Two column Value Lists poorly aligned

[ffarmer]

Is there a way to get two-columned Value Lists to be neatly vertically-aligned (in FM7)?___ The second column should be vertically aligned, rather than zig-zag'd.

They look messy, and are harder to 'read' .

[Vaughan]

Two columned value lists? You mean a value list that displays a second value? Mine are all OK, but odd things can happen if some of the values in the second column are not unique (ie duplicated).

I read recently on TechInfo that making the second field un-indexed solves the problem: make an unstored cal field.

[Fenton]

I believe ffarmer is talking about how the value list looks. The 1st column is an ID number, right? It starts with 1, but then when it gets to 10 it's not aligned anymore. The trick is to pad the number, to however many places you think they'll need. Once you get to large numbers it's not very noticeable. This is for an auto-entered serial ID in a file (a new one for each record).

So, if you think they'll need about 100,000 entries, you'd start at "00001" (99,999 before it moves out of alignment slightly).* It works in either a text or number field. The only glitch is if you do some arithmetic with it, say adding or substracting 1; then you'd have to pad it manually with a text calculation. But that's rare.

*Basically drop-down value lists become pretty clunky by the 10,000 mark. I prefer filtered portals when they get that big.

[ffarmer]

Fenton, you're 'close' but here's what I'm doing...

The value list comes from a table of Investments (which contains StockAbbrev, StockName, and several other fields). In the value list I use:

StockAbbrev (which is usually a stock symbol-- can be 1 to several characters, e.g. NT)

StockName (which is the full name e.g Nortel Networks)

The StockAbbrev varies in length (like your example) and that causes the StockName to appear in a zigzag fashion in the popdown value list. Looks sloppy.

I use the value list for a Transaction Entry screen (to enter a transaction pertaining to the selected stock), and also in the "Find" field for reports of individual stocks.

The value list works. It just doesn't look neat. (this was not the case in MS Access, where it's value lists were automatically neatly aligned). I expected FM7 to be likewise.

P.S. As an aside to this, I discovered FM7 doesn't treat Find values as entirely unique -- it only seems to look at the first few characters. For example, if I have similar StockAbbrevs, FM7 will Find all of them, not the specific one I request.....

ABC DEF

ABC DEG

ABC DEH

If the above are three different StockAbbrevs, and I select 'ABC DEG' from a popdown Value List, my report will include ALL the ABC DE... stocks. Dangerous & bad!

To get around this, I had to create another Value List of StockAbbrevs with StockNames, but in this case I concatenated "==" with the StockAbbrev field so that the Value List would display the StockAbbrev part as

==ABC DEF

==ABC DEG

==ABC DEH

and now if I select the second one, I get exactly what I want in the report (ABD DEG only). I cannot use this Value List for data entry however, because it will include the '==' in the entry field -- which don't want!

I'm very surprised that FM7 doesn't match Find values on the entire length of the value being sought. Another example of FM7's sloppiness.

If I wanted all the ABC D's I should be able to say Find "ABC D*" where * is a wildcard. FM7 doesn't follow my logic! I wonder how many users of FM7 are out there running reports of data which may be incorrect because of FM7's quirks like this. Scarey.

[-Queue-]

I tested a similar value list and had no problem retrieving the correct data. The wildcard find works, as well.

Perhaps attaching a sample of your file would be helpful.