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FileMaker 2026 Released

FileMaker Magazine

A blog by FileMaker Magazine in Affiliate Blogs

  • Entries

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    75,137

Entries in this blog

Choosing the Proper Data Storage

One of the more troublesome questions we ask ourselves as developers is "Am I doing this the right way?". And, while it applies to most all situations, it most certainly applies to data structure. If you don't structure your data well enough, then you either have to restructure it later, and migrate, or try to solve some of your problems in very odd ways. Fortunately, the variety of ways you can actually store data presents a lot of options depending on what type of software you need to create

Best Default Fields

When you consider every little action you take while creating any type of software, if you add all those actions up, you can end up with a lot of extra repeated steps. In consideration of all the fields you may be creating for various utility purposes, along with your normal data fields, it's always a nice idea to take advantage of features which may save you those little bits of time. In this video, and the provided sample file, you'll benefit from using FileMaker's somewhat hidden feature of

Hide Object When Calculations

Sometimes it's nice to revisit the basics and make sure you've covered all your bases when it comes to what you can do with certain features. In this video, I take a good look at using the Hide Object When calculation and cover the various options I'm familiar with. This includes uses for the most basic True/False to an increasingly complex calculation which starts adding more and more operators. I also go over the use of containment objects and how they can simplify the use of the Hide Object

Access Controlled Button Bars

If it's not absolutely necessary, preventing a user from accessing parts of your software is a bit better than letting them know what's possible or what's hidden from them. It also allows a given group of users to focus better without presenting options which may not apply to the functions they perform. In this video and technique file, we take a look at two tricks combined into one. We're making single segments of a button bar hide and show, without resizing, and we're doing this based on a us

Copying Filtered Portal Data

In FileMaker, once you've filtered a portal, which displays a subset of related data, there may be situations where you need to get that data out. A prime example is needing to further manipulate the data within a spreadsheet. A recent solution I was developing had this exact need. I needed to filter some financial data based on a wide date range. Yet, I still needed smaller subsets, think categories, of financial data and wanted to pull that data into a spreadsheet for a separate purpose. In

Saved Search Queries

While there are some features which FileMaker provides natively, I often wonder how heavily they are used. One feature in particular is the Saved Finds feature, which is only available in Find Mode. It's a great feature in terms of convenience, however, its implementation is right on top of the funky developer'ish UI. It's buried many levels deep within multiple dialogs (if you want to modify any of the saved searches) and it's just not as pretty as developing your own within a dedicated layout

Filtered Portal Record Counts

In FileMaker, some features seem like they should be an easy solve. Yet, the dynamic nature of creating something in FileMaker means its development simply can't account for all the possible things a developer might want to do. When it comes to showing the actual count of records being shown within a filtered portal one might think the solution would already be there. However, it's not. You have to apply some creating thinking along with a bit of inside know-how in order to correctly show the

Database Discovery & Intelligence

In the world of software development, there are few tools you simply can't live without. A debugger is the first which comes to mind; because no one gets their code exactly perfect the first time. Plus, it's always a matter of figuring things out until they work as expected or desired. There are also those "other" tools which you can't really live without. ESPECIALLY, if you're working with a solution file which was created by someone other than yourself! When you need to discover what the heck

Better Drop-down Lists

Oh the pain of a slow rendering layout! The other day I came across a painfully slow layout which was literally CRAWLING. It reminded me of one of my own situations where I needed to create a solution for some type of creative data input. This, of course, was based on FileMaker's input limitations between two types of fields. The choice of using a Drop-down list over a Pop-up menu field style was based on the type of input being managed. I didn't want the forced interaction of having to click,

Storing Secured Information

Every once in a while you need to store something with an extra bit of security. Maybe it's a password or some super secret text with a winning stock market strategy. Whatever it is, you don't just want to rely on the authentication, privilege set and possible EAR (encryption at rest) on the file. You want to store the data itself with even that much more security. By encrypting it with CryptEncryptBase64() of course! The trick is this. How do you capture that data, before it's written to the d

DataTables Deep Dive - Replacing Portals - Part 2

This is Part 2 of a series about using the DataTables JavaScript library in order to simply pull data you wish to display and doing so within a Web Viewer. While standard FileMaker Portals present one of the easiest methods for showing related data, it's now a viable option to simply use a Web Viewer to present data to the user. With the bi-directional support of JavaScript within FileMaker 19 and higher we can take advantage of what JavaScript does best - being fast! In this video we focus sp

DataTables Deep Dive - Replacing Portals - Part 1

Portals and list views represent one of the biggest reasons for using a database for managing data. You can view the data in a myriad of ways and FileMaker provides the tools to modify the views quite easily. FileMaker's list view happens to be the most powerful when compared to portals. We don't really have the same feature set presented within a portal. Using a portal it's an all or nothing approach to sorting by default and you can't really search the portal contents. You can certainly hack

