automatically count the rows in the portals ?

[Steven Cappiello]

I have a layout on it with several portals..

it is a calendar layout.. (pic attached)

i'd prefer not to use vertical scroll bars

because it makes the layout look messy

and even if I did, I'm concerned that the user might not know enough to go looking for what is beyond the field of view

Is there a way to do any of the following ?

1. generate some sort of count of all the records shown by each portal, then based on the greatest value, switch to a different layout ? (how would i generate the count ?)

2. somehow "grow" an individual portal dynamically

so that i didn't have to switch to another layout.. i'm pretty

sure this isn't possible in filemaker, but I figured I'd ask

how would you guys do it ? i was thinking also.. perhaps..

if I could generate a count like above, I could display a simple calculated field text warning at the top of the portal, or shade it in another color, to indicate that there is more in this day than what is shown in the field of view.. and perhaps in that case i should certainly switch to a layout that has vertical scrollbars..

but man, the layout looks sweet without them.

thanks.

[Søren Dyhr]

If the related records are properly ID'ed could you max(Relation::RecordID) get the newest witout counting at all - this will get an "address" to the latest appointment in the slot.

If the number of appointments exceedes the space availiable would Count(relation::recordID) tell you so and make a button "show more" become visible via the the visibility trick, the button gets you to the records via a GTRR.

--sd

[Steven Cappiello]

Thanks Søren,

I've never worked with record IDs before.. I think the relationships are correct though I'm not sure they're "ID"d correctly.

How would I know if they are ?

[Steven Cappiello]

Oh.. wait.. I think you're talking about a serial # here.

So are you saying that if the serial # was a simple #, I could use the max of that field to determine whether it exceeded the amount of rows of the portal ?

If that's what you're saying.. I think it won't work.. all the events that show in all the portals live in the same table. Each day shows different events because it relates from a calculated day (relative to day 1) to show the events that match that day.

so the IDs will get very high in the events table.

Is my thinking correct here in that I need to find some other way to count the related records ?

[Wim Decorte]

Just use the Count function and perform on it on a related field (the child ID field is a good candidate).

[Steven Cappiello]

Thanks Wim.

I understand.. now I can count the number of records for each portal on the layout. But how do I determine which portal is showing the most records on my layout ?

If I have one of those calculated fields for each portal on my calendar layout, I will have 42 calculated fields.. how could I determine the maximimum value of all the count fields on the layout ?

[Søren Dyhr]

Max(calc'field1;calc'field2 ...calc'field42)

--sd

Edited December 4, 2005 by Guest

[Steven Cappiello]

thanks a lot guys..