adding new records to related files

[hillj888]

i have a master file which is the main file i work with. It contains each person's contact info and a bunch of other info on them. whenever a new person is added to the file it generates an Auto-Enter ID number. I am trying to set up an easy way to track donations received from individuals and would love to have them all listed in a separate box with a scrollbar, rather than just having repeating fields. but it seems that the only way to do this is to create a portal with info from a related file.

I have created a very basic 2nd file for entering donations, which i figure i can let the development department use and this way they won't be messing with the master file at all. this is a good thing. the two files are linked by the Auto-Enter ID number. HOWEVER, i don't know what to do if the development people receive a donation from someone who isn't already in the Master File. If they create a new ID number for an individual in the 2nd File, how do i get that to also be intered in the master file, and vice versa?

Do you think a portal is the way to go for this type of thing, or would i be better off using repeating fields to enter donations. i will also need to be doing summaries for the amounts in these repeating (or portal) fields. is it easier to do summaries on repeating fields or or portal fields?

thanks for any help you can provide! i'm pretty new at this!

[Ender]

Yes, use a portal to a related file for this. Assuming your master file is the info about the People and the related file is their Donations, when there's a donation for a new person, add a new record in the master file. Then add their donation to the portal.

Using a related file for the donation records makes summariing much more flexible.

[hillj888]

thanks! glad my instincts were correct. however, i am still unclear about something: if a new record (and new auto-enter ID) is generated in the Master File, will that new ID number automatically appear in the related file? and also, if one wanted to only work in the Master File and not the related file (which only allows one to enter donations) could one do that? could you enter a person's donations directly into the master file if you wanted to---as a shortcut if you were working in the master file to add a new person to it. it would be a pain to have to then go to the related file just to enter the donation.

i guess what i'm unclear about is if the relationship between the two files is two-way, i.e., can you do date entry from either file and will the other file automatically get updated with the new info.

does that make sense?

[Ender]

If your relationship to the Donations file has the 'Allow creation of related records' option on, then yes, the Peson ID from the master file will auto-fill into the Person ID in the Donations file when you add a portal row.

If there's not too much Donation info to enter, then it could all be done through the one portal, without having to leave the master file.

[gradiva]

hi! I wonder if anyone can help me. I have the same question as the above, except that I am using concatenated calculation fields as the matched field in the parent & child files. I am finding that FM (v6) won't let me create a new record through a portal because it can't populate the calculated field - so it complains that the relationship is invalid. And it won't do a lookup to fill in the fields that are getting concatenated, because that creates circular logic! and it won't let me type in the values of the fields that are getting concatenated, because I can't get both values entered before it complains that the relationship is invalid. augh! Does anyone have any solutions? Your help is greatly appreciated!

-Gradiva

[Ender]

Not the same problem.

The concatonated match field must be a regular text field. You can then parse that if necessary to get the contibuting fields, or use lookups to pull the field data from the parent record.

[gradiva]

Thank you for your help! But... I'm not clear on how the concatenated match field can be a regular text field. Doesn't it have to be a calculation field? Right now I have it as a calculation and (the calculation results are text).

Parent File fields: "Name" (text), "Year" (text), "NameYear" (calculation)

Child file fields: "Name" (text), "Year" (text), "NameYear" (calculation), "data1" (text)

I am trying to match NameYear with NameYear. It does work nicely for displaying the data, but won't let me start a new record in the portal.

Hope I'm making sense! thanks again for your help...

Gradiva

[Ender]

But... I'm not clear on how the concatenated match field can be a regular text field. Doesn't it have to be a calculation field? Right now I have it as a calculation and (the calculation results are text).

Since the records are being created via the relationship, the match field must be a regular text field. If you really need the other fields in the child file, they can be calculated or looked up based on the match field:

NameYear (text)

Name (text) Lookup from Parent::Name

Year (calculation, number result) = rightwords(NameYear,1)

Different techniques work to populate the Name and Year field. Lookups work if the parent records are unique for each NameYear combination. Calcs also work, but only if you know the number of words in the contributing keys, or you use some other separator between keys that you can look for.

Alternatively, for layouts in the child file, you could just show the related parent fields directly, instead of having these copies.