Value List from a field

[Matt Klein]

Hi all -

It's been awhile since I have posted. I ran into a little something that I can't seem to come up with a solution for. Hoping you can help.....

What I want to do is create a list of items in a single field on a single record and use the contents of that single field as a value list. The problem I have is that when you use that field in the value list definition and then assign that value list to a field as a drop down list, FileMaker sorts the values alphabetically. I actually want the value list to appear exactly as it appears in the field.

For example, the field might contain:

Red

Green

Blue

Yellow

I want the drop down list to look exactly the same as the contents of that field, but instead I get:

Blue

Green

Red

Yellow

Any ideas?

[Lee Smith]

See if this topic helps.

Link

Lee

[comment]

There's a rather crude workaround described here:

http://www.fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/184044/

Why don't you simply use a custom value list instead?

[Matt Klein]

Good question Comment. The reason is because I want it to be dynamic. I want to use a calculation that, based on different environmental conditions, show different items in the value list and I don't want to create a bunch of relationships to do it.

I'll check out the two links you guys have suggested and see if I get any ideas from them.

Thanks a lot for your replies!

Edited July 19, 2008 by Guest

[Doktor Joy]

Matt I would be interested to hear how you get on.

I have a similar problem. I have a table:

Event ID (auto-enter serial)

Event Name (text)

Event Date (date)

Event Detail (Calc = GetAsText(Event Date) & "-" & Event Name

I want to create a Value list keyed off Event ID, using Event Detail as the second field, which is displyed to the user.

So, based upon context, the value list should show the user a list of Event Date/name combinations.

Filemaker insists on sorting the value list though by field 1 or field 2, not by the sort order of the relationship to the Event table. So, it ends up sorting the Event Detail field using standard text - so, 18/2/2008 would come ahead of 8/2/2008.

I can't use just the date field for the value list second field as it doesn't contain enough info.

[Matt Klein]

Hi Doktor Joy.

I don't think the solution I went with will help you since you are already using two fields in the value list definition.

I actually used a variation of Jeff Hannes post in the topic that "comment" gave in his post above.