CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I created a custom data set used for Memberships.  It contains a field I call membership level, which has three multiple choice options (Associate, Member, Subscriber).  I set the default to Associate as all new members enter at the associate level (this is capturing something different to their membership type).

However, it seems that the setting 'default' only dictates which multiple choice option should be selected by default if a profile containing this field is displayed.  The value of the field is not actually being set to Associate until that profile is viewed and saved.

a) How can I get this attribute to always be set to Associate by default for new members?  Is there another way to achieve what I want?  I didn't want to use a tag as membership-level is only valid for members.

b) By now I have a lot of members with null values for this field.  Searching for members with null values and bulk editing them doesn't seem possible.  Where in the database would the value of this field be stored -- is it safe to update the null fields directly in SQL, and if so where?

Would appreciate the help!
Thanks,
Julie