I'm cleaning up a flat, one file database that someone made with 869 fields and 4000 records. I was told that there might be fields that actually are empty for every single record so I can get rid of them. Is there a way in filemaker 5.5 or 6 to search for these fields. Thanks.

You can either perform a find for = in each field or sort by each field (I would recommend doing this on a copy of the file so that you do not create unnecessary indices) or export all fields to a merge file and open it in Excel, then sort by each column in turn.

You might think it's a joke, but no, you should define yet another calcfield that has following formula into it:

not Count( ...every field name delimited by a ;'s .... )

One important thing to remember is to lift the checkmark next to the text "Do not evaluate..." down in the corner of the define calc' dialog.

Don't put any calcfields or summary fields in the long list. Then is the records ready for searching.

Enter find mode and enter 1 in the calc fields and perform find.

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Ah I just realized it was the other way round, a seach for unused fields ...not blank records. Sorry for the inconvenience caused.

--sd

BlankFinder.zip

Edited August 15, 200520 yr by Guest

I used metadatamagic and was able to find all the fields that aren't being used. But, there are still fields that are in layouts but have no data stored in them for any of the records and metadatamagic doesn't help me find these. Any suggestions? Also, if a field is not in any layouts, relationships, calculations, scrips or value lists can I assume that it's useless and can be deleted.

See my post above.

Check also that a field is not being used in a sort order directly attached to a Sort script step on any layouts and that it is not the basis for any subsummary part on any layouts.