D365 Business Central : Edit Table Data Directly

D365 Business Central does not allow you to directly modify the table data, especially for Cloud SaaS customers. There are some good reasons why we are not supposed to do that, such as for safety, consistency, audit, etc. Tempering the table data without knowledge on how the system works can cause you more issues at the end.

However, what if we know what we are doing and we want to fix the data ?

There are few ways you can fix the data, either by creating a page to expose the data, creating a process (report, etc) to fix data programmatically, or using configuration package.

One of the hidden trick is to use the tablet view to access the table.

Before we talk about editing the data, we need to know how to manipulate our Business Central Web Client URL. According to Microsoft documentation website, this is the web client has the following syntax.

https://<hostname>[/<aadtenantid>][/<environmentname>]/?[company=<companyname>]&[page|query|report|table=<ID>]&[tenant=<tenantID>]&[mode=<View|Edit|Create>]&[profile=<profileID>]&[customize]&[bookmark=<bookmark>]&[captionhelpdisabled=<0|1>]&[showribbon=<0|1>]&[shownavigation=<0|1>]&[showuiparts=<0|1>]&[showheader=<0|1>]&[isembedded=1]&[pagesize=<number of lines>]&[redirect<0|1>]&[extension=<extensionID>]

Let’s focus on the table syntax. Consider below URL is our Business Central URL.

https://businesscentral.dynamics.com/abcdefgh-abcd-1234-1111-abcdefgh1234/Production

If we want to access table Item (27) directly, we will need to add ?table=27 to the URL.

https://businesscentral.dynamics.com/abcdefgh-abcd-1234-1111-abcdefgh1234/Production?table=27

We can see that we are accessing the table data directly in read only view. You will be able to see all the fields inside the table.

If you don’t know the table number, you can use Page Inspection to inspect the page and find out about the table number.

Viewing the table data in read only mode is easy, but what if you want to edit the table data ? The trick is to use Tablet mode.

D365 Business Central has a way to simulate tablet mode in PC browser. We use this tablet mode to test how Business Central will look like when we access it from a tablet.

We can do this by adding /Tablet to the web client URL.

https://businesscentral.dynamics.com/abcdefgh-abcd-1234-1111-abcdefgh1234/Production/Tablet

What if you combine both the table number and tablet mode ?

https://businesscentral.dynamics.com/abcdefgh-abcd-1234-1111-abcdefgh1234/Production/Tablet?table=27

You would expect a read-only view on tablet view, but you can actually edit the table data. You can even create new record and delete.

Is this a bug ? Or a hidden feature ? Not sure, but use it carefully. With great power comes great responsibility.