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FileMaker Weetbicks

A blog by Daniel Wood in Affiliate Blogs

  • Entries

    110

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About this blog

Brought to you by Digital Fusion Ltd. http://www.filemakerweetbicks.com

Entries in this blog

Suppressing Self-Referencing Auto Enter Fields

Using an auto-enter calculation on a field is a great way to populate its contents when other fields are modified, including itself. But what do you do if you want to use a calculation that references itself without having it trigger its own auto-enter calculation? The answer lies in thinking outside the calculation.... Read the Full Article Here…

"As You Type" Window Naming and Selection

In applications such as Mail, you may notice that window names can be dynamic, dependent upon the contents of a field. In the case of Mail, the subject dictates the window name. In this article I'll demonstrate a way this can be replicated for FileMaker, and more importantly, how these dynamic windows can easily be selected again once created… Read the Full Article Here…

Thinking Outside the Loop

If you have spent any time developing in FileMaker, or programming in almost any language, you will be familiar with the concept of a loop. When scripting your loops you probably have a favorite method that you use. This article presents and compares a number of looping techniques that can be used in FileMaker in an attempt to locate the fastest method… Read the Full Article Here…

A Lightweight Cross-Tabular Data Entry Method

One of the shortcomings of FileMaker is its inability achieve easy cross-tabular reports and data entry in a normalized structure. There are various techniques to replicate cross-tabular interfaces, but they often involve many relationships for either the columns/rows, or are for display only. The goal of this article is to present a lightweight method for cross-tabular data entry using as few relationships & fields as possible. Read the Full Article Here…

Ditch those Flush Caches, Use Cartesian Join Instead!

All too often, the Refresh Window script step is used with the 'Flush Cached Join Results' option checked. Sometimes this is through lack of understanding, but other times it is required to refresh those pesky relationships which have trouble re-evaluating. This article explains why Flush Cache can be detrimental on performance, and offers an alternative and more efficient method for refreshing relationships… Read the Full Article Here…

Quick Checkbox Selection of Portal Records for Users

There are many ways in which users can select records, so that each user can keep their own unique selection. This particular method uses a portal showing related records as a selection tool. The main technique involves using a value list & checkbox to easily achieve selection with no scripting required… Read the Full Article Here…

The Case of the Disappearing Sub-Summary

Recently I was working on building a large layout which is used for both printing and data-entry. One of the requirements was I needed to show a lot of "private" information that the data-entry person needed to see, but was not to be printed. The issue was solved using a very cool property of sub-summary parts… Read the Full Article Here…

Creating Tidy Popup Windows

Using Popup windows is common FileMaker technique for showing more information, managing dialogs, and running wizards to name a few. However, all to often little care is given to the aesthetics of creating and positioning a popup, leading to an unpolished and half-finished feel. This article gives some pointers on how you can create popups that are clean, efficient, and correctly positioned… Read the Full Article Here…

Sorting Records Using Your Own Custom Ordering

You may be familiar with the Sort Records dialog in FileMaker which allows you to display records sorted by one or more fields. What you may be less familiar with is the ability to more explicitly define a sort order with the assistance of a value list. This article gives an introduction to this often overlooked feature, and provides a few examples along the way… Read the Full Article Here…

How Many FM Dialogs Can I Open in 60 seconds... and other Musings

I've always wondered how many FileMaker dialogs you can have open at once, or more specifically, how many can you "string" together before hitting the limit, if there is one. So, though a little trial and error, I set out about trying to find the path to the most dialogs, and here is what I came up with… Read the Full Article Here…

A Very Nice Way to Format a Sorted Portal Using Conditional Formatting

In this article I will demonstrate a very nice way to format a portal using conditional formatting. This method is suitable for portals whose underlying relationship is sorted by a grouping/category field - similar to if it were like a sub-summary report. The easiest way to explain it is to just get stuck in with an example, so here we go.... Read the Full Article Here…

Safe Scripting: Check Before You Do Anything!

When writing a script to carry out a particular task, ask yourself what conditions need to be true for this script to run properly. Sometimes, a script will do something which can potentially fail, and cause a cascade effect or errors, IF the initial conditions were incorrect. It is always a good idea to check for suitable conditions before doing anything in the script… Read the Full Article Here…

Join My Table Pt 3 - Putting on the Finishing Touches & Extra Features

In part two, I demonstrated how to implement the basics of the join table solution in FileMaker. While the solution works fine as an illustration for join tables, it lacked many of the basic interface features that would make it a usable solution. In part three, I will show how to implement some of these features, namely the following: Better selection of a Student for an Enrollment, Deletion of Enrollments & Prevention of “over-enrolling” a course… Read the Full Article Here…

Making Creation of Records in a Portal More User Friendly

FileMaker provides us with the ability to create related records directly from a portal. This is a great and easy way to generate records without the need to script the process, and for that reason it is a popular technique among both new users and Developers alike. This article extends this concept further and suggests various user interface improvements for making data entry in this method more user friendly… Read the Full Article Here…

Join My Table Pt 1 - Intro

Perhaps one of the most asked questions that I see asked on FileMaker Forums is in regards to join tables. While some users have an understanding of what they are, they may lack the FileMaker skills to implement them. Others are unfamiliar with the concept altogether, but will explain their real word example. Usually it is a prime candidate for a join table. This article provides a real world example that will give you an understanding of why join tables are important, and in what circumstances

Conditional Value Lists Pt 2 - Building for Use in Portals

Part two in this three-part series deals with constructing conditional value lists that are to be used within a portal. In part one, the conditional value lists built were for use on a single record on a layout. Portals however may contain many rows, each row being a record with it's own field values… Read the Full Article Here…

Conditional Value Lists Pt 3 - Assisting with the Selection Process

In part one, we built a couple of basic conditional value lists to select sport names & equipment items. Part two demonstrated how the conditional value lists could be tweaked for use within a portal. The last part in the series gives some basic techniques to help the selection process from your drop-downs, and ensure that the chosen values remain consistent and correct… Read the Full Article Here…

Conditional Value Lists Pt 1 - What Are They & How to Build Them

Conditional Value lists may be the most asked about piece of functionality on the FileMaker Cafe. To try and provide a thorough and easy to follow explanation of what they are and how they work, I decided to write an article on the subject and build a small example file to help illustrate the technique… Read the Full Article Here…

Building a Timed-Delay Search Filter for WAN Performance

With the introduction of script triggers in FileMaker 10, live filtering or portals was made possible. Numerous techniques were introduced to help achieve this. In conjunction with existing filtering techniques, the "Live" aspect was achieved usually by introducing an OnObjectModify script trigger to the filter entry field. As soon as the user enters a value into the field, the triggered script would force a save of the fields contents, thus updating the relationship in question, which in turn u

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