Hi, I'm new to the forum and FM8 Adv, I'm sure this question has been answered but I can't find it.. I need to convert old (FM 5) repeating fields in an invoice file so they can be imported into a line items table. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

roadrep

After you do the file format conversion, you can use import file to import the old file into a new table. There will be an option to split repeating fields into seperate records.

Thank you for your answer. I don't think I was clear enough, I'm sorry. The original files date back from FM II, so repeating fields and an invoice number are the 2 pieces of data I have to work with. I need to asign each "row" of repeating fields the invoice number before,during or after the import into the new tables (line items) so they are not orphaned. The key is the invoice id (invoice number)

The White Paper for FMP novices was a great read, thanks.

-Roadrep

Well I am assuming that you have the invoice number in one field and the other repeating field with other line item data in it. So if you do the import, you should be able to match the key field as well. It will auto create the values for you.

So, if you have something like this

RecordID - 1

Repeating - red, green, blue

RecordID - 2

Repeating - square, triangle, circle

RecordID - 3

Repeating - pants, shirt, shoes

Upon doing the import, you will get a line items table with 9 records

1 red

1 green

1 blue

2 square

2 triangle

2 circle

3 pants

3 shirt

3 shoes

Thank you John. I tried your suggestion and it works with a lot less work than I did! I went ahead yesterday and created a conversion file with a script that looped through the records and repeating fields (if they weren't empty) and assigned a new invoice id and line item id to each record and repeating field. I did this becuase there are multiple invoice files, one for each vendor that I work with. So I added a vendor code to the invoice id at the same time, then did the imports to the FM8 test file.

I'm starting to think my entire design concept for FM8 is very flawed.