OK, after almost 40 hours on this one I am to a point where I dont know what to do.

My main database is Jobs.fp5. My related is Contact.fp5. I am trying to get some information out of the contact database and into my jobs database via a value list. But here is the problem...

There are 2 seperate pieces of information I need to retrieve. The first is from a simple "last name" field in my contact database. The second needs to be from a calculation of some sort that would look at a portal on the same record and taly up all the "last names" from the portal.

So the "last name" field contains "Ross"

The portal on the same page contains 3 names: "Lee" "Orton" "Smith"

I am trying to find a way to create something that will combine them all into:

"Ross"

"Lee"

"Orton"

"Smith"

I then want to pull these out thru a value list pop-up in my jobs database. So i Jobs I would enter the contact id that would relate to the contact database record.

In my contact database I tried a value list that looked at my portal relation, and then a calc like Valuelistitems("Contact.fp5","Email"). This gets me:

"Lee"

"Orton"

"Smith"

But this does not seem to do a good job at staying current. If a change is made to the portal info, the calc does not always pick it up. I even tried a variation:

Valuelistitems("Contact.fp5","Email") & Left("",Count(Similar::Email Combined))

to help the calc update with new information. But the problem is that I cant link to this calc from my job database because this calc can not be indexed. And I dont know how to add in the "last name" field to add "Ross" to "Lee" "Orton" "Smith"

I hope someone can give me some suggestions.

LR

Actually I have got a calculation in my related file that adds up my information from the portal and the information from the record the portal resides. But the only way to get this calc to work will not allow me to index it. So is there a way in my main database to have a pop-up based on my calc I created in my related file? Since the calc is not indexed, I cant create a value list of it in my main file. Is there a way around this?

LR