Calculation Engine (Define Fields)

Hey everyone! When I create a new record in my solution, I am brought to the first field (Field1)on my detail layout. What I want to know is how do I enforce that a value must be entered into (Field1) before proceeding (tabbing) to the next field (Field2). Basically, I do not want (Field1) to be blank/empty before any other changes are made to the record. I have FM Butler's DoScript plug-in, but I still am unable to achieve the results I'm looking for. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, Jason

I am thinking of changing my OS to Linux. Can I run FMP 8.5?

Hi, I'm working on an already implemented FM DB. I know that in Access or SQL we can change from number to text without losing any content. Is it also true in FM? Can I change a number field to a text one without losing any contents? Thank you

I am looking for the method of creating a record that requires the data in two (or more) fields be unique. Thanks in advance.

I have just started to ues FileMaker and got a few questions: 1. I designed a database with several accounts. How can I display the current account name in a text box? 2. I inserted a time symbol but the time doesn't update unless I refresh the window. Is there a way to solve the problem?

Is there a way to let user enters the date by typing the day first then month? like 29/11 rather than 11/29. I got no problems changing the date format to display ddmmyyyy but no luck for the inputting portion, thanks.

how would i write a script that would always give me tomorrow's appointments. I need a formula that = "today + 1" , but i don't know how to write it ...

Hello, I have a question about formatting a text box. I am building a database for the chemistry lab that I work in. We want to keep track of our chemical inventory. I have a field in my database for entering in the chemical formula. I would like to format the field so that whenever a number is typed into the field it is always a subscript. I don't want any letters to be subscripts, just numbers. I'm not sure if this is possible but if anyone has an idea it would help me out a lot. thanks js22

Okay this is kind of complicated for me at least. I need to be able to do a calculation based off a specific field in another table. and which field is determined by a value list on another table For example: I have a table called currencies with fields as: Currency Name Currency symbol Exchange Rate I have lets say 3 records 1 is Dollars,USD, 1 2 is Pounds, BPD, (current rate) 3 is Euro, EUR, (current rate) Now I have another table Product Price (all of these are in dollar values only) I have fields of Retail Price Cost of Goods Current Margin these are easy math no problems here BUT: I have a prod…

I would like to have my "Name Title Male" field and my "Name Title Female" field together with "/" in between. That part is easy using the "&" symbol to concatenate within a calculation and placing "/" between them. But when there is no spouse and one of the fileds is blank it displays "Mr./" which is obviously no good. I created a new field just for the "/" symbol and tried a variety of calculations including "If(IsValid(Name Title Male and Name Title Female);"/";"")". My assumption was that only when both fields are populated will it show "/" otherwise it will show nothing. What am I doing wrong? -Marc

How do you force the validation of a field to occur right after you tab out of that field, and not only when committing the modified record ? Presently, I have Validated by calculation active, and it works fine, trapping any invalid entries I make in this field, but it only happens when I leave the record (next, previous, etc). What am I forgetting to do ? Thanks.

how would i write a script that would always give me tomorrow's appointments. I need a formula that = "today + 1" , but i don't know how to write it

Hi all. I have one question. In selecting serial numbers, are there any difference in having leading zeros such as INV00003 or just INV3? I would prefer the latter as it looks less messy but I would like to get the opinion of FM gurus on this.

Sometimes customers of mine enter their shipping address with german characters. Is there any way to have the german characters translated into english ones so that the shipping address is correct?

Hello. I thought this would be simple, but I can't find any other posts on this. I have a script that inserts files into containers. In some cases they will be plain text files. And in some of those cases, I want to be able to use scripts on the text data stored in the container. So, is there a function or method to just grab the ascii data somehow? Some limitations: everything is pretty much script-driven, and this is for a cross-platform runtime, so using a plugin or apple-script is pretty much out of the question.

i don't even know how to call this but what need is a field that i can add a day/month/year and have a warning valadation message appear 11 months in the future to remind someone of an expiration date. any clues.

I am totally new to Filemaker and am hoping that someone within the forums can point me in the right direction. Before I found this forum, I purchased "FileMaker Pro 8.5 Essential Training" from lynda.com and it has some good information most of which I believe will help as I get further along in this project however, it does not give any information regarding the initial database. I am totally stumped with the tables and fields portion of this. I cannot seem to wrap my mind around how to make my project work in Filemaker. I am trying to recreate what appears to be a database written in some other program but it appears to be a very simple program/database. The database i…

I am having problems with sending e-mail through FMP and I think I discovered the problem. Some fields have unnecessary spaces or carriage returns which translates into some ASCII boxes that Outlook doesn't like. As a result, the e-mails don't go out. Can anyone help me with a way that I can cure this problem without having to check each record one by one? Can I define the field so that these carriage returns or spaces are eliminated also ensuring that it doesn't happen during data entry? Thanks in advance for any help on this.

My db consists of transcripts of interviews. For analytical purposes, I want to count how frequently certain words appear. The PatternCount function almost, but not quite, gets me what I want. The problem is this: Suppose I want to know how often the word "my" appears in a line of transcript. I can use PatternCount(Transcript::Text ; "my") But this results in a lot of "false positives", e.g. "academy" and "Jeremy". I could eliminate these by using the search string " my" (with a prepended space), but then I miss any time the word "my" appears at the beginning of the text. Surely there must be some way to do a pattern count for whole words, right? Or …

Okay, basic set-up, I have stored a reference in a container field to a file. When I double-click the container field, the file (a Word document) opens up. Easy. But what I want is for a copy of the document to open, so that the original remains untouched/uneditable. I realize that I could accomplish this by locking my original file (so that when it opens, it will be read-only), but I need my file to remain unlocked for other purposes. Any simple solutions?

