Best Way Of Hiding Record ID in Drop Down menus?

[KShackelford201]

I'm having an issue of hiding the [color:green]Parent RecordID while in the [color:green]Child table using Pulldown menus to select the record.

I attached a file with 2 examples ([color:red]test 1 and [color:red]test 2).

[color:red]Test 1:

Uses 2 fields in the pulldown, [color:blue]ID (The result of selection) & [color:blue]Company name (What you see when you pick).

This looks good while selecting, but when leaving the field it just shows a record [color:blue]ID field for the company field which confuses the user, (even when I do a lookup of the related company name right next to it)

[color:red]Test 2:

Was an experiment, I used a calculated field ([color:blue]Companyname & [color:blue]ID) from the [color:green]parent table for the pulldown menu in the [color:green]Child table. I also set the [color:blue]ID to white so the user doesn't see it after they leave the field. I also made a field to parse out the [color:blue]ID by using the rightword function.

Is there a better way to hide the [color:blue]ID while using pull downs? If not, would there be any issues with my [color:red]test 2 solution?

TESTEREL.zip

Edited August 13, 2007 by Guest

[Vaughan]

Have you tried settng the value list to only display the second value? That way the primary key is actually entered into the field, but the item name is what appears in the value list and pop-up menu on the layout.

[KShackelford201]

Sorry its late, almost 3:00am here. I ment to say drop down menu instead of pull down menu and I forgot to mention why I wanted the the dropdown menu.

The drop down menu is needed to help the user select the right item quicker. In the solution im trying to improve, the user has a selection anywhere between 2 to 240ish different items. Using the autocomplete + dropdown menus the user can quickly select the right item.

Sorry again and thanks for the reply.

Edited August 13, 2007 by Guest

[Genx]

Lol, technically that's early.

Take a look at the last example posted here: http://www.fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/186423/post/248982/hl/%22hidden+field%22/fromsearch/1/#248982

[KShackelford201]

Thanks for the info I'll try it out