I am a newb to FM, so tanks for your patience. I have a layout with maybe fifty fields. When I export them, delete the current records, and import what I just exported, the field names are all out of whack. Why doesn't it just match up by field name?

Also, I want to consistently only export maybe half of those fifty fields. How can I automate that so it always picks the same 25 fields on export?

I just made a simple DB with only four fields for testing. Same problem. Every single field re-imports in the wrong order and I have to manually drag those little arrows to get the fields to match up. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!

There are various FILE TYPES that you can export to, but you haven't said which you are using. No matter, the following guidelines will work regardless.

In order to retain the EXPORT order you must use a script (in Script Maker) where you will have the options to specify the output file and the field order and also the type of file (csv, tab, FMP etc). The same applies to the IMPORT function.

Obviously as you want to repeat the process the same every time then a Script is the perfect way to do this. If you haven't dabbled with scripts yet then you will soon realise that scripting is the real power in FMP.

Keep experimenting, the penny will drop soon.