Multiple entries in one field?

[JackSparks]

Don't know if I'm posting in the right forum, but here goes.

I work in the entertainment industry and I use a Filemaker DB to track the movies that air on our network and live in our library. Each movie title has it's own record and in that record there is an "AirDate" field, which corresponds to the date in which that movie airs on our network. However some films air more than once, so I find myself constantly rewriting the date in that field. I'd like to find a way to enter multiple dates in that field so that not only can I track when the film is going to air but when it HAS aired in the past. I'm not a FMP guru and very few people here are. So I'm looking for help. Any suggestions out there.

P.S. there is also a LIST form which alows me to see the records in a "list view" and sort by airdate, title and what not. Would that still work?

Thanks,

Jack Sparks

[The Bridge]

This is a job for a related file.

At it's simplest, you need two databases, say, Films.fp5 and Airplay.fp5

Your Films db will store information specific to the program: title, length, etc., one record per film.

Your Airplay db will store the date and time that a film played, one record per airing.

Each database needs a Key field, e.g. Film_Key. Define a relationship from Films to Airplay matching this key. Then, in your Films db you can create a portal that will display all dates/times a film was aired.

You can build from there to show all future air dates, all past air dates, the number of times a film has aired, etc., but this will give you a good start.

[JackSparks]

Thanks for the quick response. So does that mean that in my "airdate" DB I would only copy over the pertinent info (title, air_key and so forth) then create (or duplicate the record) everytime I needed to add a new date?

Thanks,

Jack

[The Bridge]

The beautiful thing about related files is that you can eliminate redundant data. The only fields Airplay needs are the Film_Key, Date and Time.

One thing I forgot to mention in my previous post: The Film_Key field in Film.fp5 must be unique for each film!

I highly recommend that you read Special Edition Using FileMaker Pro 5 by Coulombre & Price, ISBN 0-7897-2201-1. It is a must-have!

[The Bridge]

Sorry, I realize that I was a little vague. When you define your relationship from File.fp5 to Airplay.fp5, Allow Creation of Related Records. This way, you can enter a new date/time into the last row of the portal and it will automatically create a matching record in Airplay.fp5.