How to declare local var global

I am reading data in from a grid and for the life of me, cannot seem to find a way to make a local var global work. I got some help here recently and still seem to be having problems. I have posted a small portion of the code for your reference and would be grateful if someone could ncheck it and tell me where I am going wrong? I have declared var titleitem = ''; outside of the function and need to find a way to create a global var using var = act_item portion of the code. I thought that ommiting the var, this became a global var and could be used outside of the function. In this case var titleitem. This would then be used in dialog as part of the title. $('#actionform').dialog({title : titleitem});

All that is returned in console.log is (an empty string).

Thanks

<!--- function to action data -->
<script type="text/javascript">

                var titleitem = '';

</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
function action(com,grid) {


        if(com == 'Action') {
                if( $('.trSelected').length>0 ) {
            var items = $('.trSelected');
                        var itemlist ='';
                        for(i=0;i<items.length;i++){
                            itemlist+= items[i].id.substr(3);
                        }
                var act_id = $("tr.trSelected td:nth-child(1) div").text();
                var act_location = $("tr.trSelected td:nth-child(2) div").text();
                var act_service = $("tr.trSelected td:nth-child(3) div").text();
                var act_activity = $("tr.trSelected td:nth-child(4) div").text();
                var act_department = $("tr.trSelected td:nth-child(5) div").text();
                var act_company = $("tr.trSelected td:nth-child(6) div").text();
                var act_address = $("tr.trSelected td:nth-child(7) div").text();
                var act_user开发者_StackOverflow社区 = $("tr.trSelected td:nth-child(8) div").text();
                act_item = $("tr.trSelected td:nth-child(9) div").text();
                $titleitem = act_item;

+++++UPDATE++++++

$("#actionform").dialog({
            autoOpen: false,
            resizable: true,
            modal: true,
            title: "Input new intake"+titleitem,
            width: 470,
            beforeclose: function (event, ui) {
                if(flag==1){
                    flag=0;
                    jAlert("You have successfully actioned\n\rBox: "+act_item+"\n\r",
                                                     'New Intake successfull');

                }

                $("#ACT_message").html("");
            },
            close: function (event, ui) {
                $("#ACT_action").get(0).reset();
                $("#ACT_message").html("");

            }

        });

Yes, this...

act_item = $("tr.trSelected td:nth-child(9) div").text();

...will be global, but I think it is better to make it explicitly global by declaring it outside your function...

var act_item;
function action(com,grid) {
    ...
}

...or by explicitly making it a property of window...

function action(com,grid) {
    ...
    window.act_item = $("tr.trSelected td:nth-child(9) div").text();
}

Although there is often a better solution than to pollute the global namespace.

Also, be aware that this...

$titleitem = act_item;

...is a different variable name from your initial one because it starts with a $.

If your globals are not working, make sure they're declared/initialized before you're trying to use them.

(Your code doesn't show where you're doing $('#actionform').dialog({title : titleitem});.)

You need to name the variable "titleitem" and not "$titleitem" in your "action" function.