calculating only when required?

[GlennC]

Hello.

I have some calculations that involve a couple of summary fields, and therefore are not stored. The database has over 20,000 records and climbing, and by now these calculations take ages to happen, and FM is calculating them all the time - on opening and whenever I perform other functions or record groupings.

I only need these calculations made at specific times, and when I do they only relate to a small fraction of the overall records. Is there a way where I can say "calculate now", and not have these huge calculations being done all the time when I don't need them?

[BobWeaver]

Summary fields and unstored calculations are only calculated when they are displayed. So, you can remove the fields from any layouts where you don't need to show them normally.

You can also replace these fields with globals, and when you want to see the summaries updated, run a script that calculates the summaries, and puts the results into the globals.

[GlennC]

Thanks very much Bob, that's done the trick! Much appreciated.