Interrupt the inheritance relationship for a field

If the changes that you need to make to a field fall outside of the formatting restrictions of an inherited field, the only option is to interrupt the inheritance relationship between the parent and child field.

When you interrupt this relationship, you have more control over field settings, but you cannot move, rename, or delete a field, even if the inheritance relationship is interrupted. Before interrupting this relationship you must first have a local locator or an alternative locator method already in place that can be used by the field.

You can interrupt the inheritance relationship for a field by following these steps:

  1. Expand the Project Tree and select the class that contains the field that you want to edit.
  2. Optionally, view the class contents if they are not already displayed.

    The hidden class contents are displayed.

  3. Select the field in the Project Tree.

    The Details window displays the selected field.

  4. From the Field populated by list select the locator method that you want to use to populate this field once it is no longer inherited.

    This locator method must already exist.

  5. Thoroughly test your project to ensure that the field with the interrupted inheritance relationship performs as expected.
    If at any time you want to go back to the inherited behavior, you can restore the inheritance behavior for that field.