newbie needs help with oneevent triggering another

[lwaa]

I have a form where I use a pull down menu to select a client. I'd like that to trigger other events too, such as select that client's phone, fax, email and company name in other boxes automatically - currently, I have to do all of these manually. So if I choose client A from the menu, client A's phone etc would appear in the phone area without me having to go there and select it from a drop down menu.

I have very little experience with fmpro, so go easy on me!

Thanks in advance.

[ESpringer]

Iwaa,

I assume you have at least two files/tables, one with clients, and another with appointments or invoices or some such. I'll assume you've already set up a relation between these, and I'll call the file you're working with "Events" for now... Two options:

1. Don't record the client's peripheral data (phone etc.) in the Events file/table at all. In any layout, you can make related info display on screen or print by placing a field from the related table. If you choose this option and make a change in your client's phone number over in the clients file, you'll notice that the phone number now changes here in the Events file too. This is a good thing for many purposes such as appointments or ongoing jobs, and it makes data storage more efficient. To place a related field on a layout, you'll use the field tool to draw the field at the right location, and then use the drop-down menu at the top of the "specify field" dialog to choose the clients file as a source of fields. Any field from that client's record is fair game to display on the Event records for that client.

2. Do record client peripheral data in the Events file. (This is a good idea any time your needs include "snapshot" records of transactions. Say, if you need to be able to say, "At *that* time, we mailed this invoice to you at ____ address.") This would be accomplished by using the Lookup option in the definition of each field that depend on the client's name (or ID -- see below).

Which of these two options seems most in line with your purpose?

(While you're at it, you might want to make sure that your clients have an ID separate from the name, because of name changes and duplicate names. So, you'd have a drop down menu to choose a client ID (the name could appear alongside it with the "Also show values from..." option in value lists) and then the other fields -- whether they are Lookups or the related fields themselves -- will automatically display right data.)