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A field can carry a default value, set once on the Collection and applied to Items as they are created. If the new Item leaves that field blank, the default fills it in. If the Item has a value of its own, the default is ignored. Set it in the Collection’s settings, on the Fields tab: click the field’s chip and fill in Default value. Press Save changes to store it.

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What “blank” means

The default only fills a genuine gap. These all count as blank:
  • nothing entered at all,
  • an empty text box,
  • a list field with no values selected.
Anything else is a real value and wins. A 0 in a number field or a deliberately cleared field is a value, not a gap.

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Defaults apply at creation only

This is the part that surprises people: a default is stamped in when the Item is created and never revisited.
  • Changing the Collection’s default later does not update Items that already exist. Their values were written at creation and stay as they were.
  • A CSV import applies defaults to rows that create a new Item, and not to rows that update an existing one. Otherwise a partial update — a file with only two columns in it — would quietly overwrite everything it omitted with Collection defaults.
  • A disabled field’s default is skipped entirely.
If you need existing Items brought in line with a new default, that is an edit to those Items: change them in the table, or export, edit, and re-import them.

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Two fields that never take a default

Item ID cannot have one. It has to be unique within the Collection, so a shared default would collide on the second Item created. The Destination URL has a default, but it belongs to the Scan tab rather than the Fields tab, and it behaves slightly differently: when a new Item arrives without a destination of its own, the template is copied onto that Item, so each Item ends up owning its own copy. Editing the Collection’s default afterward changes what new Items get and leaves existing ones alone. Field bindings inside that template — {{item.item_id}} and the like — are not frozen: they are resolved fresh on every scan against whatever the Item holds at that moment. See Default Destination for New Items for how to author it.

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A worked example

A Collection tracking rental plant sets the default on its status field to available.
  • Add an Item and leave status blank: it saves as available.
  • Add an Item and set status to in_repair: it stays in_repair.
  • Change the Collection default to off_hire next month: the two Items above do not move. The next Item created blank gets off_hire.