I am having problems retrieving values from a table unless I am displaying a layout in FileMaker containing the fields (or table - I am not sure which...)

For example, when I have a table containing the following records:

Table: Manuals

ManualID     ManualName      Language

0001         First manual    EN

0002         Second manual   EN

0003         First manual    DE

0004         Second manual   DE

and I want to get every manual with Language="EN", I use the following AppleScript to get the IDs (not the ManualID) of those records:

--Get a reference to the table I am using

tell application "FileMaker Pro" to set manualTable to (first table where name is "Manuals") as reference

set theLanguage to "EN"



-- Get every manual with the set language

tell application "FileMaker Pro"

  set theManuals to (ID of every record of manualTable where (cell "Language" = theLanguage)) as list

end tell

This script usually works fine, but if I change "theLanguage" to "DE", the variable "theManuals" is usually undefined/empty unless the layout "Manuals" (containing all fields in the table "Manuals") happens to be displayed in FileMaker.

I can fix this by adding the line "show layout "Manuals"" before retrieving the records, but I thought that by accessing the tables directly it would be unneccessary to involve flipping layouts and windows in FileMaker when accessing the databases.

Any pointers to where I am screwing things up would be appreciated.

I'm not an AppleScript guru, but the mistakes I typically make with it have to do with context/scope. Are you missing an "end tell" after the set theLanguage step, or did you snip out some code?