I have a situation in which our filemaker files are hosted on a remote server. We maintain our own set of databases on our local machines, but need periodically to upload the updated databases to the remote server.

The problem: The databases are about 500 mg, takes forever to send over (we are using Timbuktu). We would like to be able to make a smaller copy of our local database, containing only a subset of records. In this manner, we can upload a much smaller file to the remote server. The problem is, when we make a small subset and do "copy as" in fmp, the file only reduces in size a little bit. It is as though it is still copying most or all of the original database.

How can I make a small subset of records to upload to the server?

Two ideas:

Save a clone of the original DB, then making a copy of the clone and import the records you want to send to the server.

or...

Export the data as tab-separated text, then import it into the server DB.

Thank you ! That worked great

Actually, I spoke to soon.... The resulting cloned file, after importing my search results is almost as large as the original. The original databse has 1701 records in it, and I have imported only 382 records into the clone. It could be that Im not setting up the import settings properly.

Any suggestions?

Thanks so much

Most likely situation is that the database itself is large, but that the records themselves are small. So even an empty copy is pretty big, while a full copy is not much bigger.

Do you have alot of layouts or graphics in the database?

How large is the clone before importing the records? It's also possible that the DB structure is large.

If so, check my second idea above; moving just the data may be the answer.

The DB clone file without importing any records is 294 kb, after importing the records it mushrooms to a whopping 450 MG, only 20 GM smaller than its original. We are going to try to create a new database that only contains one layout with a few fields that are needed for the customized webpage. We will then try importing to that to see if the size remains small.