Exporting fields with tabs

[mrpez1]

I'm trying to put together a phone directory in Word using a contact database with a related phone database. Originally, I was using a flat Excel file that I could do a merge off of. With the new relational contact database I'm ending up with export files that aren't set up correctly to merge (Single records take up several rows) To get around this, I wrote a script to take the contacts names and all the related phone info and put it into a singal field/record, formatted with the proper spacing and then I export that. This works great except I have to use spaces to seperate data of different legnths. Is it possible to use/add tabs in a filemaker text field/script to get around the jumbled look to the data? Or is there a better way to do this?

Thanks...

[Fitch]

Try exporting from the related file, and check out the Summarize By... option in the Export dialog.

[mrpez1]

I tried that but I didn't get very far. When I click on "Summarize by.." when trying to export it says "(unsorted)" with no options. I'm assuming I need a summary field in the data. As far as I can tell summary fields are only aggregate functions like running total. Can a name (text field) act as a summary field? I was able to export so that each phone number had the proper name next to it...That doesn't help the merge though.

[-Queue-]

As in Preview mode, you cannot view a summary part by a field which you have not sorted.

"Summarize by" uses fields you have sorted. This is not the same as a Summary field. Sort your data by name, or, preferably a unique number associated with the name, then export, click Summarize by, select your sort field, and party on.

[mrpez1]

Alright....Got the summarize down. New problem. Did I mention each person can have more than one phone number? It's exporting, but only the first number..

[-Queue-]

Are the phone numbers stored in multiple fields or one text field, in the main db or a related one?

[mrpez1]

The phone numbers are in multiple related records. That is to say that each number has a record in phones.fp5. The Contact # relates them back to the contact database (rolodex.fp5). A contact may have 0 phones or more than 10.

[Fenton]

I don't know if this would work, but here is something I ran into which may help. I'm assuming that you set up your databases relationally, with a 2nd Phones file, containing multiple phone#'s for each contact.

It is possible to export data so that it appears as (below is CSV, but could be Tab I suppose):

"ContactName", "Phone#"

"", "Phone#" <--same contact (but no data), 2nd phone

"ContactName2", "Phone#" <--new contact

"", "Phone#"

"", "Phone#" <--3rd phone#

I ended up with this inadvertently when summarizing an export.

If you sort by ContactName (you would have to look it up into Phones), and also by Phone# (or any unique field), then Summarize by the unique field, the 1st "encompassing" sort field will only have data on the 1st record of a group. It works like a Subsummary part. Never seen this documented.

In my case I didn't want this, so I had to sort the Contacts by another calculation field. If the sorted field is NOT in the export, all values will be included.

Whether or not the above format will import correctly into a merge I don't know. [Well, I just tried it, and it does work. But you need to do some Find/Replace to get rid of extra carriage returns. It's not difficult, the pattern for the extra phone# lines is: Find: ^p^p^t, Replace: ^p^t.]

Or else create a file, and populate the extra fields by script, with the flat structure:

Contact, Phone1, Phone2, Phone3

Clunky for sure. You could also just print a Subsummary report with FileMaker; but I imagine there's reasons why not.