FileMaker Pro 2023

Hello. I'm accustomed to working with MS Access, but have begun looking into FileMaker. I've watched a few tutorial videos first, then began making a simple music collection database. I noticed that when FM creates a table, it automatically adds five fields. One of them is Primary Key. It's designated as a Text field. I've always been under the impression a Primary and Foreign Key field have to be numbers (preferably auto-generated), and that you should use numbers because a text string can be mistyped. May I please ask why FM makes the Primary Key a text field and not an actual number? Thank you.

Hello All, I am running Filemaker 23 on the FM Cloud. I have a "storage" Database where I keep a number of files for our projects. We tried using external storage and I do that for some files but we have a lot of remote workers and a terrible VPN so using a file server is not possible is some situations. So we create and save docs to the database and use a portal to view them for each project. We open the files to look at them and attach them to emails, which works like a charm. But on occasion we need to edit them. My question is, is there a way to open a file (pdf or excel) from the database, edit it and then save it back to the database? Currently, we h…

how to create a script that finds or search a record in a portal?

I want to create a script that finds a category "Tuition Fee" in a portal and then when i add a subject the summary amount of added subjects will divide into two (2) and then set to the two "Tuition Fee" fields. What i mean is the divided amount will set to the two fields also named "Tuition Fee"

I'm struggling with a master-detail layout, particularly with the Sort and Filter features. While in Layout mode, when I double-click on the left-side portal (which only displays first and last names), I can't access the "Sort and Filter" options under Portal Setup because I'm showing records from the Current table. My goal is to have new records appear at the top of the portal row when created, rather than at the bottom. How can I achieve this? Thanks.

I have an semester field. I want to display a text "required" if the field is empty, and hide the text if the field is not empty

Hello everyone, in my template, there are multiple fields that initially appear grayed out when a new record is created. Upon clicking into any of these fields, I aim for the gray field to transition to white, accompanied by a red outline encircling the field. Additionally, positioned towards the right side of each field, there's a rectangular shape tool included for aesthetic purposes which I would like to change to red as well. To provide a clearer understanding of my vision, I've attached two screenshots for reference. As usual, many thanks.

I've developed a Search field that operates smoothly with single words, retrieving all relevant records associated with that word. For instance, when you search for "guitarist," it scans all fields across records for occurrences of "guitarist." Now, I'm aiming to enhance its functionality. I'd like to incorporate the ability to search for multiple terms, such as "guitarist, vocalist," separated by a comma. This expanded search should cover all fields and records. Thank you for your assistance.

Hey folks, I have a test file containing 28 "Total" records. I'm exploring FM's Export feature and want to import the data into a duplicate of my test file with all existing records removed. However, upon importing, I found that the total records in the duplicate file amount are 46, not 28. 18 of the 46 records are blank. How do I remove these empty records from the original test file, which I believe are being transferred to the duplicate test file? Thanks.

Hey folks, I'm having some trouble with this seemingly simple task. Is there a method in Layout mode to uniformly resize the text box, ensuring consistent height and width regardless of the text length? I have a batch of over 50 of these and would greatly appreciate a way to adjust them collectively. I've included a screenshot for clarity. Thanks for your assistance!

Hey folks, I've set up a basic portal featuring a few fields and a container. One of these fields is labeled "Artist name". While in browse mode, if you input the name of an artist into this field and hit enter on the keyboard, a matching photo pops up automatically. To begin with, I'm assuming that the name entered (e.g. Michael Jackson) in the field must match the name of the image (Michael Jackson.jpg). Any tips on how to achieve this? Thanks so much.

Hello everyone, I'm interested in changing just the text color from black to white or any other selected color when highlighting a portal row. I understand this involves Conditional Formatting, but I'm uncertain about the specific Formula or Value required. Any guidance would be appreciated. Thanks!

Hi, I've come across a few designs where, in browse mode, hovering over a portal allows for scrolling. Can someone explain how this functionality is achieved? Thanks!

