Mystery Error message when attempting to delete a record.

This operation cannot be performed because one or more required related tables are missing.

I have a layout/table that has only 6 fields.

Customer number

Zip code

Monthly Average Sold which is a look up from

another table in another file entered when a zip code is

entered

Rate which is calculated based on various

selections in another table in the same file for each

customer

Monthly Cost which is product of Monthly

Average Sold and the Rate and the calculation is

defined in the table

Customer Name which is a lookup from another

table in another file based on the customer number

Five of the six are defined in that table, text fields, lookups or calculations. Upon going to the layout, the records for the particular customer are found, if any exist. There is a button that creates a new record, copies the customer number into the new record which looks up the rate and customer name. The user can then enter a zip code causing the lookup of the Monthly Average Sold, which then results in the calculation of the Monthly Cost. A user can use buttons to add zip codes or delete them.

Now this part of my tables/layouts was created early in the development of my software and worked just fine for a month. I continued my development and when I was nearing completion I started a final run through, checking everything and discovered to my surprise that while I can create a new record, enter a zip code and obtain the results of the monthly cost calculation, when I try to delete a record, I get the lovely message above.

I have carefully checked all the relationships and everything looks okay. Nothing is indicating a “missing table.” I have no idea what to check next. Any suggestions?

Bev at Our Town

39 previews of my question and not one comment... Is my question stupid? Has no one else ever had the problem? Please throw me a little crumb to help me figure out what in the world I did wrong!

In your relationships, is the option to allow deletion of related records checked or unchecked?

Yes, deletions are allowed. But never fear, I figured it out this morning. I had several records that had duplicate sponsor ids.

(Yes, I know how to prevent this but I am attempting to merge several databases obtained from several different sources, deleting the duplicate records, so the situation is messier than it would normally be.)

Anyway, I sat looking at the record I wanted to delete and wondered whether it would let me delete it if I changed the sponsor id so it was different from the other record.

I changed the sponsor id and it allowed me to delete it.

I have relationships set up with other files and I think when a delete is attempted on a record that is connected with the other databases using the same Key field, it will not allow you to delete because it doesn't know which one is the correct one to delete. If it deletes connected items in other databases and it is the wrong connection, the wrong items can be deleted. So it just refuses.

That's the only thing I can think of... It was certainly very strange!

I hope this helps someone else who might run ito this in the future!! :hello:

yes! this did help me, thanks.

I had the same problem,

I have just solved it, and it was not becuase of a duplicate ID...

It was because I had a relationship with a pre-existing table. So, when I want to delete a record from Table1, I could not do it.

I had a relationship (in the relationship graph) with a previous table 2.

So, Filemaker does not update the relationship graph when you delete a table..

When I delete that occurence of preexisting table, things solved..

Regards