I want to put a text value in one field and depending on that value have another value automatically fill in another field. Is this possible and if so, how? I have been trying to figure it out with scriptmaker, value list, relationships - but don't see how. Thank you.

Hi Flanzy,

You are pretty vague on what the fields types are now (i.e. Text, date, numbers, etc.)

But assuming you have two text fields, Field1 and Field2, I would use a calculation. I would also attach a value list to Field1 to ensure that whatever word you are looking for are entered correctly. I.e. in my example, yep.

Field2 (calculation, Text Result) =

Case(Field1="yep", "Okay", "Not Okay")

HTH

Lee

Lee, thank you for your reply. I will see if it makes sense to me. But to explain further: The db is for used books. I have a field called "category" and another called "parent category" If the text in category is "WW I" I want the parent category to automatically fill-in "American History." If the category is "Aviation & Flight" I want the parent category to fill-in "transportation." I have a value list set for the category and I can do one for parent category if that would work. I definitely want all the terms to be constant. Flanzy

I'm guessing your numbers of Categories and Parent Categories are going to run to something of the order of 100 or more? (As opposed to say 20, when a long Case statment might be feasible.)

Consider setting up a separate file holding Category and corresponding Parent Category. Link your main file to this file using Categorey. Then, in your main file, do a simple lookup using Category to get Parent Category.

If you define your value list to be the field Category from the subsidiary file, your list is always 100% accurate and also updates automatically when you update that file.

Paul, you were correct. I just had the chance to try the solution and it works beautifully. I set up about 20 for the try-out. Will now set it all up. All the years I've been using FMP 4.1 - never had need for this feature and was looking for another keyword in the manual index and coming up with a big zero. Thank you and all who participate in this forum for the help! Happy 2005!