Please help a novice!

[Botuist]

Hello all,

I am new and in dire need of some help. I have a database I made for the company that tracks job applicants and their information.

I am trying to import records I work on at home into the main database at work. I will try to explain it the best that I can but I am a complete novice at this.

I have multiple tables: Employee Personal Info, Education, References, and Work History. The Education and Reference tables are in portals in the layout. When I export the file into Excel it has all of the information but when I try to import it back the database does not allow me to import all of the fields. The other tables are greyed out...

In retrospect I probably should have put all of the fields on one table and used no portals for ease in exporting and importing but I was trying to use them to clean it up.

Does anyone here ever look at copies of a database to help a person isolate and fix their problem?

I'm so frustrated and I have a database with 2000 odd people in it that I can't lose their data or re-enter it and I am finding months later I fubar'ed the database all to hell.

Thanks for any help that anyone here is willing to walk me through :

[Ender]

Each table must be imported into the relational system with a separate Import. It's generally better to try to keep the relational structure intact in offline copies than to deal with coercing a flat file into a relational format time and again. Even better still is to login to the solution remotely instead of making offline versions that must later be synced.

In any case, be sure to make regular backups of your data (especially before imports) so that mistakes can be fixed.

Edited January 17, 2007 by Guest

[Marek P]

Hello,

If you are talking about fields being grayed out, certain fields are always grayed out during imports. You cannot import into fields like calculations and summary fields. It simply doesn't make sense to import into these fields.

If you are talking about tables being grayed out and you are doing an import from the menu, it looks like you can only import into the table that goes with the current layout (or you could create a new table, but that's not what you want). All the other tables are grayed out. If you want to import into a different table, then change layouts before starting the import. You may have to create a new layout if you don't already have a layout for the table you want to import into.

Marek

PS it's not helpful to name a post "Please help a novice!"... (though it does reinforce the "novice" part : )

[Botuist]

Thank you Ender,

You replied to me before I could get back to this forum and say that I figured out that you have to export and import each table separately. Is their a faster way to do this instead of working with multiple exported saved files? Also changing the Layout Setup to look at each set before importing is a real chore....

I can't update in realtime using Instant Web Publishing because my home only has......wait for it.....crappy 26kbps dialup and the web browser refuses to connect to the IP address filemaker tells me to use. Ah the joys of living in a rural area....

I really want to learn Filemaker in as many ways as possible but I can't figure out the best place to learn. Our company is a non-profit so we do not have money to pay for lessons for me and I really need to make sure the database we use is as tight as possible. So if anyone has any suggestions as to what my best course of action might be please let me know :

Anyways the immediate crisis is solved and I will be checking back here trying to read as much as I can to get this stuff down pat.

Thanks again!

[Botuist]

Thanks Marek,

I actually understood what you meant about having each table be a Layout. I did it and it does take out some of the steps needed to import the records.

About the "Please help a novice!" post title my inexperience was making it difficult to think of a title that would address my question.

I asked it in the first post but is their anyone that would glance over a blank database to help show a novice what mistakes they made are? Maybe a different forum or group? I assume not because everything I see about learning more about Filemaker has a price tag on it :

Thanks again!

[Brudderman]

everything I see about learning more about Filemaker has a price tag on it

The price tag of messing up your data is far greater.

I'd recommend a good book such as Special Edition Using Filemaker 8 and its companion volume Filemaker 8 Functions and Script Reference. There are other good books as well.

[Genx]

Not for profit maybe, but surely even non-profit organisations have $150 to spend on some learning materials for an asset that will likely be worth $10,000+.

[LaRetta]

Hi Botuist, welcome to FM Forums

FileMaker is expensive, although less than other environments. You have come to the right place to find all the answers you will need. Don't get me wrong - books and DVDs are great but FM Forums is [color:green]FREE.

However, there is one cost ... you must do the work - not us. I would bet you can handle it. So use the Search feature, get comfortable bouncing about our home, and then ask specific questions. We are Developers - we don't work for free. But we are willing to help each other solve problems because we too have been helped by this same group. So put your thinking cap on, roll up your sleeves, and learn FileMaker. Everything you need is here. I guarantee it.

LaRetta

[Botuist]

Thanks for the replies guys/gals!

I will be reading this forum a lot! I ran into a another problem with importing because I was using a FM sequential numbering setup for the Primary Key in relationships but after reading the post from Kurt about the Auto-Calc setup I have implemented it today and love it!

See these are the things I need to know more about ....Calc Function, Relationships, Scripting.... Oh god I need to figure out scripting. Actually I talked to my boss and she said that we do have some room in the budget for extra training or materials for this project. Now what would be the best allocation of resources? Filemaker magazine? Online training? Books/DVD's?

I hate being such a novice in this field but my company hired me to be a general onsite IT and I have a great familiarity with computers and operating systems but I did get thrown headfirst into the lake of new experiences. We had someone make an Access DB that just sucked....I mean it couldn't do half of what we wanted and the guy did not know how to make it do what we needed. So I received the task of researching and designing a new one from scratch ...and then I found Filemaker. Whew! Going from no database experience to having a company rely on it is a new thing for me =)

Well thanks for listening to me ramble on...thanks for all the current help and any suggestions I can use in the future.

Peace

[comment]

I ran into a another problem with importing because I was using a FM sequential numbering setup for the Primary Key in relationships but after reading the post from Kurt about the Auto-Calc setup I have implemented it today and love it!

Hmm. Perhaps you should read this thread as well.