254 character limit on lookup?

[frank thompson]

I am writing a database to generate pupil reports for my school. The structure includes a database file editable by a department that is the source of pup-up lists for the separate report generating file. However, I seem to have a problem that text longer than 254 characters is cut off when I do a look up using a pop-up list in the report generating file to grab data from the other file. Is there a limit to text fields when using look-ups or is there a way around this? Thanks.

[-Queue-]

254? If the field to be used for a value list has more than 60 characters, then it won't determine uniqueness for the 61st character.

[Vaughan]

Number fields are limited to 255 characters... is one of the fields defined as a number?

[frank thompson]

Both fields are text fields. If as Queue says, FMP only determines uniqueness up to the 60th character I have a bigger problem than I thought. I wonder if there is another way of doing this. I am trying to be able to select sentences and/or paragraphs from a set of choices to build up a school report. Our current data base uses codes but this makes it very tough for teachers to use intuitively. I wanted a system where you see what you choose and can see your report build up as you make sentence choices. Is there a better way of achieving this?

Thanks for any help.

[-Queue-]

You might find a portal more useful than a valuelist for your purposes then.