I have a contact file in Filemaker 8 where the default area code is set to 916. Oftentimes it's easier to create a new record by duplicating an existing record because much of the contact information is the same. However, if the area code was changed in the original record, it is overwritten with the default of 916 when the record is duplicated. How can I avoid this?

You could script the duplication process to put field values into globals or variables, duplicate the records, then set the field values.