Funky portal calculations, please help.

[Chuck Shipman]

Greetings to all,

This is my first post to this board.

I am having troubles with some simple calculations in a portal field.

In my portal I have 4 dynamic value lists that work in a hierarchy. Once the first is selected the next drop down populates, and so on. Once a certain set of criteria is set then a "Fee" field is to be caluclated.

The problem is that the "Fee" field is showing up with the correct calculation in the portal but not in the respective table until I "click" in that field. And, another "Sub-Total" field which gets the sum of all of the "Fee" fields doesn't update until I change to "Layout" mode and back again.

I've tried the "commit record" script step with no results. I can't figure out what's going on. Please help.

[RalphL]

What version of FMP and what operating system? If your profile was up to date I wouldn't have to ask these questions.

I assume the calcul;ation is the related table.

[Chuck Shipman]

Sorry, Profile updated. Yes, My ultimate goal is to have the "Sub-Total" field in another table properly update when another record with a valid "Fee" entry is made. But it's not doing that until I change modes.

[Leader]

It doesn't do any good to update my profile... I'm working on products from v.4 to v.7 on both Mac and PC.

Question: I've seen on the web that some one in the community published a book specifically about FM Portals. Any idea who the author and ISBN are?

Thanks.

[RalphL]

I think what is happening is the screen is not refreshing. The calculation has been completed and the data stored. Whne you change modes and return the screen now shows the lastest info. This was a problem in earlier versions but I thought it had gone away by 5. It seems to have come back in 7. Rather then switching to layout mode try preview mode or try changing records. Another method is to set the key field to itself. Anything that will cause the screen to refresh will help.

[Chuck Shipman]

I made a script step on a button in that portal row to switch from preview to browse mode but it's kinda funky and I feel it's one step more than it should take for this to work. Thanks for the suggestion but am still open to other ideas.

[Ugo DI LUCA]

Hi,

Just done a few tests while learning 7, but didn't experienced this behaviour so far.

How did you format these dropdown lists ? Menu or Pop-ups ?

[Chuck Shipman]

They're based on the values from a field using a relation. Example:

Drop Down #1: All possible values

Drop Down #2: Once #1 is set, all values in a field of the records that match #1

Drop Down #3: And so on.

I have a "Fee" field that is based on a relationship that involves 4 of those drop downs to pull an exact value from another table.

The problem I'm dealing with is the "Fee" value is being properly pulled from the other table and displayed in the portal but not in it's own table. That fee field is involved in a "Sum" function to get an over all total and the total isn't being updated due to the "Fee" field not getting updated in it's own table.