Formatting Date, Time & Timestamp Values

What's the easiest way to format a FileMaker date, time or timestamp value? Using a custom function? Maybe... In this video, I'll show you a unique trick for getting a formatted date, time or timestamp value without using a Custom Function or any of FileMaker's Date or Time functions. Of course, I'll also provide you with one of the better custom functions for formatting date/time/timestamp values. The custom function in this technique file handles pretty much all possible variations of date/t

UI Portal Enhancements

Anyone can just throw everything they need within a portal. Adding a new field? Just throw it in the portal. But WAIT! The question is "Should you?". The fine art of determining what should end up in your portal is based on how the data and/or actions are being referenced/used. Is the frequency for editing the data high or low? If it's low, then maybe the user doesn't need field access. What is the frequency of record deletion? Low? Then, do you really need that obvious red trash can icon on ev

Mutually Exclusive Values

Value lists are one of the fundamental building blocks of any good UI built on top of a database system. Providing users with a preselected list of options to choose from helps the data entry process go faster and - is - just easier. When using value lists, there are times when you need to limit the number of selections of any given value to being used just once. You may also need to enforce that one of each of all possible values is used. In this video, we tackle both situations by enforcing

Big 3 Local Development Options

Being able to develop locally, as if the data and the server was right there on your local machine provides a nice advantage. You know how the solution will work when hosted, you can develop and test PSOS scripts effectively, and you're generally protected from client crashes. Plus, you're fully mobile if need be - it's all on one machine. This is where hosting your FileMaker solutions locally becomes a big advantage. This video showcases what I consider to be the Big 3 of local hosting. 1) You

Extracting System Paths - Media Archiving

In the process of creating a simple media archiving database I found I had used the same skill twice because of how FileMaker returns data from certain functions. Hence, I decided to provide you with my simple little start to a Media Archiving solution. Simply, it asks for a folder, then pulls the paths to all files from the selected, and enclosed, folders into the database. It's really a pretty simple thing because it's managed with one simple function from the BaseElements plug-in. However,

Universal List View Sorting

What makes FileMaker development so fun is the variety of different functions and script steps. They provide an almost infinite number of combinations to solve a wide variety of technical problems. There isn't always just "one way to do it". So, what happens when you stop to think about a more recent feature in light of how you've "always done it before"? Like... sorting... for example. Have you always simply attached the Sort script step to your list view headers and called it a day? What if y

Narrow vs. Wide Tables - Part 2

Continuing on with the two part series about Narrow vs. Wide tables, this video will go into how to best filter your data, especially if you have a large amount. It will present the data within the structure we'd created within the first video. Knowing the impact of data operations isn't just limited to the structure of your tables. It's also about how much data is loaded and shown to the user based on what the user needs to see. If you have a relationship resulting in hundreds of thousands of

Narrow vs. Wide Tables

Like any good craftsperson, you should know your tools and your methods for accomplishing things in the most efficient and best performing way. This is always most obvious when it comes to that every slowing FileMaker solution which started out innocently as a simple "helper" database. Then... it ended up being used for all kinds of things. Critical things even! It was thrown together based on how you mentally "see" the data and not how the data should have been structured. This is one of those

Extracting PDF Contents

It seems like it's taken decades for many businesses and government agencies to move from pushing paper into the digital age of transactions. Recently, I was reminded of this by heading into town hall and having to push a bit of paper myself. Banks and other financial institutions still actually offer paper options surprisingly. I guess being in the world of tech comes with its own biases. But, despite the seemingly slow adoption, the migration is still happening and more and more things are goi

Understanding External Authentication

Even if it's not a super interesting topic, and really only applies if you're managing a FileMaker server, it always pays to know how things work behind the scenes. If you've never used FileMaker's external authentication via LDAP then you'll want to watch this particular video. If you're creating any type of FileMaker solution which needs to know when your users both enter and exit the system, which especially applies to using external authentication, then you'll enjoy the super simple access

Migrating Themes

Recently, having had a conversation with a fellow developer about a FileMaker theme potentially causing issues with slow performance, it was asked about how it's possible to update a theme. Whether you simply want to update existing styles and/or remove and add others, there's only a few critical things you need to remember about updating and migrating a theme. If you can get those few things right, then making any number of updates to your existing theme can be quite easy to accomplish. The g

Customized PDF Output

FileMaker has had the ability to use an internal PDF writer since version 8. It has, however, not always had the ability to merge multiple PDFs into one master and make this work as seamlessly as possible. Being able to do this server side is a really BIG benefit! In this video, we take a look at a subscriber's question about a particular printed layout issue in conjunction with taking advantage of FileMaker's best possible output options. With the ability to Save Records As PDF we can certainl

Successful UI Design - Part 2

FileMaker themes are simply a collection of the popular CSS standards plus a few extra attributes which are FileMaker specific. Each element on your FileMaker layouts is defined by these CSS settings. They can be seen when extracting them from the clipboard, and if you know the right location to retrieve and store them, can be defined by any enthusiastic developer. When FileMaker, now Claris, first introduced themes they likely had the intention of allowing users and/or third parties to create

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