Sum/Caculate value list results

June 26, 200421 yr

I feel a bit embarassed asking such experts - but I've used FM Pro for years and it's about time I REALLY used it (If you know what I mean) I want to get percentages from value lists - ie: how many times someone chose an item on a list. I can see the results from a find, but what calculation or formula should I be using? Thanks very much.

June 27, 200421 yr

Welcome troutstudio!

Use a Summary field (Count of Record ID). To show the results you can put SomeField and the Count field on a list layout with a Sub-Summary by SomeField part. It will show the counts for each different value of SomeField when sorted by SomeField. Results will only show in Preview mode or when printed.

4 weeks later...

July 20, 200421 yr

I had a similar question! But i got a very different answer.

Here is the thread:

http://www.fmforums.com/threads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/115490/an/0/page/0#115490

July 20, 200421 yr

Often there is more than one way to do things in FMP. The best way depends on several things, including how the data is to be displayed.

I recommended sub-summary parts in this case because it looked like troutstudio was looking for results displayed in a list view, like in a report. For a more dynamic result, a count of related values is better.

Actually my solution was incomplete as it did not show percentage of each value but frequency. To get percentages requires a couple more fields.

July 23, 200421 yr

Ender,

I'm not sure what you mean by "Sub-Summary by SomeField part. "

Please clarify.

thanks

July 23, 200421 yr

I'm not sure what you mean by "Sub-Summary by SomeField part. "
Please clarify.

Just like a layout can have a Header, Body, and Footer, a layout can also have Sub-Summaries. Each of these is called a layout Part.

Sub-Summary parts are defined by the field they are grouped by. 'Sub-Summary by SomeField' is a part that shows up once for each grouping of data in SomeField.

A simple example: You might have invoices for a bunch of sales people in a database, and you want to see the dollar totals for each sales person.

In this case using a Sub-Summary by Sale Person (and sorting by Sales Person), will give us a part that will show up once for each sales person. We can then put the Sales Person name and a summary Total of InvoiceDollars field on this part to show us our totals by Sales Person.

The FM manual has a basic introduction of Sub-Summaries too.