Duplicating Records

Duplicating Records

Consulting data repeats itself: the same measure at three sites, one risk per building block, a contact per role. Retyping a near-identical record is where typos are born. Every saved record can therefore be duplicated instead — the copy takes all field values, and the small changes that made you want a copy are the very next step.

Where the action lives

Two places, both only for records that have been applied at least once:

• A copy icon at the end of each table row. It appears when you point at the row or tab into it — a permanent column of symbols would make the table louder than one action deserves.
• A button in the footer of the open form, next to Delete.

A draft that has never been applied has neither: there is no saved content for a copy to carry.

What the copy contains

Everything from the saved record — not from any half-filled form you may have open on it. Unapplied edits belong to the original's next save, not to a copy. Reference fields keep pointing at the same targets.

Exactly two things differ from the original:

• The title field gets a localized suffix — (Copy) in English, (Kopie) in German, following the interface language (Interface Languages).
• The copy receives its own identifier with its entity's prefix.

The original stays untouched.

Same path as a manual entry

The duplicate is created through the same write path as a manually applied record, and that one sentence carries most of the behaviour worth knowing:

• It sits on the undo stack — one Ctrl/Cmd+Z removes the whole copy again (session-only, like all undo; see Limits and Troubleshooting).
• The amber dot appears. The copy lands in a new HTML file only with the next save; an unsaved copy does not survive a reload, exactly like any other new record.
• The change log derives its own created event for the copy at that save, worked out against the last saved state (details) — nothing about it is asked or typed in.

One boundary to know: a copy carrying attachments doubles their share of the attachment budget. The check that refuses an oversized upload refuses the copy right away rather than letting the next save discover it.