i work for texas dept. of families and protective services ~ (child protective services)diligent search unit and we have filemaker pro 5.5, we don't know who the administrator on the account is, it was purchased long ago, staff has changed and filemaker (the company) is unable to help us since we have the old program. at the filemaker help desk i was told to try here and see if i could get us some answers!our problem: our database is set to multi user but only one person can be in it at a time, i have a 'learn filemaker pro 5.5' book and i have been unable to fix it and our IT is not trained in filemaker and has no idea how to help us.

sorry i don't know much about filemaker but we are in desperate need to make this minor change to our database / user access to allow several users in at one time.

thanks so much for any help you may be able to give us.

maggie fonseca

lead diligent search investigator

(512) 929-6615

If you are not using FileMaker Server to host the databases then you need to understand that the first person to open the files becomes the "server".

After that person opens the files, all other users must access the files indirectly via the "Open Remote..." menu option. As long as they are on the same network segment, they should be able to see the file(s) listed there and open them that way.

It sounds like you have been running this as a single user database on a single machine with one copy of FMP5.5.

It also sounds like you are trying to access the database from a second machine using OS file sharing.

If I am wrong on this just trash out the post.

1. You need a copy of FMP on each machine to use the file. If you do not have this, stop right now and find yourself some copies of FMP.

2, Each file in the database has to have networking turned on if this is a multi file solution. The main file should have Multiuser On. The other files should have Multiuser (Hidden). In this way only the main file will show onthe network.

3. Assuming no version of server here, the person who opens the files first is the host. All others are clients.

The person who should open the files first is the person on whose machine the files are located. If anyone else is opening the files, they are using OS file sharing - See below.

4. FMP has its own networking tunnelling. It does not use OS file sharing. In fact to do that is to risk pooching your database. Do No set up shares to the database machine eg by mapping the folder holding the program out across the network.

5. Once the host has opened the files on the local machine, guests would open their copy of FMP on their machine. They would then go open file -> open remote -> Local network or Local files ( forget right now) and at that point they whould be able to see the database file set to Multiuser ( not hidden) select it and click open.