout form (that includes a subform) without creating this mirror subform copy?

Hi Bob,

I appreciate your suggestion - I will definitely tinker with that idea.    

To give some extra info, in my business (ongoing distribution of consumable technology supplies to commercial and govt orgs) quotes are usually about communicating a price for an item that will be purchased on a repetitive basis in the future, versus a quote which more addresses a specific purchase transaction.  I certainly see the strong merit in your suggestion in the latter scenario.  

My thinking was that my quote form would be 'informing' two audiences - 1) the client, and 2) my Pricing database, via the creation of a Price record (as a "Q" tagged record) during the Quote ItemNum addition to the Quote form.  Thus I would have a record of each item quoted, when quoted, and to whom quoted, able to sort by client, date parameter, item, etc.  And when a client then ordered a previously quoted item, it would be automatically changed in the Pricing record to a P record from a Q record and thus become part of that client's pricing database....

I remember a previous post a few months ago where you had mentioned having SOLines and POLines be the same form, and toggling back and forth using command buttons.  It sounded like such an elegant solution.  I'll work on it.

Ah!  Exporting to XML - yes, I could try that!  I'll let you know how it works.

I've actually got 3 Pricing codes - M for market pricing, P for protected pricing (contracts, hyper sensitive clients), and Q for quotes (and Alternative pricing code for clients who might have different pricing for an item - cash price vs credit card, qty 5 versus qty 15 - the sales order recognizes the alternative pricing Clients and asks the user if this order is normal or alternative pricing, so it will know which Pricing field to update in the event the user changes the pricing on the fly while the order is being entered).  When I buy an item on a POLines record, if the cost has changed from last time - either up or down - then the code goes looking in Pricing for every record for that ItemNum.  If it's an M record, the customer pricing (and new ItemCost info) is automatically adjusted to reflect the cost increase or decrease, following the specific margin for each client/item pricing combo (although if the cost went up, it increases the margin a smidgen, and if the cost went down, it gives part of the cost decrease to the client but not all of it, thus increasing our margin on that item - I figure that over time this will increase, basically out of thin air, our overall margins by maybe up to two percentage points, which will be a huge help).  If it's a P record, then the cost and new lower resulting margin get calculated, but the price isn't changed (since it's Protected), but a PriceAnalysisNeeded field is filled and a report run at the end of the day to alert us of PAN records that need human attention.  And of course, the Q records (once that's written) are converted once that client actually orders that Quoted Item for the first time.

I know I'm blathering on and on, but this is the Holy Grail of what I hoped Sesame would allow us to do - enter data once and have it zoom around and touch everything it needs to touch under the hood.  It's like having another 3 team members on board who are working all day for free.  I'm very excited about the present and ongoing benefits that this software will provide us.  And I couldn't have done it without this forum.  If I could spend the rest of this year fulltime on programming Sesame instead of squeezing it in when I can due to 'running the business' demands, I'd be a happy contented camper.  But I'm definitely happy to be here.