Can anyone help me better understand "SET FIELD"? I feel like I am going the long way around to get some things done, but I do not understand what SET FIELD truly does, but I see it used all the time by toher developers. I know this is pretty pretty basic, but if someone could HBO (help a Brother Out) I would really appreciate it.

Thanks,

Steve

ok

Set field allows you to set the contents of any field that allows data to be entered into (basically not calcs)

You specify a field and then you specify what you want that field to contain.

You can set the field with text, numbers or dates.

These can be hard coded by you in the calc dialog such as;

 "I am some text" or 123

You can set a field to the contents of another field by referencing the field in the dialog to pull from

You can combine fields together Field A &" " & Field B

You can even create conditional calcs to determine the information to set.

The other great benefit of Set Field is the field you are setting does NOT have to be on the layout you currently reside on, unlike copy and paste.

HTH....anyone else?

Have you tried the Help file that comes as part of FileMaker? It has a good description of the Set Field Script step.

Who wants help files when we've got andy gaunt?

(But Ralph is right, of course.)

One shortcoming of the Set Field step is that you cannot determine the target field by a calculation. A workaround for that is to use the step inside a loop as follows:

Step: Go To Field [field1]

Step: Loop

Step: Set Field [ If ( Get(ActiveFieldName) = "DesiredTargetField" ; "desiredOutput" ; Get(ActiveFieldContents) ) ]

Step: Exit Loop If [ Get(ActiveFieldName) = "DesiredTargetField" ]

Step: Go To Next Field

Step: End Loop

Set field is an assignment operator, sort of like := in other languages.