Comments about a Field

[Kiele]

Is there a way that you can pull the comments that you type under the Field (in Define Fields), other than doing a DDR?

TIA

Kia

[David Jondreau]

The FieldComment function does this.

http://www.filemaker.com/help/Functions%20Ref29.html

[Kiele]

Hi David,

Thank You Sir. I went right by that function. I was convinced that it was going to be a "Get Function"

Thanks Again,

Kia

[lnadon]

I am trying to output the field comment but when I use the syntax:

FieldComment (filename;fieldName) I get an interrogation mark instead of the comment (I have made sure the size of the field is large enough to display the comment). The field to display the comment that I am trying to put on a layout is defined as follows:

fieldcomment("Filename";"fieldname").

Also tried

fieldcomment("Filename";"Tablename::Fieldname")

and

fieldcomment(Get(Filename);"Tablename::Fieldname")

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

[David Jondreau]

fieldcomment(Get(Filename);"Tablename::Fieldname")

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

I'd say it's those quotes around the field name.

Try:

fieldcomment(Get(Filename);Tablename::Fieldname)

[lnadon]

Thanks for your reply but lthough they appear to be unnecessary, removing the quotes around the field name doesn't help. I did get rid of the interrogation mark by changing the storage option to make it a global field but now the field comes out blank (I have, of course, put a comment in the field I am using for testing).

[David Jondreau]

Hm. You do need the quotes on both the file and field name. I wonder what that says about the how the function operates...usually you don't need quotes around a field name.

FieldComment("mysandbox"; "table::fieldname") works correctly in my file.

[lnadon]

Any chance you could send me a small sample database so I can see the syntax correctly. It's probably some very trivial thing that I'll see right away in a sample file.

Thanks.

[Lee Smith]

see if this helps

fieldcomment.fp7.zip

[lnadon]

Yes, this did help! Since it worked and I couldn't see any difference in the syntax, I realized the problem was in my file. Turns out that you cannot have a space in the filename. I usually avoid spaces in filenames but this file was developed by someone else and the filename consisted of 2 words; removing the second word did the trick. Thanks for your help!

[Vaughan]

File names can have spaces, but not periods. Periods breaks the Get( FileName ) function.

[lnadon]

Right Vaughan, it was not the space in the name finally. There is just something very unreliable about the fieldcomment function. I can seem to figure out why sometimes it works, sometimes not. One example of how weird it is is that if I erase the comment in the field defintion, it will still appear on the layout! And if I try to change the def, the old def still appears. I have to delete the field that displays the comment and then sometimes I'm back to square zero because it will no longer display anything. Grrrrrrrrr. I think I'll use a repeating field to document the fields as someone else suggested.

[Lee Smith]

Maybe this would be better if done using Tool Tip.

[comment]

Make the calculation field unstored.