I am trying to be able to show if multiple cities with the same name (but from differnet states) exist for data entry users when they enter a city name.

I have a master file and a related city file. So, when someone enters Portland, for example, a portal would show Portland,OR and Portland,ME.

Is this the right approach? How could I do this?

Hello Sprice,

Yes, what you are proposing to do is a reasonable solution, and will give you what you've said you want.

How you should go about it is to define a relationship (via the Define relationships command on the file menu) which matches the city name field in your main file to the city name field in your cities file. Then if you base a portal on this relationship, and add the city and state fields (from the cities file) to it, you should be in business.