In the Access world I come from, a pop-up (or drop-down) list will often show a list of text values to the user, but actually store a list of hidden numeric values. The "hidden" values are "serial numbers" that have no meaning to the user, but are necessary for completing a relationship. I don't see a way to do this in FileMaker. Am I missing something? Am I "going about it all wrong"?

thanks

You can't really hide the serial value, but you can have it show both the serial and the corresponding text. Then you can cover the list field with a non-enterable field showing the related text, so the serial only shows while choosing the values.

Another way around this is to have a value list with just the text values that looks up the correct serial value into another field. If you don't want to store the text value, you can use a global field. You have to be sure that the text values are unique in this case though.