Two newbie questions

[inriquito]

Hi all!

I was doing a list of my books using Microsoft Excel, because I like this software for entering large amounts of data, but I now moved to FM7 because it's a real database program, not a Spreadsheet. But I miss a very useful characteristic from Excel:

When you are filling a new record, the program Autofills that I write with the data of all the other records (the data of this concrete field). In example, when I write "Grisham, John" for the first time, if I have another Grisham Book, I don't need to write the whole name again. I start to write Gr..and Excel autofills the rest. Maybe I have another book written by, let's say, Gritton, but when I write Gris... it changes automatically to Grisham, John and I don't need to write the rest. Exists this kind of function in FM7? If not, I prefer entering data in Excel and then importing to FM7 for sorting, searching, etc.

The other newbie question:

I'm defining a new database, and I have a field that only has 2 possible values, excluding each one between them. How can I create a radio button for choosing between this two values when I enter new data?

Thanks a lot

Inriquito.

[Aviosity]

To my knowledge, Filemaker does not have an "autofill" function like Excel does (I know what you mean, though, since I use Excel for data analysis and use that function every day). If you find yourself using a lot of the same values for a field in a record, I find that attaching the field to a value list on the layout with an "Other..." option is helpful. If you're using table view, however...I don't think Filemaker can do that.

In response to your second question, value lists to the rescue again. Instead of using a radio-button list, assign the field to a value list with no "edit value list" or "other..." options. This way, a pop-up type menu appears that allows users to select only from those options.

Hope that helped,

Aviosity

[Scott Quiring]

for the first question, create a value list based on the contents of your author field, then on the layout (under field format) make it a popup list (instead of a popup menu). If you want an existing value, choose it from the list, otherwise just click twice into the field.