Hello, I have a situation where I have a Customer Table and Invoice table and I have them merged on a layout I call Sales Slips. I want to be able to add new customers to the customer tables, but if they are repeat buyers, I don't want to be typing their information again, because then I would have a duplicate entry. So.... I need a way to still add new customers, but at the same time have filemaker tell me if it is a repeat buyer so I can just use their information again for another invoice. I know this is probably hard to follow so let me know if something needs clarifying, otherwise any help would be appreciated, thanks - Jeff

Perhaps you can have unique validation on a phone number or address field. Either that or you can script your new entries.

As for your invoice, you are using lookups for your customer info?

The Unique validation would work for telling me if I have a duplicate. Yet, I'm not sure how the lookups would help in the invoices, in fact I'm not even sure how they would work. Could you explain how I might use lookups to fix the problem. Thanks - Jeff

Once you have your customer information in its own table, you should be able to use something like a customer ID or telephone number etc so that the rest of your customer info fields on the invoice are filled in automatically with the lookup feature.

Read up on Chapter 4 of FM9 User's guide for more on lookups.

I'm not sure I want the fields copied to the invoice table. I think I want some way to add new records to the customer table, yet at the same time Not add duplicates, using a lookup would just fill in fields. I tried doing something using a related record script, but no dice. Thanks for all your help, I think we are getting close.