m4trix

hmm... well can someone give me the gist of it? unfortnatly I can't open those files because my version of filemaker is too old

I have a field where the user types some information, then I want some other text appended to the begining and end of what they type, but it must be bold. The only way I know how to edit text is to use a button, where the user types their info, then clicks the button to append the other text to what they typed. But how do I get the script to append bold text? Unless it's appending text from a field that is already bolded (which isn't an option)

after some experimenting, it works perfectly. thanks for the suggestion.

hmm... never thought of that. sounds like a good idea. I'm not quite familiar on how filemaker handles searches like that. Would I just do something like if calc field = "value"? or would I actually have to search for the value as a substring in the calc field? do you know what I mean?

Ok, I have a set of fields, labeled "field 1" through "field 10" for example. The values contained in these fields are from a defined set of possible values, or the fields are empty. No two fields in a record will have the same info though.. For example, let's say that the possible values for these fields are: a b c d e f g h i For the first record, field 1 = a field 2 = b field 3 = h field 4 = c and the rest are blank second record: field 1 = b field 2 = f field 3 = e field 4 = h field 5 = i and the rest are blank What I want to do is enter a value, click a "search" button or something, and have it list all the records that one of those fields contains that value: So if I typed in "a" and searched, it would return the first record, if I typed in "b" and searched, it would return the first and the second records (even though record 1 has "a" in field 1 and record 2 has "a" in field 2) and if I type in "e" and search it will display record 2 See what I'm saying? I'm stumped on how to do this

alright, I'll work it out. As for getting a newer version of filemaker, this is the version I was given My employer has 4.1, but he only has one license for it (and he's very strict about sticking to software licenses), while he has an unlimited license (or something) for 3.0. As for the newer ones, I dunno. He thinks that for our use, 3.0/4.1 should be enough. Plus, both he and I believe that most of the updates (not all of course) up to 6.0 are mostly for the web aspect of filemaker - which I personally see no use for, as I'm quite handy with php/perl/mysql which can be customized to fit almost any application. Anyway, thanks a lot for the help. Really appreciate it

wow! thanks for all the replies. you guys have been great. I've basically solved all my problems except for the courses depending on grade thing. What about grades 7 to 10. I have fields course1 name, course2 name, course3 name. etc.c can I make it so that when the user enter's a student ID #, it pulls up the student's grade # from the student db, and then fills a name for each of those fields from the values in a value list named "GradeX" where X is the grade #? I KNOW I can do this simply by placing a button and running a script, but Is there a way to make it automatically run a script as soon as the user enters data into a certain field? I wish there was the equivalent of the javascript "onMouseOut" event or something, so as soon as the data is entered, it triggers a script. and I wish there was a way that you could change a value list for a field depending on another field. I don't think you can do that even through scripting. This is one of those things that bugs me about filemaker That and the fact that if I have a 2 page report, and someone is typing in a textbox on the first page, and types enough that they fill up that text box, there is no way to link the bottom of that box with the top of another one on page 2... Or if there is a way to do this, I havn't found it. Many text editors I've seen allow this.

harry, I'm not quite that lucky! : I'm stuck with FileMaker Pro 3.0!

Thanks a lot for the reply, however, I couldn't get it to work. I think that it has to do with the fact that I'm using such an older version. It doesn't have the "only related fields" checkbox for example. Sorry about the length of the rest of this: I tried some other stuff, which I'll get to, but if you're willing to read this, this is exactly what I want: There are grades 7 through 12. Grades 7 - 10 have fixed courses, and grades 11 and 12 have some optional ones. This becomes important when it comes to report cards. the courses are listed horizontally, with various marks shown below. This is fine for grades 7 - 10. If I made a different layout for each, that would be an easy solution. However, for grades 11 and 12, as the system is right now, all the courses available are listed, and marks only appear for those courses that that student took. This means there are large white gaps appearing between the course "columns" for courses not taken by that student. What I would like to do is only list those courses that the student is taking. This would make the reports look much neater. In addition, there are about 15 fields for each course. That works out to an awful lot of fields per student, most of which aren't used. So, What I was hoping to do, is have say 9 generic sets of course fields, label them course 1 through course 9 for example. I figured the easiest way to do it would be to select the courses each student took on their record, and using that list, distinguish each of those 9 generic sets of fields from eachother... hard to explain, do you see what I'm saying? So here is an example of how I envision it working, though the only important things are entering grades and the final reports: A new record is made for "bobby". His grade is entered, and that allows for the selection of x number of courses from a list of courses available to him (based on his grade). Let's say he takes eng, math & science to simplify. Now 3 sets of fields take marks for each of the three courses. So all the "course 1" fields pertain to eng, and I suppose would be linked by name (ie "course 1 name" = eng) or something like that, and all the "course 2" fields link to math, and so on. So once all the marks are entered, the user switches to the report card layout, and it displays the courses horizontally with the corresponding marks below. I guess it would be like "Course 1 Name"---"Course 2 Name"---"Course 3 Name"---"Course 4 Name" ... etc. "Course 1 Mark"-----"Course 2 Mark"-----"Course 3 Mark"-----"Course 4 Mark" ... etc. so the previous example would appear something like: English---Math---Science---(blank since it doesnt exist) ... etc.. --100--------99---------98-----------------(blank) ... etc.. as for the other stuff I tried, so far I tried creating a global field list for all the subjects available to each course. Then I created a "course" field which was a calculation that used the case command to return the global field for grade 11 if grade=11, return global field for grade 12 if grade=12, etc. It works fine, but I don't know how to store whatever values are checked for each record. I tried creating a field that got it's values from the "course" field (which got it's values from a calculation), but all I get is "[] <index missing>" so it seems like a dead end at the moment. I'm stumped

I'm working on a database for a school. I have a student database, and now I'm making a separate database for marks. Rather then having a separate one for each grade (as was the previous method) I have decided to put them all in one. The report cards have different courses for each student (since they can choose their courses). I want to only display the marks and headers for those subjects that each student takes. To start, I was thinking of having a bunch of checkboxes listing the courses available for each grade. That way for each student, the courses that apply to them can be checked off. But I don't know how to display different value lists depending on the grade the student is in. That is, not all courses are available in each grade. How can I have filemaker say "hey,this student is in grade 11, so I'll display the value list for that grade". There is a field called "Grade" which contains their grade. Secondly, but less important at the moment, how can I display on the report card ONLY those courses which are checked off for that student? Thanks -mike