Selecting more than one record at a time

[Jeff Bills]

Does FM7 allow the user to select more than one record at a time like the Appleworks database?

[Fenton]

No, and yes. You don't really "select" records, you Find records. The term "Select" implies dragging over something, or using some command key and clicking on it, to make part of an "active set."

Filemaker doesn't work like that really. There is the "current record" (which you're on), and there is the "found set", which is all the records currently active (and conversely, the remaining records not found).

In other to get a selection of records, you basically create a found set of such. You can create your own "mark" field, a "Boolean" checkbox, click on a bunch, then Find those (but they you have to clear the marks before or after).

Or you can Find close to what you want, and Omit (Command-T) records you don't want. You can Omit Mulitple to remove either the first or last set of records, or any chunk of contiguous records.

Or you can Show All Records (Cmd-J), Omit the ones you want, then Show Omitted Only. It's kind of "backwards" thinking, but it works.

[bruceR]

Appleworks is like Access in this regard, and it can be kind of nice to select multiple rows of a table. But Fenton's right, you can't do it. But then - what is it that you want to do with selected records? You can, for instance, copy a found set and paste it into a spreadsheet.

[Jeff Bills]

Thanks Fenton,

Such a bummer

Batch annotating files in Appleworks database is so easy. I posted a suggestion to Filemaker before version 6 came out concerning this issue (say, shift-clicking to select a range or command-clicking to select specific records in a list like Appleworks) and I was hoping that version 7 would accomodate.

[Jeff Bills]

I have digital photo programs that batch annotate records by selecting any number of records in a list without having to perform a find and so forth. It is done by shift or command clicking any record in the list to prepare it for the batch change.

My Sony digital camera sets the file names to DSC1000, DSC1002, DSC1003, . . . etc (or something like that). I guess I'll have to perform a find for a given range of records in order to batch the filenames to "Christmas 2003 photo 001, Christmas 2003 photo 002, . . ." etc.

[Fenton]

You could designate a button on a record to "add" it to a list. Personally I'd do this in a global field, text, return-delimited, adding a serial ID field (auto-entered, incremental, unique). So choices would look like:

125

152

178

etc..

If this field was related to the SerialID field, could be used in Go To Related Record ["gSerialIDs"] to instantly go to those records. They could even be shown in a portal (though that's not useful in List views).

It could be made to look like a checkbox with a calculation field:

Case ( PatternCount (gSerialIDs; SerialID); 1; "")

To start a new list, just set the gSerialIDs to "" (nothing).

[P.S. This is "multi-user safe," 'cause it uses a global field. That also means no one else can see your choices; and they go bye-bye when you log out of the file.]

CheckOff.zip

[Deep Thought II]

to be able to manually select each row is an important feature, and FM just doesn't have that.

from a developer's point of view, this action might not be totally necessary as long as it can be replaced with some other actions. but from the user's point of view, this means extra learning and extra amount of time to adapt to new way of doing things.

it's not very good when this feature is not present... plus, to use find in place of select, is just a pain, when there are multiple criterias, as well as non-linear logical selections. extra brain work is required as well, and some records are just not able to be "selected" using find.

do consider to make use of "Omit Record" or "Omit Multiple" for making it easier to select particular records.

[Jeff Bills]

I guess that IF Filemaker would ever add this feature they'd want to toggle its ability for developers who don't want people messing with a found set.

It's nice going through a list of photos (using other programs) and, for example, establishing a keyword to each photo that has my wife in it via selecting specific, not-in-order rows