Right now I have a search page which is working well, but when no records are found, the format file simply is empty, except for the navigation bar. This could be misleading to the user. I've tried to search the forum for this question, but I guess I'm looking in the wrong place. Is there a simple way to include a message in the format file saying "no records were found"? thanks.

No found records is Error 401. Any error will cause the error format file to be displayed (specified in the -error CDML tag).

I'm surprised you are seeing a format file with no records... are you correctly specifying an error file?

I'm new at all this so you'll have to bear with me. I think I figured out why it is not working, but with my limited knowledge of fm, i'm not sure how to get around it. the problem is that i'm trying to search a database of courses. the search page is simply a dynamic drop down menu of all courses in the course db. The retrieved records are based upon a portal of related records. The portal represents instances (dates, times) of a particular class. So even if a particular course has no scheduled dates in the date portal, it is still technically a "found record". But if there is no info. in the course portal, i want an error message, not an empty format file. I'm not sure how to get around this. Thanks.

OK, create a calc field in the master db that counts the number of related records (use the Count() function).

On the html format file, use an IF conditional that displays the portal if the count cal field is >0 ELSE create a little message to say there are no records/classes/whatever.