Ah, yes. The Update All Display Dimensions function. I blithely clicked on the button one morning, thinking that this would do the trick after having changed the format for inches from "in." to "inches". We have approximately 42K records. Ultimately, it didn't work. I looked back over the thread that I and GS support had about this, and they were unable to explain the reason for my workstation's locking up (I let it run for five hours). According to our IT person, the process (which was running on the server) seemed to have stopped a few minutes after I had started it on my workstation. So, nothing was ever "done" to the data. At that point (after 5 hours) the process was stopped on the server. While no lasting damage was done to the data (that I could tell), the update didn't work. I think we left it that GS would talk to the programmer about this. I have not pursued it since April. I'd be interested in hearing of your continued experience with this. Christine Droll, Collections Database Administrator The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art 4525 Oak Street Kansas City, MO 64111-1873 tel: 816.751.1333 | fax: 816.561.1011 [log in to unmask] -----Original Message----- From: The Museum System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jeffrey Smith Sent: Wednesday, July 12, 2006 4:19 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Update Display Dimensions The Freer and Sackler Galleries are currently in the process of simplifying the practice of recording object dimensions in TMS, largely by reducing the number of dimension elements and ensuring that only one dimension is set to write to the objects dimension field. At the end of the scrubbing process, we intend to use the "Update All Display Dimensions" control in the Dimensions Authority. This control will rewrite the current text in Objects.Dimensions with whatever dimension elements are checked in the Dimensions Assistant. Kind of scary! Gallery Systems has kindly offered to provide a temporary license so this dramatic update can be tested on a copy of the database, and we will of course back up the database when running the final update. My question is: have any other TMS users out there ever run this update? If so, did you encounter any problems? How long did it take for the size of your database? Thanks in advance for any advice, suggestions. Jeffrey Smith Assistant Registrar for Collections Information Freer Gallery of Art & Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Smithsonian Institution P.O. Box 37012 Sackler 1040, MRC 707 Washington, D.C. 20013-7012 [log in to unmask] tel: 202-633-0348 fax: 202-633-9770 http://www.asia.si.edu