This has got to be a stupid question, but I need to ask it anyway:

I have a database I've given someone that is now in production. I, of course, continue to make changes to it while they keep entering data. What I need to know is the proper sequence of steps to correctly move my user from one version to another. The version of FM will be the same.

There are a number of tables with data entered by the users (this is a concert ticket reservations system so it has: table of buyers (name, address, phone), price list, table of seats). But there are also tables with data that the user did not enter. These I created under the covers and contain much of the relationship information. That is, for each contact I create a unique "Contact ID", and there is a table that relates a particular user with a particular seat they purchased. There is one such record for each seat the person has bought. This way, from the "seats" table, I know who has bought the seat and from the "contact" table I know which seats the person has bought.

So, is the right thing to do the following:

In the new database: Save a copy as... Clone"

From the old database:

Export data from each of the tables: contacts, seats and my "hidden" tables.

Import each table into the cloned database.

Am I missing anything?

Custom Value Lists!

This one can be a problem. Value lists do not export or import (without alot of tricks, this may have changed in 7 correct me if it has).

If you have any value lists that the end users can change, then these must be manually upgraded.

Jerry

I hadn't thought about Custom Value Lists. However, the only value lists there are are the ones I created; the user's can't change them.

Note: I've tried doing exactly what I described above. Indeed, I put the import/export into scripts so the process would be automated for the next time around. All of this *appears* to work with one exception: Global Data. When I did an export/import, the global data was not re-imported. For the most part, it doesn't matter, but for one particular table it definitely does...

There should be no problem with exporting and importing global fields. Just make sure they're selected for the export and are matched up during the import.

Is there a way to import everything at once or do you have to import data into each table separately?

Import each table separately.