Vin

Bingo! Thank you Queue. I was previewing from a different route and not getting the sort order correct. Six years of Filemaker and I'd never noticed that before. Vincent O'Brien

Has anybody come across what may be a bug, a problem with reports not appearing properly, when I set up a grouped and sorted report everything is fine it prints and all is as it should be,then I close the file and reopen it and none of the grouping is retained I just end up with a list in the body. I've just repeated this about 3 times in a row. FMP 5.5, Mac os 9.0.4 I'll post more details if anyone can help. Thanks Vincent O'Brien

Thanks for your prompt reply Live Oak, thats exactly what I was hoping to hear I should be able to do it in under fifty files, its also just struck me that all the files would be extremely 'reuseable' in other applications. Anybody got a pointer as to how to view/enter the data, my first thought was using an 'Interface file' with portals set to 'create related records' but maybe someone knows a better way, or where I could find some example files? Once again thanks to Live Oak and rest of the Forum, Vincent O'Brien

Hi everyone, I have a developed a database system for the company that I work for which contains about ten files eg.Contacts,Invoices,current projects,Timekeeping etc. The contacts file which is the largest contains about 3000 records and the whole system totals about 20Mb. I am currently studying Object Oriented system development and have been experimenting with a rewrite of my database, I have normalized my files and broken my system down into Classes and objects,my Contacts file is now complete and has been turned into four or five seperate smaller files. My question is has anyone else used this method to develop Filemaker? and what are their experiences/difficulties. I haven't done much testing yet except give it a quick run over the network and was surprised by the increase in performance, I realise that this method will probably triple the amount of files needed but they will all be very small. Hope someone out there will be willing to share their knowledge and experience. Thanks

Hi,try an 'If' script on the second field ie. if Value of first field equalls 'paint' set second field to required values. Sorry to be so vague as I'm using my PC at the moment,with no Filemaker so I cannot test it.

Hello the Guardian, you make this field take its value list from itself ie. in the define value list dialogue box you have the option to use values from a field just select itself, I dont know how well this will work in a portal though and beware of performance problems if you are trying to display a very large value list. If anybody has any experience of displaying large value lists and noticed a speed drop I would be glad to hear from them I have used this method to allow users to select names from another file and so create a relationship

Thanks Live Oak looks like you've pointed me in the right direction. I"m going to do it now,keep you posted thanks for the prompt reply Vin

Please help, I am having a very basic design problem which I just cannot get my head around, I have a sytem off about 10 files - Contacts,Invoices,Projects,Images,etc. Problem: I need to be able to set up a mailing database related to the 'contacts file' by 'contact Id', I need to store details of the mailing ie. mailing history .What if I make each record in Mailings equall a seperate mailling and show all the contacts in a portal does this sound sensible or am I missing something, I would also need to "mark" the records in the contacts file. Assistance greatly Appreciated Vin

I think it's possibly an imac problem, my imac used to sporadically fail to read some or most of a disc which had been been burned in different 'sessions' other times the same disc would would read perfectly, Have you tried Apples CD rom updates or firmware updates