Hey folks, I'm still rather new to FMP and this one is a little tough to put together. I created a field within a portal and it does what it's suppose to. All I'm trying to do is add is an ellipsis (...) once the word hits the end of the field and wraps around. Once I click on the field I can actually see all of its info. Click out of the field and it returns back to the ellipsis towards the end of the field. Any help would really be appreciated. Thanks so much.

I have a solution in which we can drag audio files on (we use the MBS plugin for drag/drop), and we parse out the data from the name. An example is: Some Job JW "Some Title".wav In the above example, the client = "Some Job", the composer = "JW", and the title = "Some title". Each of those is a field in the database "tracks". From that information we can look up all the other information we need about that particular track. So far so good. We can also have some tracks with multiple composers, separated by dashes in the name, so they could be JW-AB, JW-AB-CD, etc. Again it's no problem to search for that in the composer field. However, it gets tricky if the inform…

I work for a millwork company. We have numerous wood suppliers. There are many species, qualities, and thicknesses of wood and each vendor has a different price for each item. I have a layout where I enter the parameters of the item we are building along with the species, quality, thickness, etc of the wood we want to use for the item. There is a relationship between the calculation layout and the wood supplier layout. I have a portal that shows the different vendors that have the product I wish to use. I want my layout to populate with the lowest price rather than the first price that matches the criteria. How do I do that?

Please: How do I Set Field by Name [FieldName ; empty]? Thank you 🙂

I'm trying to write a script to export a found set into multiple excel files based on grouping records by a particular filed. So I have a found set, which are all records with todays date Each record has a client assigned in the CLIENT field. I'd like to script a loop to export all records matching the Client name in the first record, then move onto the next Client name found and export those records. Some days there may be 5 different client names and other days there could be 2. Any help with advising what the correct step would be for splitting the found set would be great. thanks

Hello All, Hopefully I can explain this without confusing anyone too much. First off, I am running FM Pro 2023 on the Filemaker Cloud. I have a solution that is tracking jobs in the field. I have a job table with a job line item table that includes the material used for the job. those line items are entered through a portal on the job layout. Then I have a time sheet table with line items for an individual employee for a specified day. These are entered daily also through a portal. There can be multiple jobs per time sheet. Each time sheet is per employee per day For tracking, this works great, I have a relationship between the time sheet line items an…

I'm trying to write a script to import records from a secondary FMP database. Each FMP file to import will have it's own unique name, but will have the same prefix eg. ImportFile_230525.fmp12 Is there a way of scripting a wild card filename......like import any file in a specified folder that begins with "ImportFile_23" ? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. thanks

I want to access document records in table Doc from many different tables For that I create a variable $Doc I want to set the $Doc variable as either: Get(ActiveFieldTableName) & "::" & fkDoc ; or Get(ScriptParameter) & "::" & fkDoc FM rejects it saying that it can't find the table. I've tried all sorts of different places to put the " ", without success. Is there any way I can achieve the desired result? Just in case it is not clear aboe, the Script Parameter would be the calling table name

Hi all, Please could you assist? When I create a new part number in orders layout, the part must be created in the parts table only if the part number does not exist My script goes into an endless loop and does not add the part

Hi, We have integrated FileMaker with PHP via the native web publishing engine and establishing ODBC connection with the FileMaker databases and PHP. Recently, we are facing an issue of retriveing data from FileMaker Server 15 using PHP. The PHP throws a generic error as shown in the attached screenshot and there are not information on the Web publishing core log. Any help regarding this will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

I posted this in the FM Cloud forum but nobody responded ;-( I have searched all over for help on this and can't find anything at all. I have 2 d/bs on one FMCloud host that has a Connected Drive. Both d/bs have a Doc table with fields to create a link to open the relevant document. Until now, each user has been able to open a synced version of the document in a Dropbox folder on their local computer. Now I have a user who can't download FM Pro to her computer so I need to store the docs on FMCloud in a sub-folder on the Connected Drive for docs exclusively for this app. How do I create the sub-folder? How do I and all users upload docs to that fol…

Hypothetical file : The file has one table with three fields. Field one is a date. Field two is data. Field three is data. I would like to enter date and data. If any date in a new record is the same date already entered then you would do a search for the record that has the original date entered. Now you want delete the new record with the duplicate date. With only one record now showing, you can now edit that record and save. I want this to be invisible to the user. Saving stuff, I'll work on later Thanks

Our database is made up of different locations, towns, sites etc. There are thousands of entries, each day different locations are updated with current information. Is there anyway to do a search for all records that we haven't updated in say 6 months or a range of dates? I'm looking for records that may have not been updated in a while.

