I successful globally added an appeal to selected records with admin>globally add but what is the difference between global add and change? can they be used interchangeably? they seem to do the same thing? also, I only have global add (not change) option in Admin - is that right? thanks

Add is just that - adding a new record such as an appeal, action(emal),attribute, etc. Change is taking an existing record and making a change to it (for example, if you forgot the bank was closed on Veteran's day and started processing gifts - you could use global change with a query of those gifts to change the gift date to the next day)

I would check with your supervisor if you have rights to global change, etc. Some folks have global add so they can send a bulk email - but they would have no need to globally change anything.