Validate field when exiting field

[Normand]

How do you force the validation of a field to occur right after you tab out of that field, and not only when committing the modified record ?

Presently, I have Validated by calculation active, and it works fine, trapping any invalid entries I make in this field, but it only happens when I leave the record (next, previous, etc).

What am I forgetting to do ?

Thanks.

[John Mark Osborne]

Some validation occurs as you exit the field (Range) and other validation occurs as you exit the record (Calculation). My thinking is this gives someone a chance to skip the field, work on some others and come back to it later. For example, the Not Empty validation works at the record level, otherwise it would be really annoying if someone wanted to skip that field for a moment. I believe your best bet is to use a plug-in that initates whenever a referenced field is modified. One such plug-in comes with FileMaker Advanced.

[Pasrandy]

I have had a similar problem trapping errors with field validation. I have a field that cannot be blank and if the user clicks on a button to exit the screen, Filemaker doesn't consider it exiting the field - it won't let me exit the record but it doesn't trap the validation error either.

But I found if I check for errors in the script that the button executes, it will trap the invalid field with error zero. I'm not sure why it thinks a validation error is error 0 but it still traps it. To trap errors in a script, use script step "SET ERROR CAPTURE[ON]" then check for an error with the IF command - IF GET(LASTERROR)<>0 then display error message, etc. It's a rather odd way of catching validation errors but it works.

Hope this helps.

[aharown07]

Some validation occurs as you exit the field (Range) and other validation occurs as you exit the record (Calculation). My thinking is this gives someone a chance to skip the field, work on some others and come back to it later. For example, the Not Empty validation works at the record level, otherwise it would be really annoying if someone wanted to skip that field for a moment. I believe your best bet is to use a plug-in that initates whenever a referenced field is modified. One such plug-in comes with FileMaker Advanced.

What's the plugin called and where do I find it? I'm using 8.5 advanced... didn't know this existed.

Edited November 8, 2006 by Guest