Hi I am mail merging 1000 records with one word document using Scribe. I would ideally like to mail merge them all into one document but I cannot find documentation to show me how to do this. Alternatively I am then trying to save each PDF with a unique name using the URN from that file. The error returned is Error 102 field missing. the field is on the layout and in the file. I have created a variable with the contents of the field and then use that in the name but it keeps giving me this error.

I'm working with a Filemaker database which is imported from a mysql server every night. It's imported, rather than set up as a direct external data source, for reasons of speed - it's just too slow to use otherwise. So up to now I have been doing an "add" import, by adding all the records from the external source, deleting all the omitted records if it succeeds, otherwise on an error, deleting the new imported records, and then showing the omitted ones again. Because of this, I've been careful to run the script after hours, because I worry that connected users may have trouble during this process, or records may be locked by users, and so the script would fail and leave …

I have a calendar layout that I'm using for a classroom. On the List layout, each row is a week. Each day has its own Topic field and a Lesson Field (e.g. MonTopic, TuesTopic, MonLesson, TuesLesson, etc.) I have a Lesson table and a Topic table, and each Lesson record includes a topic field which is used to join the two tables. The Calendar table is not related to either table. On the Calendar layout, the topic field is filled in via a value list which is generated from the TopicName field on the Topics table. On this Calendar layout, I would like the Lesson field to be filled via a Lesson Value List that is filtered by topic after topic is selected. …

Our Filemaker Server and clients were updated to version 20 recently. Since the update a number of my files which are accessed over webdirect do not show the contents of portals. I've tried recreating the portals, checking the relationships, starting and stopping the database on the server etc but I can not get the portals to display on Webdirect. The webdirect versions were working at the start of the week on version 19. Has anyone else come accross a similar problem? Kind Regards, Dave.

Hello, I've been a Filemaker programmer for a long time, but on occasion I lose track of something that I should understand. A file has somehow gotten its date input formats switched around. My preference is to be able to enter DD/MM/YYYY, but I've done something to cause it to insist on YYYY/MM/DD. Related question, possibly? What is causing this dialog to appear, when opening just one particular database file? Not the same file as in the first query? Thank you!

I have a server hosted app. It sends emails to clients but when a user send the email it queues it and then the server runs a script to send the emails. This all works fine. The issue I am having is as follows: 1. When creating a new e-mail (new record/request) there is about a 10 second delay when entering the first field in the table and then the rest of the fields that are updated is quick. If I cancel the record creation and then create the email again there is no delay when entering the first field This only happens when access the server over a VPN into the rooms but not when accessing on a local PC in the rooms. I assume this has…

Hello all, I am hoping that the fact I don't feel well is why I can't figure this out as I think it should be simple. I have a script trigger attached to a field OnObjectEnter, however the field is part of a portal row and navigated by the tab order, so when the user tabs out of the previous field, it goes to the field with the trigger, but the script is not triggered. Is this a normal behavior? Must the user "click" into the field for the script to trigger? If so, what other options do I have?

What is the point of get(CacheFilePath) and get(CacheFileName) functions? Is there utility in reading these files? Are we going to have to monitor their size and manually flush cache files in a future version? TIA Jerry

I created a file called "Open Notes File" I want that file to execute a script that opens a Notes file and hides the window. But when I try the following, it hides "Open Notes File" instead of the Notes file. Open File [Open hidden:On ; "Notes" ] How do I make this work so it hides the window for Notes instead of the Open Notes File?