I am wondering if I am missing a step somewhere.

I have a field that looks up the first and last name from a different file and inserts it into the field.

I made a calculation to concactonate the two fields as follows:

firstName & " " & lastName.

I also uncheck the box to disregard empty fields, so that it would always add the info from the other database, in case there was a last name but no first name.

Yet it does not work everytime.

Check your field result in the calculation box and verify that the Results = Text

Are 'firstname' and 'lastName' in the related file?

I don't think so, because you're talking about a lookup taking place. In that case check if the lookup is actually taking place, and if 'firstname' and 'lastName' have values in them.

Ernst.

pkudrle said:

I have a field that looks up the first and last name from a different file and inserts it into the field.

I made a calculation to concactonate the two fields as follows:

firstName & " " & lastName.

I also uncheck the box to disregard empty fields, so that it would always add the info from the other database, in case there was a last name but no first name.

Yet it does not work everytime.

Rather confusing...

What exactly isn't working ?

Is the calculation a concanation of 2 fields that were populated by the lookup ?

or

Are you looking up to that concanation in a related file ?

or

Is your calculation not taking place ?

The fields were taken from a lookup on another file. I went in to check and found out that some of the files had a lot extra white space sometimes before and sometimes after.

The concatonation was working, but sometimes I was getting to much white space which would make the field look empty.

I went in to look at the contactonated text fields and found that there was info, just to <return> keys down. I will have to go through my other records from the lookup to fix it.

Sorry for the troubles.

Paul

Ok, so I thought I had it fixed but maybe not. ugh.

The calculation works expect when the field that receives the concactonation already has some information in it.

Is this just a Filemaker thing? I do notice that when a field does a lookup it will overide old information that was previously in the field.

Yet the calculation does not overide the information. is there a way to make sure it will, something like a clear field or something?

Paul