Cross Referencing Help Please

[Merit Solutions]

I would like to create a layout which displays a little like an excel spreadsheet. However to show a list of records (Agencies TO) vertically down the left side of the page (List View) with records of Client Names along the top. Where an Agency row meets a client Column for whom they have worked (WorkDone TO), the Invoice total appears. See attached image. - What is the best way to create such a layout?

[Søren Dyhr]

It seems like a X-tab you're after:

http://edoshin.skeletonkey.com/2006/12/crosstab_report.html#more

But this is meant for reporting....

--sd

[Merit Solutions]

Thanks for that! It's great for certain things where the number of columns are known in advance and therefore labels can easily be created, but I need the column labels to be values from an ever increasing number of client records. I think what I want is probably impossible due to the limit of physical paper dimensions in FileMaker. Excel allows us to print across as well as down multiple sheets, FileMaker does not. :

[Søren Dyhr]

Why is it manditory to have the tool to behave like a spread sheet...

It's like "to a hammer, everything looks like a nail"

Think of why on earth anyone would pick something else than a spreadsheet?

--sd

[AudioFreak]

Why is it manditory to have the tool to behave like a spread sheet...--sd

Because Sooooooo many people out there are switching to filemaker from Excel and that is what they are used to...lol.

Not realizing that this program is not excel and should not be set up to look or act like it. If you want it to look and act like Excel, then use Excel.

[Fenton]

I have not yet studied that cross-tab method (I've been meaning to). I usually do these things relationally. Which also works fine, but can be a bit tedious.

What I wanted to mention is that there is usually a way to "roll over" the labels; first seen in the file Across.fp4 (long ago). You reset the labels in groups; do the 1st 20, then do the next 20, etc., by changing which is the 1st in the group to show. The fields in the body are based on similar relationships, so they roll over also.

That way you can do as many as will fit across 1 page (depending on the width of the field you want in the body of the cross-tab). Then toggle the next set. Other than ending up with some partial pages (where one set's records did not fill the page), it would produce much the same as a "pages across" print from Excel.