Find duplicates, keep 1 of each

[jrl64]

I want to omit all but one duplicate in a find.

I have a class roster for each weekday but the people change daily. I only need them to sign in once so, I want to find only the first occourance of a person's name and omit the rest. This is to generate a list each day of people who were not on a previous list.

Did that make any sense?

[BobWeaver]

There is an excellent example in the FM manual on pages 10-14 and 10-15 which shows you how to create a simple script to mark the duplicates. Once they are marked you can do another find to omit them.

[CobaltSky]

The technique Bob mentions involves marking records, and thus may present problems if you will want to be able to operate in multi-user mode.

If that is of concern, you might like to consider an alternative technique which achieves the outcome you describe, but without marking the records.

A demo file which illustrates the technique is available for download from my web site at the following URL:

http://www.nightwing.com.au/FileMaker/demos/FindUnique.zip

It is a free and open file, so you can have a look at how it works, if you are interested.