I know what you're going to tell me. Well, the answer is to pay attention to what I'm doing. But, what keeps happening is ... I end up working on another copy of my dbs. I have the original one, the newly cloned vs. 2 and a backup folder with 15 FM db backup folders. Occassionally I jump around to find old calcs that (at the time I couldn't get to work), that now I want to review ... and I've been really tired ... and the next thing I know, well I realize FM has opened from the wrong folder and this isn't the version I'm SUPPOSED to be working on.

I thought maybe the 'relative path' selection was the answer ... some way to force FM to only look in it's folders and subs, but NOOOO! Is there something I can add to the .EXE line or some other way I can allow FM to protect me from myself? Short of renaming all of my db's -- there are 25 for this agency program at this point (and growing), any ideas? I know ... I should know better!

There is no easy way to prevent this. Filemaker is notorious for locating the wrong file and opening it. You can zip the files you don't want to access. But then, if you need to refer back to them it's a nuisance.

FWIW, I keep old versions zip'd.

Bob and HTH (smile) -- Thanks! Not the answer I was hoping for but, at least you didn't say "You dummy!" Which is how it makes me feel. Well, unzipping is certainly better than finding out I've just wasted 3-4 hours ... over and over again! BTW, what's FWIW, HTH?

FWIW is 'for what it's worth', and HTH is 'hope that helps'

The best answer to this one, if you have the option, is to save all but the active development copy of a file or set of files onto removable media (eg jazz or zip).

Another alternative (quicker than zipping files) is to add a character (alpha or numeric) to the names of files that are not the 'active' one. Since FileMaker opens and references files by their names, this is as effective as zipping them. This works quite well as an archive reference scheme where you call each subsequent version of a file A, B, C etc.

If you need to open an old copy of a file and want to keep its links intact, it is best to rename it back to its original name for the period while open, and then add the archive reference character again after closing it.

Well, I don't have a Jazz or a Zip drive but I do have CD. However, it always sets everything to read-only (why did they do that?), anyway at least that would stop me from changing it before I noticed. Also, would it automatically go to CD to 'hunt' or does it only 'hunt on the local drive? At least now I have options. Thanks all!

Okay Kennedy (Brian?) I thought you were telling me to call you HTH!