hopefully I can explain myself.... I was wondering if there is a way to define a number of variables (or number of rows for a portal) based on a result from a field?: I'm working on a database for a m anufacturing sales department and need to set it up so they are force to give a description of an item based on the number of items that they say they are going to sell. (i.e. if they say that we need to cut 5 sinks cutouts for a house, then I need to force them to give model and dimentions informations for each of the 5 sinks. makes sense? the number of rows in a portal that specifies the sinks will depend

entirely of the number of holes we have to make.....can this be done?:

No. However, you can force them by checking that you have 5, or however many, sets of descriptive info.

The only way i can think of to do this is to have five different relationships, with 5 different portals.

Say the original key fields for your relationship are PrimaryKey and ForeignKey. Create a new field in the parent database called PrimaryKeyNumber which is equal to ( PrimaryKey & "|" & NumberOfItemsTheyAreGoingToSell ). Create five new fields in the child database equal to ( ForeignKey & "|1" ) , ( ForeignKey & "|2" ) , ...

Now create relationships from PrimaryKeyNumber to each of the five new fields. If you base portals off of them, setting each to the appropriate number of lines, then the number of portal lines available will always be equal to the number they enter in NumberOfItemsTheyAreGoingToSell. You can either line these portals up going down the page, or you can make a new layout for each portal. But please note that you cannot stack them on top of each other! (Would that it were...)

Jerry