Combining Multiple Table In To 1 Report

[Baylah]

Hello,

Is there a way to combine multiple tables into one report?

When I try to use the Sub-Summarize By, the set up dialogs make this eem like it would work but when I perform the actual sorts I get results I do not expect.

Does anyone have a sample they could post that would demosntrate such a technique?

Thanks,

Steve

[Vaughan]

No; or at the very least, probably not the way you hope.

Usually, sub-sumary reports are best done in the child or related table, with the master information brought onto leading or trailing grand summary parts. This would be for something like an invoice, with related line items: you don't display a portal of line items on an Invoice layout, you display the related line item records in a list view layout.

What you probably have is a master record with multiple related tables, and you want to print a single report showing all of the related records on it.

No can do. Except with portals for each related table, and that starts getting very inflexible very quickly because sliding/printing does not work fully for portals.

Common work-arounds are:

1) put all the related info into one related table (where a category or type field determines what they are, instead of separate tables) but this is not always apporpriate, or possible, and even when it is appropriate and possible it can become complicated an awkward. This might work for a contacts databas where instead of a table holding phone numbers and another for email addresses, one table could store both phone numbers and e-mails.

2) keep them all separate, print them separately, but join them somehow into one report and display only the final report. This can be done by printing each separate part to pdf and then merging the multiple pdfs into one document, but it requires either doing stuff with a third-party plugin, or doing it outside of FMP at an OS-scripting level.

[Baylah]

Well...you just validated what I suspected to be the case!

I need to think on this some more..It does not work to keep all of the information in one table....I have a work around in a similar situation but it is pretty clucky and I really thought there would be a better way.

I'll keep on thinking.

Thank you for the reply.

Steve