I am having trouble understanding how filtered valuelists work. I have done them two different ways. But both ways were from records that were already created and had a reference. What I am trying to do on my next project is show related records through the value list from a field. What I have is a student who wants to join in 2005 and I have a list of classes that have a field 2005. I created a seperate occurance to equal the two filds accross the tables and I made my value list based on the classID field. Now on the table where the student name is I put in 2005 in the year field and of course the classes have a value of 2005. The portal is set to create a record for that student and it will put that student in that class. But when I click on the field in the portal, the valuelist displays nothing. What am I doing wrong? How does this related record relationship work?

Have a Student table, a Class2005 table, a Class2006 table, etc., and a join table, Student_Class. In the Student_Class table, have a year field. In the Class2005 and Class2006 tables, set up value lists based on field. In the Student_Class table, have a pop-up to choose the student from the Student table and make the class field a pop-up, with the appropriate value list displayed (based on the year field).

Well, that works fine that way. And not too much trouble. But what I am trying to do is go backwards. I don't want to go directly to the join table and add the student. I want to do it from the student table. I have it working fine but instead of showing ALL the classes, I would like only the ones for the year that the student will join from a field that is on the student table. I have made a similar set up using catagories and it works but I can't seem to understand WHY it works. It isn't a clear thing that is for sure. You would think that I could just set up a 2nd relationship based on the year field, so that any entry, as say 2005, and the class list having a field with the same value, then set up the value list that comes from the field of class ID from the class list. Then set it to show only related records based upon that second relationship being that the fields ARE equal... but it doesn't work.

The last time I had this problem it was because the second value list field had one of the same names as another so it wouldn't work. When I make a calc field and put the ID in it, therefore making it for sure a unique value, then it seemed to work. I kept that in mind when I made this one and still nothing.

I will keep cracking at it but I wish I could just understand the logic of how FMP determines a related record through a value list.

You could have a portal from the join table in the Student table and add the courses there, using the pop-up (after inputting the year, of course).

You could have a portal from the join table in the Student table and add the courses there, using the pop-up (after inputting the year, of course).

You could have a portal from the join table in the Student table and add the courses there, using the pop-up (after inputting the year, of course).