Text in related field doesn't seem to work

[tloscheider]

Hello!

I have a FileMaker Pro 5 database for membership and contributions to a non-profit organization.

There are two databases: one with a single record for each member, and one with an entry for each contribution from the members.

I used a single field called "ID" as the related field. We use the member's first initial, last initial and phone number as a unique and EASY to remember identifier for each member. So, my ID would be tl3285555

When a user enters the member id into the ID field of the contributions database, the name, address, etc. is filled in from the membership database.

My problem is that the relationship is only matching the numeric portion of the field and disregarding the alpha portion. It finds the first record with the number portion of the field. Since there are frequently multiple members with the same phone number, this is a problem.

Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong, or suggest a better approach to this?

Best Regards and Thanks!

Tom

[ August 21, 2001: Message edited by: Tom_L ]

[DykstrL]

Check to make sure the ID field is a text field and not a number. Finds and sorts based on a numeric field will ignore any alpha characters in the field.

[tloscheider]

Many thanks! One of the databases had the "ID" field as numeric.

That did it.

Tom