Thank you for your help about ways to do the project below.

Could someone kindly now help me estimate the magnitude of the project?

The goal is to combine the information from 24 files into a single FileMaker database.

Almost all source files are in FileMaker Pro 6 (.fp5) except for three files in Word, one .htm file, and one .pdf.

Among the FileMaker Pro files, the same fields do not always have the same names. Also, fields that are present in some files are absent from other files.

Where the source files have different information about the same record, all information is to be retained by adding new fields to the resulting record to hold the different versions of the source information.

The largest file has over 2800 records. The 24 files have a total of about 21,000 records.

How large a project is this one?

How much time would it be expected to take?

And what level of FileMaker Pro ability is needed to handle it successfully?

Thanks very much for your help.

Brad

FileMaker Version: 6

Platform: Windows 2000

Importing from the other fp5 files should be easy. Just create your new empty database with all the fields you want. Choose import from file, and use the import dialog to match up field names. Shouldn't take more than 1/2 hour even with 20 files. 21,000 records should be no problem.

The other files you will want to convert somehow into a text format (like tab-delimited, or XML) How hard this will be depends on how cleanly the current files are formatted. Why don't you attach one of the files and I'll see what I can do?

Dear Reed,

Hope things are going well for you.

Really appreciate your heplful reply.

Have used the method you posted to combine the records from two smaller databases and it went very well.

Now feel more ready to tackle the large databases, using your fine approach.

Thanks again for your kind assistance.

Brad