I recently needed to split up a large group of records into 3 smaller groups due to a problem I ran into when emailing over 1000 users. I figured I would split the record set alphabetically using the last name field, so I wrote 3 scripts to constrain the record set using the range operator like

A…H

I wanted every name starting with A to H for the first group. I got some strange results and believe it is related to spaces in the field. For example using the A to H range I would get results like these

John A.

Sara B.

It’s like it treated the middle initial as a separate search. Is this how it functions? It also did the same using email addresses the @ symbol acted as a space and it treated both halves as separate words matching from either.

To fix I added a customer number field as a key and split by the number, but I would like to known if there is a way to only use the first letter in a text field. I thought about the left function but was unsure how to place it in the script. Most of my experience is with SQL not filemaker.

Thanks

I've never had a problem emailing 1000+ from FM. However, I loop thru the found set with the Send Mail step and have never tried adding 1000+ To: addresses to one email. I bet it's your ISP that's blocking what looks like (is?, lol) spam.

It's not the ISP. The program just dies with an unknown error. When it is restarted it has to check the data becuase of an unexpected shutdown.

I don't think that v9 is compatible with Windows 2000?

Lee