serial numbers and relationships woes

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Total filemaker beginner here, learning databases in general as I try to figure out new solutions. Right now I am working on an inventory db and was hoping someone could tell me what I am doing wrong. I have two tables, Items and Vendors. Because they are many-to-many I created a line item table. I use auto-generated serial numbers for the IDs and numbers for field keys (Item ID = item fk; Vendor ID = vendor fk). Right now I have a portal on the form layout of my Items table that I would like to be able to use to list vendors (and create a record for each). I also have a portal on the Vendor page where I would like to be able to see a list of all the products we get from that vendor. My problem is, right now, when I create a new item and list a vendor that already exists it does not recognize the vendor. Instead it creates a new serial number and record for the same vendor. This would seem to make sense to me, since I haven't told the program yet to recognize the value of the vendor name field, but I still don't know how to do this. And have not been able to figure it out. Can anyone help? Thank you in advance for your time!

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See if this helps:

http://www.fmforums.com/forum/showpost.php?post/246136/

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Thanks for the example database. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to fix my core problem-it still creates a new vendor entry each time. I was wondering, do I have to do something to the value lists or set the field up as a calculation? I was not able to view all the parts of your database because it is "not modifiable". Is there a specific way I should set up the relationships to be able to create records like this:

Enter Vendor Name into Portal on "Items" Layout. Portal is set to Vendor Table--> creates Vendor Entry or recognizes pre-existing vendor. (I tried setting the Portal to Item/Vendor but it would no longer allow me to create any entries.

Thanks again for the help. Appreciate it.

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I don't see your file, so it's difficult for me to see what the problem might be. You need to compare the demo file to yours, and see which relationships have the option to create new records, and on which side.

That's assuming the demo file fits what you have in mind.

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Hey, I did some more investigating in the sample join database and got it figured out! I set up the value lists for serial numbers to show names of vendors/ products and it works great. Thanks!