How2 create report counting up value list occuranc

[Brian Hagemann]

Hello,

I'm new here and fairly new to Filemaker. I'm stumped right now on what I assumed to be a very basic function (and I'm sure it is and I just don't know what I'm doing)! ;-)

I have a database for a conference registration form. Outside of all the normal contact info, payment info, meals requested etc... there was a section where folks could sign up for workshops. There are 8 total workshop 'slots' over 3 days (workshop sessions A-F) and for each session time there are 8 possible workshops someone could attend. For each of these we've asked for their first, second and third choices (in case the room capacities get filled) which we will fill on a registration date basis. Anyhow what I'm trying to do is printout a summary page of how many people signed up for what sessions and what 'choice', but its not obvious to me how to accomplish that

My fields are as such:

workshopA_1stchoice --valuelist "1" through "8"

workshopA_2ndchoice --valuelist "1" through "8"

workshopA_3rdchoice --valuelist "1" through "8"

workshopB_1stchoice --valuelist "1" through "8"

...

workshopF_3rdchoice --valuelist "1" through "8"

so i want a page that will tell me how many times each value occurred in each field. As such:

workshopA_1stchoice ="1" 10times

workshopA_1stchoice ="2" 36times

workshopA_1stchoice ="3" 33times

...

workshopA_1stchoice ="8" 18times

workshopA_2ndchoice="1" 43times

workshopA_2stchoice ="2" 36times

etc... then for session B,C,D,E,F... we should end up with a table of all the entries.

so I need to know how to count how many times a value has been picked from a value list in a give field. The only thing I've figured out is to create a global numeric field and in scriptmaker do a find for each instance and then put that result in the field, but that requires me to create 192 additional fields just to keep count and the script would be over 500 lines long the way i figured it out. It WORKS but there's GOT to be a better way to get a summary type report of how many records contain each value in a value list. I also tried a variety of summary, count and other functions but am kinda lost at this point.

Any suggestions or ideas would be much welcomed! TIA

[Brian Hagemann]

Oh my.. i made that sound wayyy too complicted. Here's a very short analogy:

If you have a field say, 'favorite color' and a valuelist containing 'red','blue','green' as choices... and 100 records have been created... how do you get a report of how many picked red, how many blue and how many green?

This is what i'm trying to do for the workshop selection fields. Sorry bout the verbage above ;-)

Brian

[faaslave]

So you just want a report that looks like:

Favorite Color

---Red

--------------Jim Jones

--------------Doug Johnson

-------------------------------Total Red 2

---Blue

--------------Mary Jane

--------------Lisa Easy

--------------Bob Waters

-------------------------------Total Blue 3

Maybe I am not understanding the question. If this is what you are looking for, I think I know how to help you.

Dave

[ctls]

If thats what you are looking for, assumign you have fields - Person_name and Color, make a summary field s_color = Count of Color.

In your layout for Report, choose layout type -report with grouped data with subtotals(and grand total if needed). Choose Color and Person_name to appear in your report. Choose Group by Color and Sort by color. And choose summary field "s_color" and click on Add subtotal. If you want the total of REd + Blue etc, you can choose s_color and Add as Grand Total.

I think this should work.

CTLS

[Brian Hagemann]

Thanks, but I think that would give me way too much info... I don't need ANY details in the report... i fact I don't want any information about the records that contain the fielddata, just a running count of the totals. I need to printout a SINGLE page (layout) that would look like:

_____

date: november 15th, 2004

As of today there are 125 total records in the database

For the field 'FavoriteColor';

50 people picked 'red'

30 people picked 'blue'

20 people picked 'green'

25 records contained no selection

end.

_____

again, there is a single field in the database called 'FavoriteColor' which has a valuelist containing possible colors ('red','green','blue'). I'm just trying to figure out how to get filemaker to count up the number of times each value in the value list was picked and print that out (how many red.. how many green... how many blue... ). thats it. seems like it'd be easy, but i've tried every way of counting up this and can only figure out how to do it if I create (in the case of my specific real need-not this example) close to 200 global fields to act as temporary variables and it makes a real complicated thing. there's got to be a more elegant shortcut using a formula such as a count/sum/index, report/layout field or something basic. seems like a basic kinda need.