Referencing other Data

[Birds532]

I am a beginner at Filemaker and have been using it for a couple days now in order to build a database to catalog my photos. I am a nature photographer so I will be photographing a lot of animals. Here is my problem. I am attempting to have three different fields in my catalog that will consist of the Common Name, Genus, and Species of each animal. I have a Pop up list on the Common Name field. What I want to do is select the Common Name from the pop up list and have the Genus and Species for that particular animal filled in automatically. I have created another database file consisting of the three fields (common name, genus, species) so that I can create a record of the appropriate Genus and Species for each Animal. I need to know how to call on this file to fill in the Genus and Species dependent on my selection in the Common Name Field. I also would like the list of available choices in my drop down list for Common Names to be generated from the file that is referenced. I don't understand how relationships work and I was wondering if anyone can explain to me exactly how I need to do this. I hope this makes sense to you guys. I am using Filemaker Pro 5. Thanks for your time.

[Kurt Knippel]

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Originally posted by drew:

I am a beginner at Filemaker and have been using it for a couple days now in order to build a database to catalog my photos. I am a nature photographer so I will be photographing a lot of animals. Here is my problem. I am attempting to have three different fields in my catalog that will consist of the Common Name, Genus, and Species of each animal. I have a Pop up list on the Common Name field. What I want to do is select the Common Name from the pop up list and have the Genus and Species for that particular animal filled in automatically. I have created another database file consisting of the three fields (common name, genus, species) so that I can create a record of the appropriate Genus and Species for each Animal. I need to know how to call on this file to fill in the Genus and Species dependent on my selection in the Common Name Field. I also would like the list of available choices in my drop down list for Common Names to be generated from the file that is referenced. I don't understand how relationships work and I was wondering if anyone can explain to me exactly how I need to do this. I hope this makes sense to you guys. I am using Filemaker Pro 5. Thanks for your time.

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Relational database design is well documented in a plethora of books. Do a search on Amazon and you will find hundreds. Many are specific to Filemaker.

Basically a relationship is a join between two sets of data via an ID field. In this case you beginning relationship between the two files is via Common Name.

You then set your Genus and Species fields as lookups, getting thier data from the other file via the Common Name relationship. This way when you pick the common name, the other two get filled in automatically.

To put this all together you need a value list of the common names. One of the options when creating a value list is to choose the values of a field from another file. Do not use the relationship option, as this is not going to give you the results you want. Simply get the values from a field and choose the Common Name field in the other file.