I'm trying to make a pair of simple related databases, one with employee information (name, department, social security number, usual shift, pay rate) and a second one to track work (employee name, department, date worked, start time, end time). The relationship seems obvious enough to me (if last name = last name), but I can't get that to work. Here's my problem:

Let's say I have two employees in the employee file, Mike Johnson and Sandy Johnson, when I go to the Track Work database, it always shows the first one alphabetically.

Is there a way to see all the employee names in the Track Work database so I can select the right record/employee? I've tried a portal with a scroll bar, and various lookups, but can not get it to work. It would be even better if I can type the first few letters of a last name and FM will pull up close names for me, and I can scroll to the one I want! Any ideas??

Thanks for the help!

Russ Conte

(currently using FM 3.0, soon to get 5.0 on a 400 MHZ TiBook, if that helps anyone)

The problem is that the Last Name field does not provide a unique value as a key, and therefore, the relationship doesn't always work.

Use an Employee ID# field (unique) instead to set the relationship to the individual Work records. Each work record should have a field in it to match up with the Employee ID#. Because each Employee ID# is unique, FM will not get confused if two employees have the same last name, or even if one of them changes their name later (because it's using a unique key).

See the Relationships section in your manual for more info.

HTH

Thanks very much, I was able to get it to work!

Russ Conte