Capital letter field becomes small letters in export

[Sean O'Donoghue]

Greetings Folks

When I export a field which is all capitalized, the letters change to small ones in the export file - any solutions please - I want to retain the capital letters in the outcome.

Regards & thanks

Sean o'Donoghue

[Geeksharka]

There's a difference between what you see, and what's there.

For the field in question: has the Style of it been formatted to UPPERCASE?

If not, and what you've entered was indeed ALLCAPS, then I am stumped too.

If so, then the following will hopefully clarify, but sadly not help.

Even when you enter or type lowercase letters upon data entry, it will show up as Uppercase in the field if you've formatted that field (in that layout) to do so. There is a difference between what you've entered, and what you see.

The Style functions are very handy for various modes of Output (email, printing, lists, reports, etc.), but do not work too well for Exporting (into a Tab delimited file for instance).

When Exporting, FMP tends to stick to the basics -- which is usually good, but not in your case.

There is a 'Format Output Using Current Layout' option when you Export, but I've never seen it work.

I have not been able to run a script that will automatically reset the field to be true ALLCAPS, but maybe someone else can help out here.

Otherwise, you will need to reset the fields manually -- or of course utilize a format function in the system you will eventually be importing the data. This is what I usually do. the data just needs to be correct, the formatting of it is taken care of in the environment it ends up in.

HTH

[The Bridge]

quote:

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Originally posted by Sharka:

I have not been able to run a script that will automatically reset the field to be true ALLCAPS, but maybe someone else can help out here.

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FieldName = Upper(FieldName) would do the trick, although you may want to define another field, say, FieldName_UpperCase and simply export its contents instead. This way you're not messing around with your original data.

e.g.

FieldName_UpperCase(unstored, text) =Upper(FieldName)

Hope this helps!

[Geeksharka]

Excellent, thanks.

[Sean O'Donoghue]

Thanks both for your responses

Sharka - I have the field automaticall capitalised

The Bridges - sounds simple but afraid I do not get it - I am very much a beginner at Filemaker.

The field I want to create as capitals for exporting is an "Author" field - as it is at the moment, everything, including first letter are exporting as small letters - are you suggesting I create a script to do what you say or just a calculated field - which I tried unsuccessfully to do.

Thanks for your help

Sean O'Donoghue

[The Bridge]

quote:

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Originally posted by Sean O'Donoghue:

The field I want to create as capitals for exporting is an "Author" field - as it is at the moment, everything, including first letter are exporting as small letters - are you suggesting I create a script to do what you say or just a calculated field - which I tried unsuccessfully to do.

---

Okay, so working with what you've told me, let's say you have a text field called Author. Now define a new field called Author_Uppercase. Make it a calculation field. The calculation you want to enter is:

code:

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Upper(Author)

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Make sure Calculation Result is Text.

Click on Storage Options... and make sure that Do Not Store Calculation Results -- Calculate Only When Needed has a check beside it.

When you export your records, do not export the Author field; export the Author_Uppercase field instead.

Hope this is more clear!

[Kurt Knippel]

Exporting with export the EXACT data just as it was entered without any formatting information and in whatever the system considers the default font.

So if you typed in "albert einstein" and set your layouts to format it as "Albert Einstein", exporting will give you "albert einstein".

You can select the "Format Output Using Current Layout" option in your export dialog box and that should format number, date and time fields as they appear on the current layout screen. However text fields are left alone.

The best bet is to deal with the data formatting in your destination application or to fix the data entry.

[Sean O'Donoghue]

The Bridge

Got it thanks

Many thanks for your time & expertise - I appreciate it

Sean O'Donoghue

London

[The Bridge]

My pleasure, Sean!

As CaptKurt suggested, the calculation I gave you will not "fix" the data that has already been entered as lowercase. I suggested creating a new field only so that you wouldn't be messing around with your original data. If you wanted to convert all existing data in the Author field, you could create a looping script that would perform the calculation I gave you on the Author field itself. Another option would be the Replace... command, again with the same calculation. To make sure users entered only uppercase names in the Author field, you could set validation based on the same calculation. This is, of course, when you're adventurous enough to overwrite your existing data... make a backup first!