Accessing related data from a third file

[joecollver]

There's a section on this in the fmp5.5 user's guide, but I think their example's a little off so I'm going to have to ask for help here. I'm modifying the fmpro solution framework, and trying to make my own print layout in the lineitems file. Everything is working great now, except for two of my merge fields.

The merge fields, which look something like this <<People_Cust Number::CompanyName>> worked just fine in the Invoice file because it had a relationship with the People file with the customer ID number as the match field. But the line items file has no such relationship.

The user's guide says to create a new field in lineitems, a calculation field whose value is equal to Invoice_Inv Num::CustomerID, as a way to pull out the ID number from the invoice file, so I can define a relationship between the people file and the line items file using the customer i.d. as the match field, thereby getting my merge fields to work. It sounds simple, but when I tried it I got nothing in the cust. i.d. field in the line items file.

Am I doing something wrong, or, is there a better way to solve this problem? Thanks

[joecollver]

it seems every new record I create after I set up this calculation field will enter in the i.d. number correctly, so the merge fields end up working. But I have to go in and manually enter the i.d. numbers for all the previously existing records.

Why do calculation fields work like that? It seems like it should automatically update all the data in the field once you change the parameters of a calculation field.