I'm a beginner and have 2 simple questions

[dannylan]

Hello! I have been managing my customer data base for years using AW5 (AppleWorks 5) on my Mac, but now I have hired two assistants and I need them to also have access to the data base so I networked the Macs using ethernet & Appletalk... someone suggested FM 5 but I have two questions:

1. Can 3 users manage and work (view, search and SAVE) on the same database simultaneously? (This doesn't seem possible on AW5 or AW6... right?)

2. I have my customer data base on AW5, is it possible to export to FM5? how complicated of a process is this?

3. Anything else I should know or final suggestions?

Thanking you in advance I look forward to your answers.

Best!

Danny

[Chuck]

quote:

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Originally posted by dannylan:

Hello! I have been managing my customer data base for years using AW5 (AppleWorks 5) on my Mac, but now I have hired two assistants and I need them to also have access to the data base so I networked the Macs using ethernet & Appletalk... someone suggested FM 5 but I have two questions:

1. Can 3 users manage and work (view, search and SAVE) on the same database simultaneously? (This doesn't seem possible on AW5 or AW6... right?)

2. I have my customer data base on AW5, is it possible to export to FM5? how complicated of a process is this?

3. Anything else I should know or final suggestions?

Thanking you in advance I look forward to your answers.

Best!

Danny

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1. FileMaker can allow users to view, edit and save data at the same time over a network, but they can't work on the same record. If one user is editing a particular record, other users won't be able to do anything except to view it.

2. You can export the data from AppleWorks to a tab deliminated file, and then import the data into FileMaker Pro (after you've given FileMaker a database structure to import into). Just recreate your fields in FileMaker, export the data from AppleWorks to a text file, and then import the data from the text file to FileMaker.

3. Going from an AppleWords database to FileMaker might be analogous to going from an AppleWorks paint document to using Adobe Photoshop. FileMaker gives you a lot more tools to work with, and can make things a lot easier for you to manager your data, but there is a learning curve involved. I would suggest going through one of the beginning books on FileMaker before actually tackling the project, such as "Learn FileMaker Pro 5.0" or "FileMaker Pro Visual Quick-start Guide".

And of course, feel free to make liberal use of forums like this.

Chuck

[MadHatter]

about the first question, you have to have a user licencse for each person that needs filemaker on there computer, so for 3 people, you would need 3 licensces.