I use fmpro8.5 on macosx. i am trying to duplicate the value of a calculated field in my 'contacts' table into another field in the same table. the field i want to duplicate is the "fullname" which is calculated as "lastname"&", "&"firstname" Because i want to be able to add a new record using the fullname field, i need to have a text field (call it fullnamelookup) that looks up and stores the value in the fullname calculated field.

I have been able to create a self-join of the table,using a second occurrence of the 'contacts' table and joining the two table occurrences by the unique contactid. i then made a field fullnamelookup with autoentry lookup of the fullname calculated field in the other table occurrence. although i can perform a re-lookup which populates all the fullnamelookup fields properly, i cannot enter a lastname and firstname into a new record and have the lookup work--even though the fullname calculation field works just fine. what gives? any way to copy the calculated field value into a textfield in the same table?

i answered my own question---duhh. the answer is to change the filed type of hte fullname field to text (which then allows dataentry and modification in the field) and the use auto-enter to calculate the field on populating the lastname and firstname fields. duhhh. that way i dont need a lookup field.

on the other hand, i still dont know why the lookup field wasnt performing a lookup, but thats life. i will figure that out some other day i guess

I would guess because because there is no matching related record until you commit the record, but at that point the lookup was already attempted (and failed).