Okay, I'm thinking there is a simple solution for this:

I have two files:

FilmTitles (holds film titles)

Engagement (holds information like "open date" & "theatre")

Here's what I would like a "browse" layout to look like:

1ST COLUMN: (left of page)

6/24/05

Sunset 5 Theatre

Star Wars

Beaches

Monica 4 Theatre

Madagascar

Toy Story

Bridget Jones

2nd COLUMN: (right of page)

7/1/05

Sunset 5 Theatre

Scream 2

Charlie's Angels

Shaft

Monica 4 Theatre

Tomb Raider

NOTE:

The text above is as follows:

Dates and Theatres are in "Engagement database" --- Film Titles are in Film Titles Database.

-----------

Any suggestions on the best way to accomplish this? Relationship/Portals?

It needs to be in browse mode since the Film titles NEED to be clickable to view more information about the film.

I thought of creating a portal/relationship but couldn't figure out how to dynamically "show" only portal rows that contain data....instead of "forcing" it to "always" show a set number of rows. I don't want a scroll bar AND I don't want empty portal rows, but I NEED this to function in BROWSE mode AND NOT by sliding, etc in preview mode.

Thanks for the insight

Construct your layou hierarchy:

1ST COLUMN: (left of page)

6/24/05

...Sunset 5 Theatre

......Star Wars

......Beaches

...Monica 4 Theatre

.....Madagascar

.....Toy Story

.....Bridget Jones

7/1/05

...Sunset 5 Theatre

.....Scream 2

.....Charlie's Angels

.....Shaft

...Monica 4 Theatre

.....Tomb Raider

May be it will be little duiiicult but it is possible

Is this a preview mode layout?

I guess what I'm asking is if it's possible to dynamicly SHOW portal rows instead of setting the rows to a specific size.

if the portal has 6 records I want it to show 6 records, if it has 4, I want it to only show 4, etc.

This is similar to "sliding" in preview mode, but I need a browse mode layout, so users can click on things.

I don't quite see how a portal will give you the arrangement you want, but in any case, if the portal is transparent, the user is not aware of any empty rows.

This is in brouse mode. And you can by clicking at button for each rows open or close any theatre or any date, such as it is in windows files and folders. I did it for accounting map for our accounts system.

Yes, thank you.

I would want the portals to "slide" in browse mode.. One portal might be 10 rows deep and another portal may be 3 rows deep.. In "list" mode it would be better to tighten it up to have the portals only show the rows that contain data.

As far as "aaa's" comments, I'm still not sure what you mean. Any way to "post" an example?

Thanks again for your time.

OR possibly any other advice (besides portal?) can give the layout I'm looking for?

Portals have sliding issues even in Preview mode. And NOTHING slides in Browse mode, so basically that's a dead end.

You might want to have a look at Edoshin's Fast Summaries:

http://www.onegasoft.com/tools/fastsummaries/index.shtml

if you're up to a lot of work. But that's really a report, so you'd need to re-generate the table after each data modification.

Alternatively, do something like aaa suggests. You would have a columnar layout with three fields:

cOpenDate...cTheatre...FilmTitle

You do this in Engagements, and you need a relationship to the previous record (after sorting, so again each modification requires a re-sort and replace the sort order field). The calculated fields are empty if the previous record has the same info.

Look like fun !

I've downloaded it and am runnin through it now. Thanks again for the suggestions.

It looks like very usable solution. But I did notice that I can't click on the "report".. I would like the "film titles" to be clickable to users can go to that films record to view synopsis, run time, etc

Actually I've created a preview report that gives me the look I want, but of course non-clickable --- I guess I'm looking for a sorta calendar layout with clickable fields, but without all the "browse mode" white space.

You could do a calendar-type layout - IF you can find a way to populate 2 (or more) global datefields with the dates of interest (6/24/05 and 7/1/05 in your example). Then you can have a portal to Engagements under each datefield. Although you'd still have to display the theatre and the title side-by-side. Or maybe you can concatenate them based on previous record, as I mentioned above. something like:

Case ( theatre <> previous::theatre , theatre & "