I need to search a Filemaker database I have for 400 email addresses. I have the addresses in excel, but don't know any easy way to make 400 find requests in Filemaker. Any hep would be appreciated.

There's a couple ways this could be done, but what's the goal here? Do you want to have a found set of the matching records? What about those that are not found? Or do you just need to know if they exist in the larger file already?

i know they all exist, what i need to do is pull these 400 records, and seperate them from the rest so i can send them all a letter.

I'm not sure why you're not just using FileMaker for your larger file, and marking a field (or using a related file) to indicate the addresses that are part of this mailing group. Then you'd just find for that group.

However, if that's not an option, you could add a global text field to the group's file and define a relationship between the group's file and the larger contact file's ID field (you'd need to make it a FileMaker file.)

Then use a Copy All Records script step to copy the email addresses (unless you have a better ID that can be matched in the larger contact file too.) This Copy All Records step must be performed on a layout that only has the email address (or record ID) on it. Then paste this into the global (on another layout,) and use a Go to Related Records [ Show ] step to jump to the matching records in the larger contact file.

"Go to Related Records [ Show ] step to jump to the matching records in the larger contact file"

how do i set this up?

"Go to Related Records" is a script step available for scripts in ScriptMaker. You'd add that step to a new script and select the relationship described above. Then check the option to only show related records.

when i perform the "go to related records" it only pulls up one, not all of the records.

Do you have it defined on the relationship with the global? Perhaps you can post zipped clones of the problem files.

i included the external file that held the bad email addresses, and i also included the main file. i took out all of the data, but basically what i need to happen is thus:

Bad emails from the bad email DB need to match up with bad emails from the main DB, giving me a list of 400 or so addresses so that I can print form letters for people.

bademails.zip

You had the global in the wrong file. Try this.

Archive.zip

i don't see what that global is doing though. it's just that one email address duplicating itself over and over.

No, the global is a multikey on the parent side of the relationship.

i see it works, but i don't understand what it's doing. so i can use this in the future, an explanation would be great.

thanks for your help.

A multi-key allows OR matches in the relationship. If the parent file has records in the found set with IDs:

123 - Bob

142 - Elane

173 - Jordon

and you want to see all the related records from Bob OR Elane OR Jordon, then putting the IDs into one field, separated by returns, will create a multi-key, that can then be used in a relationship. We used Copy All Records to grab the keys for the found set, but a loop would work too. The multi-key would then be:

123

142

173

Then using a relationship between this global with it's multikey, and the related file's ID field, we can see all the related records for any of those IDs. The Go to Related Records [] script step puts these related records in the found set.