Displaying masking data

[OllieJ]

This may be a basic one, apols if it's too much so ;>

Anyway I have two files (Organisation and Entry). Entry is the file that the data entry people will see, and Organisation is the list of the organisations. Entry is related to Organisation by OrgID, present in both files, and is a unique serial generated in the Organisation table.

The field OrgName is in the Organisation table, and embedded as a portal in Entry. I want to select a OrgName from a value list (defined as listing values from the Organisation table), and when an OrgName is selected the OrgID field is updated to the relevant serial number.

At the moment when I select an OrgName from the value list it generates a new OrgID even when it's the same name. When I enter an OrgID (still in the Entry table) it quite happily updates the OrgName field with the related organisation. Is there a way around this without having the OrgName as the related field (in which case it has to be in both files?).

Hope that's clear...look forward to some nice easy answers.

Thanks

Oliver

[McGoo]

I might not have understood exactly what you are saying but here goes. You create an organisation in the organisation table and a unique id is created that will be used to link the two tables.

In the entry file you want to enter the organisation name and have the Auto ID for that organisation entered into the Auto ID Field in entries. If that is the case the only way I can think of to do it this way around is by making Auto ID a calculation something like this.

if(Company Name = "Microsoft", 1,if(Company Name = "Coca cola", 2,""))

This is a not very flexible way of doing this as every time you get a new organisation you would have to change the field and the calculation would be huge.

Another alternative would be having the Auto ID as a standard text field with a lookup to organisations that shows the companies id with the name of the company showing on the list but I would say that the easiest way would be the following.

Define you relationship between organisation and entries via the organisation id and click allow creation of related records. In your organisation file create a portal and everytime somebody enters data in the portal it will automatically create a record in entries that is linked to organisation by the organisation id.

I hope that this sounds right and I have answered the problem as I was not 100% sure of what you were trying to do

[OllieJ]

Thanks for that...I'll give it a go.