I am brand new to the FM world and have a question... the database has 16 groups of fields.. each group has a FirstName, LastName, Male/Female, Age, and Misc. field. How can I search by last name in general instead of typing in each of the 16 LastName fields to find the person I am looking for? Can I somehow make a master sheet that would have all of this info alphabetically from all 30 records?

Thanks for any help!

Chris

You need to structuralize your data slightly more relational, since each record has several identical fields does it urge you to make those to appeare in a portal from a related table instead.

Since you're on FM5 should you investigate this:

http://www.kevinfrank.com/download/multi-gtrr.zip

Thats actually the proper way to do it, instead of making repeating fields ...althought they intuitively might be easier to graps. Hopefully will you try hard to get the ideas behind, allthough it contains a certain level of abstraction ...to say the least.

--sd

I don't think that's a very helpful example.

Chris, Soren is right that you need a better structure, but you won't need that structure.

Presumably there's something in common with the names in each record of your file. If you restrucure your data into two files, the first holding whatever it is that's common with those names, and a second related file holding the details about each name, you should be able to run a wider variety of searches and reports from within that Name file.

I'm sure we can elaborate if you can provide more details about your file.

Mike you're right, I'm often puzzeled by these spreadsheet'ish approaches, how are they straightend out easily???

Alright they should be single records not 16 names including details, but instead 16 individual records which if it's wished can be listed in a list layout ...but putting them a relation away makes the search in a portal unindexed...so they need to be reported in a sorted manner.

If I just could get into my head why the data is arranged as it is ... Will it be enough just to single out an individual while considering the context might be of less importance?? We encounter the wish to make global searches once and a while, but it doesn't bring me nearer to an understanding why they are of such importance.

--sd