Superimposed fields replaced with one field

[stefangs]

Hi all,

something I discovered out of the blue -

I often use a contact field in a related table and have two fields on top of one another. I enter into the lower field which gives me a popup list of related contacts, but I really only enter an ID which isn't shown in the value list. Upon exiting, the upper field (which you can't enter) is populated with the name of the contact.

Now I found this: I only have one field which is the ID using the same value list, but is formatted as a popup menu and it works exactly the same way. No more aligning two fields. And because I use global value lists, I don't even have to have another TO to my contacts file in the graph.

I haven't seen this before, and I'm like 'wow, this is cool, I need to share...' - sorry if it's old hats for you.

Stefan

[Ocean West]

Hi Stefan

This is the behavior when a field is styled as a popup menu. And you choose only to display the second field.

One caveat about this is if you wish to do a free form search  or a search where you need to insert operators. You would really need contact name field on the layout vs the ID field.  - typically i have such field stacked but it is only visible in find mode and the other field is only visible in browse mode. 

[stefangs]

I don't need find mode in this case, but it's a good point to keep in mind - even better with the switching 'enterability' for these two fields.

Thanks!

Nice cat, btw :-)

[Ron Cates]

Years ago I got away from Popup menus purely because of the unappealing visual aspect. Going back to filemaker 10 it was an ugly experience. It has improved over the years but still not a fan.

[TobiasLiebhartKoschierSE]

This works great with FileMaker on Mac, but popup menus are a pita on Windows as scrolling using a mouse wheel and type-ahead are not supported.

[stefangs]

2 hours ago, TobiasLiebhartKoschierSE said:

This works great with FileMaker on Mac, but popup menus are a pita on Windows as scrolling using a mouse wheel and type-ahead are not supported.

Now that's something I haven't thought of. Good point - I will try to have a look at a Windows machine to see how it behaves/looks. Thanks!