I'm working on a database right now that handles general accounting information for a department of a university.  My current layout looks like this:

Where the left section has buttons to take you to the different layouts and look at various different tables, and the middle column is a scrollable portal to look at all of the jobs.  On the right hand side for the "employees" section, I was able to fit all of an employee's data in that space, so it worked, but each job has significantly more data associated with it and doesn't fit in that space, so I was wondering if there is a way to make that section scrollable, but looking at the same record (i.e. The job description would be at the top, and then some info on what materials and labor have been billed to that job, and then be able to scroll down and have another section with contact info for employees assigned to that job, etc.).  From what I've been looking around at for solutions it looks like this is impossible, but I'm hoping that maybe there's someone out there that's more creative than me!  I thought about making the whole layout taller and then somehow locking the left columns into position while scrolling so that they would be fixed in the viewport, but I couldn't find a way to do that.  Thanks guys!

If I think I understand you correctly, its basically a Master-Detail setup.  You can search for that on the FileMaker forums and find some nice examples.

If the information you want to scroll is from a different table, a portal of related records may fit the bill.  If all the information is from the same table, then a self join relationship to the selected record could be used to add a portal, showing the detail, and the portal would be scrollable.

You could also use a slide control, or tab panels to separate and group the data.

I think you always want to avoid scrolling the entire layout.

Here's a picture of one.

Edited December 27, 20178 yr by Steve Martino