newbie question - friend didnt backup

[doubleg]

A friend of mine has filemaker (not sure of the version at the time) but now has v8. Anyway to make a long story short, he didnt have any backups on his home contact database, so im trying to figure out a way to help him build a new one.

Basically my request is pretty simple, im having problems using an "if", but maybe is should be a "lookup" instead. Im completely new to filemaker and honestly I had never even heard of this database program.

Basically (using the contact management sample) as an example, I added 4 radio buttons. (first, second, third, fourth) basically each one of these would stand for a period of time. Under the contact management once a person has been entered into the database one of the 4 radio buttons would be selected.

What im trying to do is create a script that would allow me to specifically select only those people that were selected with the "third" radio button selected and then take them to a letter and print it out. Only those people specifically. Basically whats happening is when I run the script it selects everyone in the database and just not the ones selected with the "third" radio button selected. I have tried about everything, and I know this has to be really simple, but I just cant figure this one out for some reason. I could probably do it in Access (which would probably be more difficult), but he wants to use his filemaker pro program. So any help you could shed on this for me would be greatly apprecaited.

If someone could get me started or point me in the right direction I would grealy apprecaite it. This is driving me insane!! :)

[LaRetta]

Create a value list for each 'selected' value (and ONLY that value).

Attach the first value list to the field. Set it as boolean. Duplicate the field. Attach the second value list to this copy. Repeat with all value list/radio button selections. They will work as a group because they will be attached to the SAME field. In this way, you can 1) place them anywhere you wish (2 columns of 2 for example), 2) attach script to each one; turn off entry into field and have script set the value (also from the script parameter).

[doubleg]

Thank you very much for you help. Im still having issues with it though. I do want him to be able to select one of the four radio buttons if he adds a new person to the database though.

I did what you had suggested and this is the following error I receive.

"There are no valid criteria in this request. Type a valid request before clicking find". I did attach the script for one specific radio button just to try it, and it was selected. For some reason its not recognizing it. Heres my script. Maybe the problem lies in there. Any more help would be much appreciated.

//

If ["Quarter = "third""]

Show all records

Perform Find [Restore, Replace Found set]

Go to layout ["letter.quarter3"]

print[]

End if

Thank you again for any light you can shed on this for me.

[doubleg]

Should I not be showing all the records?

Thats the thing that really has me hung up.

As a test I selected on person with a radio button checked for the first quarter. When I run the script I end up with all 4 records in the database (new database only 4 records)

This is driving me nuts. Somebody please help!!