CANCELLED MESSAGES

The Cancelled Messages feature is the easiest way to filter the cataloging or validation messages generated by MARC Report. (Note that in past versions of MARC Report the Cancelled Messages feature was called ‘Disabled Reviews’.)

When you right-click on a brief message in Record-by-record mode the following options pertaining to Cancelled Messages are available:

Current Set: DEFAULT
One message cancelled by this set.
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Cancel message--for this Record only
Cancel message--for this Session only
Cancel message--for All Sessions
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Open Cancelled Message Editor
Help on Cancelled Messages

The ‘Current Set’ indicator at the top shows you which Cancelled Message set is currently active; it will be ‘Default’ if you have not used this feature before. The next line tells you what effect the Cancelled Messages are having on the current record: it will display the count of messages cancelled, if any, in the record currently being validated. If any messages were cancelled, you can click on this item to display a list of cancelled messages.

If you select 'Cancel message–for This Session only', the message remains cancelled until you exit Record-by-record or Edit mode; the next time that you open a file (even if it is the same file), the message is automatically re-activated.

If you select 'Cancel message–for All Sessions', the message will be added to the currently active Cancelled Message set. The message will remain cancelled until you manually re-activate it.

If you select 'Cancel message–for this Record only', the message will only be cancelled in the current record. Why would you want to use this option? Let's say you are working on a file of records, and MARC Report displays one of those 'warning' type of messages (ie. there may be a problem or there may not–you just have to check). If you check it out, and there's no problem, you will not get a Perfection image (and you may be using the 'perfection' image as a visual cue). But, on the other hand, you do not want to cancel the message for the rest of the file (or permanently), because the next time it appears there may really be an error. This option addresses this quandary.

If you select 'Open Cancelled Message Editor', the program opens the editor that allows you to re-activate cancelled messages, or change to other cancelled message sets you may have created. The use of this editor is described below.

NOTES

Whenever you choose to cancel a message, the current MARC record is automatically revalidated.

If you open the Cancelled Message Editor while running MARC Report, any messages that were cancelled 'for This Session only' will be re-activated. (You will be prompted by the program if this situation should arise.)

Cancelled messages are also active–like other options–when running MARC Report in Batch Mode.

Cancelled messages will not block a perfection image. Thus, if a record has errors, but their associated messages have all been cancelled, the perfection image will be shown. You can determine when this is the case by checking the status bar on the top right (above the Brief Message/Perfection panel)–if applicable, the count of cancelled messages will always be displayed here, whether perfection is showing or not. If perfection is showing, and you want to access the cancelled messages, simply right-click on the perfection image.

THE CANCELLED MESSAGE EDITOR

This Editor is available both in the Program Options and in Record-By-Record or Edit mode.

The currently active set appears in BLUE at the top of the screen, followed by the list of messages that are cancelled. If you have created more than one set, you can switch from one set to another by clicking on the down arrow (which will open a list of all of your saved sets).

We use the term 'Set' to refer to any group of cancelled messages that you have saved. You can create more than one set of Cancelled Messages. Sets are useful if you frequently work on files from different sources, or files of different types of records, and would like to configure the program accordingly.

Creating a New Set

The default cancelled message set is called 'DEFAULT' and is empty–i.e., no messages are cancelled. You cannot make changes to the default set (i.e. it must always be empty).

To use the Cancelled Messages feature you must first create a new set. Select 'Create new set' from the 'File' menu.

Restoring Cancelled Messages

Open the Cancelled Message Editor, select the set that you want to work with, and replace 'Y' with 'N' in the 'Cancelled' column of the message(s) you want to restore. If you click ‘Save’, all messages marked 'N' are removed from the the list of cancelled messages (ie. these messages have been re-activated and will thereafter be displayed when the program runs).

To restore all of the Cancelled Messages in a set simply click on the the 'Delete Set' button. This will restore all of the cancelled messages, delete the set from your options, and activate the (empty) Default set.

IMPORTANT: Notes about Using Cancelled Messages

First, cancelled messages that are restored are not saved.

Second, messages referring to Mandatory fields may not be cancelled. The reason for this is that Cancelled Messages do not take into account the Leader Record Type value, which is required when determining when a field or element is Mandatory. If you want to disable a message about a Mandatory Field, you must use the Mandatory Field Editor in the Program Options.

Finally, the Cancelled Message concept was designed to provide a quick and easy way for the average user to turn off a message that they felt they did not want to see anymore. It was not originally intended as a way to configure MARC Report's validation features. Cancelling a message does not prevent MARC Report from running the cataloging or validation code that generates the message–the only way to do that is to track down the message in the appropriate database in the Program Options and disable it. Cancelled messages are simply removed–or filtered–from the message stream before it is displayed to you in the Brief Message window. Therefore, in some cases, the Cancelled Message option may not be the best choice for fine-tuning the program (consider the note above on why Mandatory Fields cannot be cancelled). If you want to use the full power of MARC Report, we recommend that you use the editors and checkboxes in the Cataloging Check and Validation sections of the program options.

Here is an illustration of why it is important to understand how Cancelled Messages work. Say that you have some 500 fields that end in a '>' and the program displays a message like: '500-01: End of field punc. needed'. You want to accept the '>' as valid end of field punctuation and so you cancel that message (we don't have any other way for you to specify that at present). But remember what we said above–the program uses the message itself when cancelling, not any validation logic. So cancelling this message will also cancel messages for a 500 field that lacks, say, a period at the end, because the brief message for that problem is exactly the same: '500-01: End of field punc. needed'.

We still think the Cancelled Message concept is a great tool and we will continue to improve it. However, be aware that in some cases, the Cancelled Message option is not the best choice for fine-tuning the program.