Why do I delete the wrong record?

[Tom T]

Hello,

I am creating a one-field database which will be a list of authors that will be related to a main database. The records in the one-field database will be where new authors are added, edited or deleted and then these records will be the value list in the main database.

But I am having a devil of a time with a problem I just don't understand, even before I go relational. Whenever I choose in a pop up list an author to delete I end up deleting a different author!

Attached is a very simplified database with 7 records in it. The records are:

A1

B2

C5

D3

E7

G6

Z4

I created them in the order of the numbers, but they appear alphabetical in the pop up list. This helped me make sense of the problem, although i do not yet have a solution.

In the status area I can choose any record with that little book in the upper left hand corner. In the pop up list I can choose any record. But when I try to delete the record in the field it is the record that is chosen in the status area that gets deleted?

Why is that? I want to delete whatever I choose from the pop up list and place in the field.

Help!

Thanks,

Tom

DeleteProblem.zip

[ESpringer]

It sounds like you just need to delete the text in your field, and not a record at all. Anytime you tell FileMaker directly to delete a record, it assumes you want to delete the whole current record, which is always the record shown in the rolodex icon.

If you want the author no longer to appear in your pop-up list, since your pop-up list shows all values in that field across all the records in your file, then you need to make sure that no record has that value. (Instead, it sounds like you assumed that you could "pick" which item to delete by being in record #1 and making that value show in record #1, then deleting record #1. But it was in the value list already because it's the value in, say, record #6. So the value doesn't disappear, and meanwhile record #1 is gone.)

So: find the record with the undesired value in it, and delete that record, or change the value there to another value you do want.