Set data for old records

hi

in such cases I opt for "not changing the code"

so I just fill the table with 0 for id's, out of date dates for dates, '*' for characters etc..
doing some update ... where "New_field" is null (this may change a bit depending on the database you use)
hope it helps,

Nir.

Thanks Nir for your advice.
Cheers

If you just leave it like it is , when an old record is empty , it should just modify the new field upon edit. It may be necessary to change the each field to "use different settings for all pages" and have a default value for the auto update field. If you don't want to modify any old records that have no data then you need to add code to edit event before record updated to set the old record field to empty or Null ( depending on what it was ).
Something like this for strings . depends on empty or null see below?
If ($oldvalues["yourfield"]=="") {

$values["yourfield"] = "";

}

else {

// continue updating fields with new data

}
Just make sure database field is not set to not null. See differences between empty and Null HERE.

Thanks John, very useful advise.