I have set up a database of sound effects, which are stored on the hard drive. By using the quicktime option of a container field, this enables me to realte each record to the audition file and then to audition each effect. There are two (related?) problems. If I move the Filemaker database to a different location, then the database tracks the move and it all still still works. However if I move the sound files to a different location, Filemaker loses them and still looks at the original location. Secondly it would be good to have a 'save' button which then copies the sound just auditioned into a folder set aside for the new audio project. Any ideas?

We've got a field in FM that holds HTML used for eBay auction descriptions. This HTML is generated dynamically using an ASP script. The field in FM that holds this is simply a single line that they paste their HTML into. It's not meant to see the entire contents of the field, just so that they have ability to populate it and see that it is populated. So, all you see in this field within FM is the very first line of the pasted HTML. The problem I'm having is that because the HTML is generated from an ASP script, the ASP code at the top of the page gets left out of View Source, and as such, it leaves a blank line at the top of the HTML code. When this is pasted in…

Hello all, i am trying to parse a logfile which begins with a timestamp like this "1146707632" . on mac osx, running date -r 1146707632 show that it means Thu May 4 09:53:52 HKT 2006 . is there a sane way to calculate timestamps to unix / epoch time and back? thanks a lot, overrider

Hallo, I tried to find another topic to answer my question... bad luck or bad finding skills : I'm trying to count the number of different values in a text or data field. eg: Field -> date 1-1-2006 present in 3 records 2-1-2006 present in 6 records 3-1-2006 present in 9 records my desired outcome should be 3 (3 different dates in 18 records) "count" function returns 18 : I need this to average a number of contacts (1 each record) by working days as in previous example: 18 (contacts) / 3 (worked days) = 6 contact per day (average) I'm just switched to FM 8.5 Advanced I appreciate any help. Thanks :

This is one of those things I know I could do if I could just find an example of something similar. In lieu of a more robust connection with another tool we use at work (which is ancient and not going to be updated), I'd like to create a quick method for pasting in some data from the old tool and cleaning it up and just showing the data we care about (via an auto-enter calculation step). The data I can copy/paste is multiple lines of text, with the individual field data separated by tabs. I want to paste this into a text field and strip out all but two values per line (the positions of which I can always determine by counting the tabs. So, each line would look l…

Hi, i am encountering a problem here i cant solve... : Take for example person A added a new record1 into table1, person B is able to view all records via table1. If A is to edit any fields of record1, is there a way whereby any changes are saved for viewing later while only displaying the latest changes to person B? Not sure whether i am making any sense here... Something like this. Person A new record in the table: x1 y1 z1 After editing: x1 y1 z1 x1 y2 z2 B can only see x1 y2 z2 but i want to be able to save both. The records consist of many fields so if possible any updates can be only specific to the field and not just adding a whole new…

I have a script that reads: GO TO FIELD (Gizmos[4]). This script always takes me to the 4th repetition. What I would prefer to do is select which repetition I want, based upon a calculation. If, for example, the value in another field =5, I would like the script to take me to the 5th repetition. Any ideas how to select this repetition based upon another field calculation? Thanks, Jarvis

I'm trying to do a very basic calculation in a report based on two summary fields. The data in the summary fields is working correctly within the sub summary p mart but the calculation appears to be doing it's math on the found set. What am I missing here?

I have a number field with 5 repetitions. The values are populated with a scripts that pastes a value into a specific repetition. I would like to keep a running total of the values for all 5 repetitions. For example: Rep 1 = 5 Rep 2 = _____ Rep 3 = 4 Rep 4 = 4 Rep 5 = _______ Current total of all Reps = 13 Any ideas how to do this? Thanks, Jarvis

I have 7k records in a table, each with a unique serial number ID. The field is a number field. (The serials auto enter in increment of 1). I want to get the highest serial value in the current set (or even all records in the table) It seemed so logical to use MAX(_ID) to get this, but it only gives me the value of the current record. Does MAX only work from the perspective of a related TO calculating the MAX value in the "child" TO? Isn't there a function that gives you the max value in the current table in the current found set?

I went to update the validation calculation for a field and got an error: "Unknown Error: 1218." and I am unable to enter the validation calculation. A inspection of the database shows that this happens on 23 other fields. The fields that have the error are shown to be validated by a calculation in the field definition but not in the DDR. I tried to Recover the database but it did not find any problems and problem I am having still exists in the recovered copy. I checked all of my backups and it looks like the problem happened three weeks ago. The database is in the final stages of developement so there is no data I actually care about. I just ne…

Can someone help me with this. When I use the checkboxes or radio buttons in FMP 8 they are too light making it hard to make out what was or wasn't selected. How can this be corrected? - Wagner

Hi all I am writing a new database where i am using check boxes for all the people that have are to read an entry. What i want to do is find a way to automatically uncheck their name from the list using a script - does anyone know how to do this??? regards paul

I am maintaining a 6.0 database for a client and though I'm reasonably familiar with FM basics, this is eluding me. I have two tables. One is a order table and the other is a product table. The order page has a data input layout and an invoice layout. The data input layout is formatted for 9 point and the invoice page is 12 point. There is a lookup of a product description on the order page from the product table based on a product ID. It works fine. The problem is the formatting of the size of the text is taken from the product table instead of the default formatting of the orders page. The product table is formatted for 9 point and the invoice from the…

hi newbie here. I am creating a solution for my optometry practice. I have a layout which has all the visit data. Prescription, vision, ect. I would like to have a Last visit field which auto-enters the last visit. should I use the getnthrecord function? or is there another way to display this? -Kevin