newbie here: CALCULATION for total quantity for each product

[shamrog12]

I have a repeating field named "ProductName" and it repeats 2 times. As you can guess it is for products and what I am in need of is to track how many of each product we sell. If I have (for example) "bat" and "glove" as the two products in my repeating (2 times) field and each has a quantity of "1" as defined in a field called "Quantity", I find that I can't write a calculation that that detects that "bat" exists and has a quantity of "1" and that "glove" exists and has a quantity of "1." My calculations seem to only see the product name or quantity at the top. This makes it very hard for me to somehow keep record of the total quantity sold of each product for all records.

Any ideas? I'm new at this and need some guidance and advice. Thanks in advance.

[BobWeaver]

If you read through some of the messages in this forum, you will find that as soon as anyone mentions repeating fields, the answer is always "Don't use repeating fields!" They are very inflexible and you'll find that trying to extract summary data out of them, as you are trying to do, is next to impossible.

You need to replace the repeating field with a related "line item" file, and a portal. Then, you will be able to get all the summary data that you need.

[Anatoli]

IMHO - the "Don't use repeating fields!" should be on first page of FM manual in bold size 128 points.

They are left there for compatibility reason.