ommiting duplicates

[markdesign]

ok, .. so i'm trying to ommit duplicates again, but this time it gets a little more complicated...

I have a found set in my database. Field A. Field A has more then one entry, separated by a break.

e.g. field A, record 1 can have:

eggs

bread

milk

sugar

field A, record 2 can have:

eggs

coffee

bread

butter

Etc.....

what i need is a list of all the data in field A without duplicates...

I know this is possible if there is one data per field, but is it possible with multiple data in one field?

What I am currently doing is copying all the data in the field and pasting into excel one record at a time. Then sorting them in excel to delete duplicates to get a list of originals..

is this possible to do this in filemaker?

I tried some scripting myself but having trouble with storing test value, and testing record....

someone help.... i'm a newb so please be descriptive when explaining script steps.. =P

[Vaughan]

You say "what i need is a list of all the data in field A without duplicates" If the values are separated by paragraph marks then you might be in luck.

Try this: define a vlaue list based on the field A. The value list will contain all values minus duplicates. Then define an unstored calculation field that uses the function

ValueListItems(database name, value list name)

The calc field will contain all of the values, separated by paragraph marks.

[markdesign]

Cool vaughan, that worked....but i didn't explain correctly...

What I meant to say, if you looked at the example i was trying to illustrate was..

"what i need is a list of all the data in field A (within all the found records) without duplicates"

Hope that makes more sence.... thanks for all the help.

[Vaughan]

Depending on what you want to do with the results, a summary layout with appropriate sub-summary parts will produce the answer you want. But you can only look at it in preview mode.

Alternately a script will be needed that concatenates all the field values for all the records (say into a global field) then do the ValueListItems() trick, using a value list based on the global field.