Value Lists & Primary Keys

[CyborgSam]

Given 2 DB simple DBs:

DB1: DB1record# - number, a unique sequential serial # for each record, never reused (primary key for DB1)

: myName - text - a person's name

: myFavoriteFood# - number field

DB2: DB2record# - number, a unique sequential serial # for each record, never reused (primary key for DB2)

: FavoriteFoods - text

A popup menu with a value list in DB1 has the relationship between DB1:myFavoriteFood# and

DB2:DB2record#. Basically, you enter a user and their favorite food.

The primary keys prevent data from being lost, e.g. should the favorite food be renamed due to misspelling.

The popup in DB1 has as it's first field DB2:DB2record#, the second "also displayed" is DB2:FavoriteFoods.

This sucks for the user to see a number they don't care about. In the past I got rid of this by making my own version of the Geneva font with no numbers in it (0 wdith characters replaced the numbers). In the past I only developed for Macs.

So: how do ya'll do this? Primary keys are a requirement, any/all other data in a DB could change.

Thanks,

Sam

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[Ugo DI LUCA]

Hi,

Welcome to this Forum.

You may find some good workarounds, but you surely would need this sequential number anyway.

You could use portals instead of Value List, but it depends on your proper needs and situation.

The Portal could list all the "Favorite Foods" and you won't need to see the number. You'd select it via a GTRR script step.

[CyborgSam]

Ugo->

Thanks for welcome, glad to be here. I haven't done much FileMaker in a few years and forgot how much I love it. Some DBs I wrote back in FM 2 are still in daily use!

Has anyone come up with a solution that uses popup menus/lists? To the users they are very intuitive, so I'd prefer to stick with them if possible.

Thanks,

Sam