Relating names

[Asheyeree]

I am new to Filemaker, trying to use it (5.0) to organize the research for my dissertation. I want to make two files. First, one for notes from various sources (one record per source, each record having one large field for the notes). And a second file for particular persons. I want to find a way to have the info in the Notes file on a particular person show up in the record on that person in the Persons file. It seems clear that the person's name is the key. But I could not get FM to index a multiple name, even using the Option Spacebar. Using Option Spacebar, I could get Society for the Diffusion of Political Knowledge indexed as a single phrase, but it would not do this for names, e.g., Frederick Law Olmsted--each of these names appears in the index by itself. Then I looked at Scripts, but could not find the right function. The Uppercase/Lower case change from one to the other, but I couldn't find or make an "if" statement based on words in the Notes file that are capitalized. Any help will be gratefully appreciated. Thanks!

[Kurt Knippel]

Couple of points to make your life easier. Filemaker will only index up to 20 characters in single "word" and 60 characters in a single "line". Once either of these 2 conditions has been exceeded the indexing will STOP for that field altogether. This is not however your problem.

Your problem likely lies in the Option-Space concept, which has merits and your thinking is on the right track, but this is a bad choice of character to use. For one it is impossible to tell the difference between the two, so you may have just missed those instances. Secondly the Option-Space character is not recognized on all OSs or by all functions, so it is possible the some functions do not see it. It is also possible that you have chosen an indexing type (English vs ASCII) which does not recognize it.

I would suggest one of the following as a solution: Replace the Option-Space with an Underscore "_" character, which is recognized globally, or use something other than the name as the key, such as a numerical ID or genuine record ID field for your relationships.