Forgive me...I'm new to Filemaker. I'm very used to Access, so I'm finding that this change to Filemaker is strange at times. In a nutshell, I have five files (or tables?). I have all of the proper relationships linked up, I believe. In one of my tables, which I'll call Table A, there is a field for courses. I can select the course by using a menu. (The menu values come from a field from another table). In Table A, there is another field called "Categories". It is actually a related field from another file. I have enclosed it within a portal which also is defined properly, I believe. When I select a course from the drop down menu, I want the category field to automatically display that course's category. But this doesn't happen. I think the deeper problem is that I'm not sure what the equivalent of a linking table is in Filemaker. I've defined all of my relationships, but this does not seem to be enough. When I try to combine fields from different tables, I simply can't get the fields to show any information. I hope this makes sense. Thanks.

If there isn't one created already, create a relationship from your Table A file to the file that has the related Categories field using the Course field as the key. Then displaying the Categories field on the layout should display the correct information after the course has been selected.

Let me know if this doesn't clear things up.

Chuck

Thanks for the suggestion...I had defined the relationship between the two tables, but between the two primary keys rather than the course field itself. When I have access to the software (at work) I will try this out.