When entering data in Music Monitor, you will often see a drop-down list of options to choose from. This article is about how to edit the list so it includes the option you wish to choose.

There are two main ways these lists are populated. In the simple case, the list shows everything that was entered in this field in other records. In other cases, the list is drawn from a different table.

When terminating a tuition enrolment, you can enter a Reason for the termination, and that field has a drop-down menu.

If the Reason you want doesn't appear on this list, all you need to do is click again in the empty box, and then type in a new option.

Drop-down menus of this type are populated by the entries that already exist for this field in other records. So what you enter here will then become an option for use later.

If you have a long list of options on a field like this, tidying it can be a little laborious. It's always better to keep it short in the first place. But the following approach can minimise the time you have to spend on it.

In the case of a Termination Reason list, first determine what's important information to record. Come up with a basic list of circumstances you want to capture, such as:

But your actual records may have entries such as:

Each of these is slightly different and will be listed as its own option in the drop-down. To shorten the list, you need to change them all to one of the standard options that you've settled on in the step above.

First go to a screen where you can see these entries in a list. For the Termination Reason field, you'll need to go to Home > Student Activity > Tuition > Super Users and modify the table to include that field (see Modify Super Users for guidance).

Perform a Find to bring together groups of records that can all be changed to the same entry. Exactly what terms to search for depends on what is in your data. To include the entries in the example above, you might search for the word "school" in that field. Check the list for any that you want to change to something different from most and omit them from the list. Change one record to the standard entry you want to keep and use the Replace Field Contents function to copy that to the rest of your found set.

Repeat that until it's no longer efficient, then work through changing individual entries until everything has one one of your standard options entered.

Some drop-down menus do not give you this option, and that is because the options are determined by the contents of a different file. For example, when you are creating a new Ensemble enrolment, there are drop-down menus that you cannot edit in the same way as above.

The menu shown above, in the Discount Description field, is drawn from the Fees file (showing only those with the Fee Category of "Discount"). To edit this list, you need to go to the Fees file and add or edit a record.

The Pencil icon shown above that field takes you directly to the table where you can edit the records in this file. Closing the Fees file brings you back to the enrolment window to continue creating the enrolment record.

Generally, drop-down menus in Music Monitor where you can't simply add a new entry will show this Pencil icon that takes you to the screen where you can edit the list.