I have two relational files, Tech Dept and Functions. A list of functions is created from within a portal in each Tech Dept record. This was working fine, now I'm finding that if I try to delete any record from Tech Dept, the whole thing hangs and I have to force quit FM. If I remove the relational requirment in Functions to delete related records when a TD record is deleted, things work fine. I can delete Function records either way without incident. This works the same on OSX and XP. To my horror, when I tired to compact or optimize Functions, it becomes damaged and cannot be opened. If I try to recover the file (before or after I crash it with compact or optimize), Filemaker makes it to step two of the process, then crashes. No problem with any of these used on Tech Dept. My worst nightmare would be to rebuild Functions, with 4 tables, over 260 fields and 120 layouts, from the ground up. Any ideas?

Backups, Johnny, backups. Start looking for them.

I had some serious problems with this also. It was in files converted from 6. I just turned off "allow deletion of related records," since in that case they were very seldom going to delete records anyway. A few orphans seemed a good tradeoff to keep from crashing.

I haven't seen this happen with relationships created in version 7. I can't remember if it would work to create a new relationship, then transfer all references to it, then delete the old pre-7 relationship.

You could also script deletion. Go to related records, Show, then delete all records (related), then return to the main record and delete it.

But, as Vaughan says, if you can't Compact, then you'd want to go back to a backup. It sounds like something is not quite right.

Thanks guys. This was converted from 6 to 7. It's been rough seas ever since. I guess I'll start testing all the back-up versions and see where it takes me.