I am very new to FileMaker. I have an Excel file that I need to import into two tables in FileMaker.

The Excel file has columns like StudentFirstName, StudentLastName, Classroom, GradeLevel, etc. Two of the FileMaker tables are Students and Academics. The two tables are related.

The FileMaker Students table has fields like StuID, StuFirstName, StuLastName. The Academics table has fields like StuID (foreign key from Students table), ClassroomNum (from a Classrooms table), GradeLevel (from a GradeLevels table), and Teacher (a calculated field from a Teachers table).

I want data from the "student columns" in my Excel file to go into the Students table and data from the "academics columns" to go into the Academics table.

I have tried importing the "student columns" from the Excel file into the Students table -- and that works fine. But I can't figure out how to import data into the Academics table.

I would appreciate any suggestions you may have.

Chris

Welcome Chris,

The structure of your files seems correct, though if you haven't already, you should add a separate ID field to your Academics table. It will be useful later.

It sounds like your Academics table tracks enrollments for a Student-Classroom join. Each record in your Excel file is pretty much the same thing--you probably only track one enrollment year for each student in the Excel spreadsheet. If this sounds right, then importing Academics is simply a matter of importing straight from the Excel file.

If you did not have a Student ID in the excel spreadsheet, then you should generate one in the Excel spreadsheet before importing into both Student and Academics, so they will match up easily (later you can update the auto-entered Student ID serial number in Student.) This can be done easily in Excel with Edit->Fill->Series.

Oh, in case this wasn't obvious--You will need to import the Excel file twice, once from a layout based on Student, once from a layout based on Academics.

Thanks so much for your help. I created a StuID in the Excel file and seemed to do the trick. Thanks again.

Chris