I am a foster volunteer for a kitten and cat rescue. Each foster has daily medical and health items we preform for our little wards.

Years ago I created a simple Foster Tracking database in Filemaker 16 and now use FM 17 on Mac OS Catalina 10.15.x

Many of these chores repeat at a regular interval so so my Foster Tracking has charts that when given a start date propagates repeating fields with the next occurrence.

Typically foster arrive in litters of 3, 4, 5 or more kittens and all have a naming theme. I've used "Companions of Doctor Who" and "Gins of the UK" for example. This is stored in a "Name Theme" field and displayed at the top of each kitten/cat record.

Each time I weigh or give a de-worming or flea medication to a foster group I open the FM db, do a search for the group (e.g. "Gins") in the "Name Theme" field and then I have the medical charts for that group to mark my progress.

The complication is I often have 3 different litters in three different areas of my home. 

What I want to do is to have 3 Global Fields - which store the 3 "Name Theme"s I am fostering at a given moment.

Find_1 "Gins"

Find_2 "Companions"

Find_3 "Marx Brothers"

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Then I want to place these global fields on the main layout that my db opens to. I would define each Field Label to be a Button and have each button search for the appropriate Find_x content in the "Name Theme" field.

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I cannot figure out how to capture the value of the "Find_x" Global field and insert the value into the "Name Theme" to then Find.

Nor do I see in the Find function a way to specify that the value comes from the Find_x field but the search itself involve this value in the "Name Theme" field.

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I feel there must be some simple scriptable way maybe involving an additional layout and a calculation but the how to escapes me.

I would be very grateful for any help.

thank you

Bill qb Quattlebaum

Edited August 18, 20205 yr by quattleb

I got a little lost in your explanation. In general you can use a global field in a scripted find as:

Enter Find Mode []
Go to Layout [ TableToSearch ]
Set Field [ TableToSearch::FieldToSearch ; AnyTable::gGlobalSearchTerm ]
Perform Find []

 

Wow - thank you for the very fast and purrrrfect solution. This is exactly what I needed and I've got it working for Find_1 and Find_2 and will duplicate and set Find_3 up soon.

Thank you thank you. 

The Set Field using a calculation eluded me when I look at that function...

thank you 

qb