Exporting single record to text

[pubdss]

Hi,

I'm fairly new to FMP so please bear with me. We have a database that has a large amount of records linked to it. We would like to be able to export info from specific records to text. When I try exporting it now, it exports the field information for all the records. Can I have it do the fields of my choice and do only 1 record? Also, is it possible to export the field name as well as the data within the field? Thanks in advance.

- Greg

[Moon]

quote:

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Originally posted by Gregory Firestone:

Hi,

I'm fairly new to FMP so please bear with me. We have a database that has a large amount of records linked to it. We would like to be able to export info from specific records to text. When I try exporting it now, it exports the field information for all the records. Can I have it do the fields of my choice and do only 1 record? Also, is it possible to export the field name as well as the data within the field? Thanks in advance.

- Greg

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Greg, here is what to do

1. Find the record you want to import and isolate it.

I use Isolate so often I created a script and set it as the first displayed script so that I could use a Command-1 keyboard shortcut. The script is simple:

Find All

Omit

Find Omitted

Go to the record and execute the script and now only that record is in the found set.

2. When you execute the Export command, select Merge Text as the export format. This will give you the field names in the first paragraph and the field contents themselves next.

3. In the dialog box with the field selections, move the field names of what you want to the right side box. You can re-order the list of fields if you wish. Then export.

The export will collect the field data you specified in the export dialog from the single record you isolated, and export a text field with two tab-separated paragraphs. The first paragraph holds the field names, the second holds the respective data.

That's it.

If you do this a lot, you can easily script the whole process.

[pubdss]

Moon,

Thank you very much for the very clear and concise how to. It worked like a charm. Suppose you had a database with different 10 records. Is it possible to export several records but not all?

There are three fields that we need. Name, Job Number, and Billing amount. We usually search the records by Job Number. Is there a way I can add multiple records to an export. The workaround is to export each to a different file and then copy and paste text when its all done.

Thanks again for the help.

- Greg

[Moon]

Greg,

Your export will always include only the found set of records, so you need to do a find first to gather the records you want, then execute the export.