I am switching over to FM from Access. I plan to rebuild a database that I made in access so it will have a user interface that I was never able to build in access.

The main issue is that 2 of the tables are linked to 2 text files. They are for county permit files which I download from the county website and the table is automatically updated once I overwrite the text file with the current version. As long as I don't change the name it works fine.

How can I do this with Filemaker

Just use a container field linked to the text file. When the text file changes, the container field will change. Store only as a reference to the file on the disk.

Assuming that the text file is tab or comma separated, you could script an import to a related file to bring in the data from the file. This could be set to delete the current records in the file, then re-import the file data. To automate it would be a simple matter of setting the script to run as part of your opening script.