In FMP5.5 I am trying to create an application with the following functionality...

Start Page will be a graphical interface that allows users to "Add Projects" and "Line Items" per project. Each project can have an unlimited number of line items associated with it, and they all need to appear below the previous item in an orderly fashion on a seperate layout behind the graphical interface.

Help is needed to place the line items below the others in a dynamic format. Can someone please give me shove in the right direction.

Cheers,

Pall

Hi Pall,

What you're describing is pretty much how portals work.

If you set up a portal to a related file where the line items are stored, and make sure that the 'Allow creation of related records' option is enabled for the relationship that the portal is based on, the portal will have a blank row at the bottom, and entering data into the blank row will automatically add it to a new record in the line items file, and it will appear at the bottom of the scrolling list of line items in the portal.

Give it a try and, with a little tweaking I think you'll find it gets you pretty close to what you have in mind.

thank you CobaltSky, i will go ahead with this... off topic a little bit, but could you recommend some good resources to learn Filemaker? i'm trying to grasp the concept of portals, relationships, and all the fancy stuff. cheers.

Well, there's no substitute for the 'hard yards' - hours spent trying out different approaches to a problem with some test DBs and a limber mouse wrist.

But that aside, browsing the forums and tips and tricks sites (there's quite a tour of them in the FileMaker web ring) is a worthwhile pursuit. Plus if you're so inclined, there are some useful intermediate level books around. Some examples are listed at:

http://www.filemakertoday.com/

And last but not least, there are tutorial CDs - the best know of which is probably Scriptology - and various seminar series'. Both can be pricey, so it depends on the size of your budget, among other things.

I highly recommend the book by Coulombre and Price, "Special Edition using Filemaker Pro 5" and the book by Moyer and Bowers, "Advanced Filemaker Pro 5.5 Techniques for Developers"

thank you both