Peter Jago

Victory ! After a day or two of playing around with scripts and functions, and learning a lot along the way, I've come up with a one line script that removes the filename extensions of the imported pupil photos: REPLACE("destinationfieldname","SUBSTITUTE(sourcefieldname,".JPG","")") So "Lyons C.JPG" becomes "Lyons C"

Thanks Brian for your suggestion of a plug-in. I have recieved my copy of FM pro 5.5 and have started the learning curve. I downloaded the trial version of the plugin that you suggested. It took me a while to work out that there was a FM file to import pictures in a batch (I initially thought that I had to hard code it all by hand). This worked a treat! My next problem was how to combine this FM file full of photos with my Pupil DB? I set up a relationship between the two files and managed in bring in the photos.....great! I ought to be grateful for the progress made, I've been down or up this learning curve many times before. I am now trying to work out how to change the photo names in order to omit the file extension ".JPG" from each one. I suspect that it is either done via a script or a calculation field. Probably the former as I think that a calculation field will not work on data already brought in ? I'm having problems trying to get a script to do this. My push has been around using the SUBSTITUTE function but to no avail at the moment. Any ideas gratefully received!

Thanks again for the advice. I have ordered FileMaker Pro 5.5 . I can get a good educational price in this country (all in about 75 pounds). Looking forward to using it. I can see the way forward. Carry a PDA around during classes for data entry with either Pocket Excel or the PDA version of Filemaker. Download at the end of the day. Take pupil photos, rename and incorporate into pupil DB. Display pupil records with picture for parents (so I know who I'm talking about!)on a small laptop at parent's evening. If anyone has any experience of similar projects, I would be grateful of any advice. What is the best way of inputting large numbers of photos or links to them as easily as possible without having to do it individually? I am most impressed with the web site and enthusiasm shown for the product on the forums.

Thanks for the encouragement! I am on the way to being converted.I have downloaded a template (ID personnel card) from this website and this looks good .(The trial version of FM wouldnt install on this School NT network). I substituted my photo for one of the records in the template DB and this worked well.When I saw a photo in an image field under table view, I started to feel very positive about this. I worry a little about storing a lot of photos in a DB. I could eventually have around 600 (900 max). Will this be a problem regarding record recovery times? Is it better (easy?) to run the DB with photos stored elsewhere? My next problem is to try and find an image management tool that beats Cerious Thumbs + when it comes down to renaming jpegs and exporting them into a db such as FM pro 5. This software, good as it is with images,just doesn'do the job it claims to when you want to combine dbs. I presume that once I have renamed photos according to a field name in the FM db, that I can run a batch program to copy them in instead of inserting them one at a time ? P.S. The de facto standard books about ACCESS dbs in the shops are not helpful. They hardly ever show you how to do projects like this which must be fairly popular. I have yet to find a FM textbook. Thanks again.

I have not used FM yet but am considering a purchase. Can anyone enlighten or persuade me to do so? I am a teacher and need to hold IT records for a few hundred pupils. I typically collect a class of 30 digital photos at a time and rename them using Thumbs Plus. I would like to combine the pictures of the pupils with test data and IT records which are currently kept in Excel spreadsheets. Is FileMaker an easy product to set a DB of this type? I have struggled with linking photos and DB files before. I suppose that I'm looking for a DB that is extremely easy to setup to import Excel data and Jpegs. Does this exist and,if so, is FileMaker the product?