Database within a Database?

[cbntor]

Relatively new to FM: I am currently trying to re-design our corporate docket system. Basically, each contact in our database is one record. We need though, the ability to create a distribution list with many addresses from many records. Is there a way to compile various records into a list without having to use a relational database ?

[LiveOak]

You need to search for the records you want to print. You will probably want some field that identifies which records are in which mailing list(s). Then if you go to Find Mode and enter a "find request" and "perform a find", you can isolate the needed set of records or "found set". You might want to give the manual a read, it is all in there.

-bd

[cbntor]

That works if I only want to print one label for each record. Consider this scenario: Say that we have 3 contacts, which are each contained in their own record. What if we needed to create 5 labels for Contact 1, 3 for Contact 2 and 2 for Contact 3. Our system now creates 1 record for 1 label. In this case we would have 10 records to print 10 labels. Is there any way to have a separate label database contained in the original Contact list? I know this sounds crazy! Could we just be getting in over our heads?

[Vaughan]

Use a related database. Create 5 related records (labels) for contact 1, 3 for contact 2 etc.

Relational isn't hard. In fact for what you want to do it'll be orders of magnitude easier than a non-relational kludge.