The Categories screen (Fig. 15) is fundamental in tailoring My Vision Express to your needs. Most list controls (Fig. 16) in the application will get their values from this screen.

The database that installs with the software contains predefined values for each category. However, in some instances, these values may not provide for every option that you want or there may be some of them that you do not use. If you review each category and optimize it for the options that you do use, you will be speeding up data entry on the system considerably.

To edit a category, go to File > Setup > Categories from the main application menu. Select the category that you would like to work with by clicking on the ‘Category Group’ on the left. The list of items under that category will appear on the data grid to the right.

To create a new item, click on Add and enter a description for it on the “Category Items” column.

The number in the “Sort” column indicates in what order the items show up on the list control at run time. The higher the number,  the lower the actual position on the list will be. To speed up data entry, you can cluster the items that you use the most often at the top of their corresponding category by assigning the lowest sort numbers to them.

The Active checkbox indicates whether the item actually displays on the list control at run time. If you do not want to delete an item altogether; but you do not want it to be available at run time either, clear this checkbox.

To delete an item, click on it to select it and click on Delete.

On the bottom left-hand corner of the screen, there are three radio buttons to filter the categories available for editing. Select from ‘Exam’, ‘Non Exam’ and ‘All’.

Click Save and Close on the main application toolbar after you are finished making changes to this screen.A dialog will inform you that you need to restart the application before the changes done on this screen will take effect.