Creating a list of dates from multiple records

[ambweb]

Really having trouble kickstarting my brain on this one. I've got a contract file for a talent agency. They represent a roster of about 35 musicians. When they procure a date for an artist a contract is issued. Each contract is its own record in the file. There are about 5000 records dating back to the year 2000. This includes dates for all 35 artists.

Each month, they have to put a letter together for each of their artists listing their itinerary for the next 4-6 months. Since the data is already in the file, this should be easy, but I can't figure it out. Should I be doing it in a seperate related file? Can it be done as a layout in the original file? Portals? I welcome and appreciate any and all suggestions .

[LiveOak]

You can do it from the contract file using subsummaries. Create a layout with:

Header

Subsummary when sorted by musician/leading/ page break before each occurrance (put the first elements of your letter here)

Body (a list of the dates and related informaton)

Subsummary when sorted by musician/trailing (put you letter closing stuff here)

Footer

Now find the contacts for the time period you want, sort by musician and print.

-bd

[ambweb]

LiveOak-

Either I'm misinterpereting the instructions or I've miscommunicated what I'm trying to accomplish. The part that I don't understand is how to generate the list of dates and venues in the body of the letter. If each contract is it's own record with an Artist field, a Date field and fields for Venue, Venue City, and Venue State, how do I get all the dates and venue info for a particular artist to show up as a list in the body of one record? I included both subsummaries around the body, and then put the following fields in the body: Date, Venue, Venue City, Venue State. I then sorted by Artist and ended up with 5000 letters with one date each. Am I doing something wrong? Thanks!

[Ugo DI LUCA]

each contracts are different records, but they still belong to the artist...

The solution should work.

There is an obvious step though. Summary can be viewed in Preview mode only...

Hope this is it.

[ambweb]

I'm not sure what you mean when you say they each belong to the artist? If you mean that each contract/record only has one artist attributed to it then yes, but I'm not sure how that solves my problem. I put the Artist field in the leading subsummary, and I'm still getting 15 seperate letters when I do a find for one Artist from January1-January 31. ie I'm not generating a list of all 15 dates into one letter which is what I'm trying to achieve. Do I have the body set up wrong? Do I need to create summary fields for the date, venue, etc.? Please help me!

[Ugo DI LUCA]

Are you in browse mode ?

[ambweb]

Yes I am in browse mode.

[Ugo DI LUCA]

Then try to view the result in PREVIEW mode.

[ambweb]

Hey it really does work! Wow. Thank you both for your help.