Have you tried dumping the data into Excel first. I haven't done any quite like this data, but it is usually better to dump it in Excel and massage it there first before importing into FMP.

Maybe someone else has more experience with this technique than I do...

Cael.

How automatic do you want this to be?

What do your chunks-o-text look like?

is it possible to make an index like what you might see in a book using FileMaker? i have a bunch of chunks of text from a document and i want to make a index out of them.

for example,

code:

---

aarvark ..........25

birds ..............109

dogs ..............14

forests

birds..........109

plants........134

zebras...........19

---

is this impossible? i am wrestling with how to construct the database... any tips?

well, they are just a short paragraph or two.

some more background on this, the text is basically short answers to questions that might be asked at a meeting. the document is actually quite large... again, it would be grand if you could index someting by more than one way, like in the example in the first post of having "birds" index under "b" but also listed in the index under "Environmental impact"

to make things more complex, you might want to drop another item like "Chemical disaster" under C in the index but also under "Environmental impact"

the first level in the index would be automatically sorted alphabetically and if you wanted something to also be indexed under something else you would manually set what it is listed under...

The only way I could think of doing it wuld be to have a field on the record where the keyword for the index entry is manually typed by the skilled operator. There is no way a computer can automate sophisticated indexing.

There is a "technique" file by a man that goes by Steve Babineau. He has a file that is called Main Menu, or Hierarchical Menus. It is pretty darn complicated. I could get his file to work, but i was never able to replicate it building my own from scratch. Though it might not be the exact thing you are looking for, it might do the trick, or at least get some of these guru's going for them to figure it out for you ( us ).

To get this wonderful creation that i would love to use, but never have been able to because of lack of time and intelligence, follow this link:

http://www.databasepros.com

Choose the style of your liking (Flash or Static - Static is much easier to see and quicker, but Flash is pretty interesting too as it intergrates with Filemaker). Then choose the Resources Link, and search for Main Menu. Download the file and have fun.

Jeremy

is that the one that has the cars menu? ford, chrysler, dodge and then if you chose ford for example it loads the menu with the ford model cars?

i downloaded that and i'm fiddling with it now, it does seem kind of complicated so i'm actually thinking of trying the same thing using web publishing and javascript dropdown menus... wish me luck!

i'll post my results....

well, not the one that i downloaded a long time ago. . . it didn't mention anything about cars or nothing. But if it's what you're looking for, then more power to you.

Good Luck

Jeremy

http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/98/10/index3a_page4.html?tw=authoring

is this helpful? can you drop in CDML tags into this?

-gerard

this might actually be cooler...

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex1/dropmenuindex.htm