I have a portal showing data from a table and it works well. My problem is that the portal rows are too small and not appropriate for showing some of the data in the record so I want to display the active portal record's other data elsewhere in the layout and I need it to refresh as portal rows are selected.

Imagine a contact list for a given company where each contact has specific and in-depth instructions for how to handle a transaction.

When I list the contacts in a portal, I show the name, phone, etc... but the instructions need to be shown in their entirety. I want to show the instructions below the portal and used the <> format in a text box which shows the first record in the portal just fine. When I click on the next contact in the portal, the instructions never update.

any thoughts?

thank you in advance,

Peter Lehrack

Take a look at this solution by Ray Cologan:

http://www.nightwing.com.au/FileMaker/demos8/demo808.html

You'll need to adjust to your application.

hth

aldipalo,

Thank you for taking the time to reply, I appreciate it.

I suppose I should have mentioned that I am a beginner and couldn't make heads nor tails out of that example. Perhaps an overview of the logic behind the variables/calculations and the overall structure can shed some light on this issue.

If I knew what the global variables were doing and why they are in there, I should be able to adapt this process to my database.

Excluding the highlight parts of the script will also go a long way in clarifying things.... If I could just figure out which parts those are.

thanks again,

Peter (head scratching) Lehrack

Let's assume each contact in the portal has a contact ID.

1. Create a global field in the parent (company) table, let's call it gContactID

(you may want to put this field on the layout for testing, but it doesn't need to be on the layout)

2. Create another Table Occurrence for contacts, let's name it gContact

3. Create a relationship from company to the new TO, gContactID to ContactID

4. Put the gContact::instructions field on the layout

5. Put a button on the portal and attach this script step:

Set Field( gContactID ; related::ContactID )

*where "related" is the name of your company to contact relationship

Does that make sense?

Thanks for the info, Fitch... I assume that the 'Set Field' is a calculation.. I tried it but got 'field does not exist' errors even though the fields certainly do exist, so I'm still trying to get it all figured out.

Peter

Double check that the field is indeed set to Global.

Set Field is a script step, not a calculation.