I've got a frightfully basic question...I've tried Help, the manual and searching the FAQs and other articles, but I'm still stumped. I'm trying to lookup data from one file (into another, the master (?!)) by defining a relationship between a master file and a related file. I've tried to define the relationship in the master where the relationship is determined by common field data, and made the lookup field in the master where the source is (theoretically) the related file. Nothing, however, appears in the lookup field though I know that there are matches between two files. I'm using the trial version of FP5 for Mac OSX.

I've attached copies of 2 simple example files ("master.fp5" and "related.fp5" w/in "example.sit") I created in an attempt to figure this out. (The data files I'm actually working with are much more complex.) Perhaps someone could take a look at these example files and point out what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks! Pete

Hey Pete,

I looked and if I (re) enter a valid value in 'setsppID' in the master file, it looks up a value in n-_small, just like you would expect.

What's the trouble?

Ernst.

Hi, _Pete!

The look-up just works fine on my system... though I would have sorted the matching fields in ASCII.

Geez! It never occurred to me that I'd have to re-enter those data. What do I do though with a file containing 47,000+ records? I definitely don't want to re-enter all of those! Why can't I select all those fields in Table view, copy and then paste? Thanks, Pete

One difference (amid others) between look-ups and relationships is that look-ups aren't automatically updated.

But there's no need of re-entering anything, bc Records/Relookup does it on command (first select the field the look-up is based on).

You can force a relookup by re-entering the keyfield. In your sampledatabase that would be 'setsppID'

You could make a script that does this automatically:

Find all records

Freeze Window

Goto Record [First]

Loop

Set field ['setsppID', 'setsppID']

Goto Record [Next, Exit after last]

Loop

Hope that helps,

Ernst