Is it possible to navigate to a field on a layout which is otherwise hidden and not part of the tab order? I'm trying to develop a search layout which will fill in criteria to search on a target layout.

Also, the fieldname it navigates to should be based on a calculation, not hard-coded in.

THanks for any help.

Hi,

Don't know about anybody else, but I find hidden fields are a real necessity in filemaker solutions. There's kind of a sliding scale of complexity as to how you do it ( all with pro's and cons). The simplest is to minimise the field right down ( like 1pixel x 1 pixel big) and tuck it away in the top right corner. Filemaker with obviously have no problem accessig it, but your users won't.

Another option is to make a background field, contains all the required fields. Setyou scripts to freeze the current layout, go to background layout, perform script there, return to orig' layout & refresh (unfreeze). Unless your scripts are REALLY heavy, the latency in this procedure will be really small

You can access any amount of fields from a calc, so long as their predefined in the calc (otherwise how will the calc realise the field exists) .... check out using Case() to act as a "router", that way you can have a MASSIVE amount to field "GoTo's"

Hope that helps

Giles

Thanks for the tip.

I think for my purposes here I'm going to go the background layout route. It would be great if the Goto Field could go to a calculated field name, as the case statement just seems like it would get a bit too messy.

I spent a lot of time getting rid of those nasty little hidden fields on the solution I inherited. I hate them.

It's much safer and cleaner to use Set Field for most operations, and a developer layout with all the fields listed, for anything that requires fields on the layout. If you have a find that can't be assembled with Set Fields, then navigate to the developer layout, enter the criteria, then navigate back to the original layout.