I have a filed in my db. called message, i want to be able to court how many time a new message is entered. I need to be able to print a monthly report for each record with a total count in message field, and also to be able to reset the count to 0 when starting a new month. thanks

As with all things FMP-related, there are probably several ways to do this -- but the cleanest way is to NOT create a system to count how often your one message field is edited, BUT rather to add a separate file called Messages, and relate it to the original file.

That way you can add new messages to any record, one message-record at a time. It is then very easy to count how many messages were added to any given record (because the messages will relate to their corresponding record), AND if you give the Messages creation dates, you will also be able to count how many Messages per month.

Better yet, you can view all the related messages easily with a scrollable portal.

If you have time, check out the chapter on in the FMP manual on Relationships and related files.

HTH