I'd like to grey out all but the first portal row.. so that the most recently created record is the active portal record, and the rest are considered to be inactive.

I attempted this by creating a container field that would show a grey graphic

if the portal ID of that portal record was anything other than 1.

So... I have a MASTER table that shows a portal of records from the RELATED table. 2 of the fields in the RELATED table are Portal_ID which is a calculation (get(portalID)) and color which shows a graphic container based on the portal ID

the problem is the portal_ID field doesn't seem to be working. It shows 0 for the first row and a "?" for the next row.

what gives ??

-)

The related table does not know about portals in other tables (note the plural here: how would the calc work if there were other portals to the same table?).

Why don't you split the portal into two: a single row portal for the first record, and a multi-row portal for the rest. Then you can format each one to your liking.

Ahhhh... thanks.. a simple solution. -)

I'm still curious though about the Get(portal_ID) function..

I mean... how/when can that be used if not in a case like this ?

I suppose you mean the Get(PortalRowNumber) function. You would use that in a script to provide feedback where you are in a loop, for example. But you have to be IN a portal, i.e. there has to be a portal on the current layout, and one of its rows needs to be selected. IOW, it works from the perspective of the PARENT layout.