I have a database in Filemaker 8.5 that tracks Accounts in the main table, transactions in another table, and the account number is the field on which they are joined. Each Account has anywhere from 0 to 200 transactions.

My problem is that some Accounts seem to have 'phantom' transaction records showing up in the portal. The portal is on an Account layout, and the transactions are sorted so that the newest transaction is to be at the top. When I try deleting the bland transaction record, the record count for transactions within the account is decremented, but the overall count of transactions is not decremented.

Other facts about the database - there are other tables, which are joined to the Account table by the account number or by other fields. And there are lookup fields in the Account table based on some cumulative values in the Transaction table.

I expect I have done something incredibly stupid, but time has gone by and I'm not finding the cause of my problem.

Any suggestions?

Not sure I follow completely but by chance do you allow records be be created via the Relationship? this will show what appears to be a blank record in a portal.

Thanks for your reply. I do allow the creation of records, as you state. And each account shows an empty last row in the portal for that. But about 40 accounts have additional empty rows, which sort up to the first rows of the portal. I'm sure I'm missing something obvious, but I sure don't know what it is.