The records are about member club. the FE cannot add or remove records. I had two fields when i set them up i set as "notempty". The club name and a short club name. i did not allow these two fields to be edited by the FE anyway so it was not a problem removing them. both fields had a value in them on the record that failed on a FE save.
this feature worked find until yesterday and i started getting the errors when i tried to save, even with no changes. when i get more time i will try to trace down the problem. i am sure that it is something else that i changed, things to not change without a reason. i just could not figure what was causing it. i went live with the site last thursday so i needed it fixed fast. i will go more traceing it down in a couple of weeks when things calm down, but removing the notempty turned the problem off for a while.
i will send you another message if i can pin it down more.
Thanks again.