TOPIC: How to disable a field mid-event (but not lose data)?

I have a lot of events that pre-sell t-shirts for the event but they cut the ordering off a couple weeks before the event so they can get the shirts in time. How can I turn off a field in an event and still be able to access the field data in the records or CSV export? The only option that I have found is to "hide" the field when I want to stop allowing for pre-orders. However, this would require that I create a new T-shirt field for every event since the "hidden" option is not controllable per event.

Is there another way to do this that I am missing? I have tried turning off the field in the event fields list but then I am not able to access the already entered data for that field in my admin or CSV export.

There are two ways to do this:

1) Set the field as hidden, as you already said. But it would affect every event the field is used for.

2) Use selection limits. The limits given for field values are applied per event. This may or may not work for you. You can give a limit that is at the current number of shirts sold... then the option to select a shirt would no longer be available.

If this is going to be a regular issue for you, you may need to consider making copies of the shirt field to use for each event... or at least groups of events.

Selection limits may work. Thanks for the suggestion. Would there be any issues if I switched the selection limit to 1 for the shirts (even if there were more sold) instead of having to determine the actual number of shirts sold?

No, that would be fine. However, keep in mind that the limits used for the field will apply to all events that use the field. So you probably don't want to drop the limit to 1.

Ah, that's right. I was thinking that the limits were sent per event. Sounds like either way, it won't work then since changing the limits would affect other events that may not have a limit.

Looks like I will have to do different shirt fields for each event.... was just trying to simply the fields page since that will very quickly become a very cumbersome page to deal with.