I am an artist and professional photographer who uses Filemaker to keep track of the editing and printing decisions behind my final prints. In the record for a given image, I have a sequence of 10 fields in which I log the major editing moves I make in Photoshop, and they contain entries such as: "Contrast layer, overlay blend, 20% opacity." Because the editing sequence is unique for each image, it doesn't make sense to organize these as Drop-down lists. At the moment, I have a text field in my entry layout in which I have the 20 most used editing moves available for selective cutting and pasting. Is there a way to make that text field available to all new records? Better yet, what would be a more elegant and not-too-difficult solution to making such a group of standard entries available to all future records? Thanks.

Edited October 21, 200619 yr by Guest

I think I would put the actual edits in a related table and show them in a portal, rather than duplicated fields. I would put the frequently used actions in their own table, and show them in another portal (using the "x" operator for the relationship). Finally, I would make a script allowing me to click on an action and have it added to a new row in the edits portal.

Well, when I joined the forum this morning, I listed my experience level as "Intermediate" because I've been using Filemaker for something like 20 years. However, I have to confess that I'm not a very sophisticated user, and have no idea what a table, or a portal, even is, much less what it's capable of doing. I have recently purchased a copy of the Lane, Bowers et al Using Filemaker 7, so I guess I have some homework to do. Are there any particular resources toward which you would point me so as to be able to execute your suggestions? Thanks very much.

Tables, relationships and portals are the baic stuff of FileMaker. I'd suggest you start with the book, and come back when you feel you have enough background to tackle this. The good news is that at least the basics are quite simple.

Thanks for the advice. I'll see what I can do.