first...thanks to liveoak back a few posts ago. i worked your sorting technique into my solution and it works wonderfully, and it added some neat flexibility into it i never even thought about before!

ok, on with the new question

i have a parent file with my data in it, and a "queue" file that has the portal pulling live jobs out of the parent file. the queue file will exsist running on several different computers, each computer with its own copy.

occasionally, i need each copy of the queues to run an "update" script based on some changing values in the parent file. i created a button labeled "refresh" and stuck it in a little one row portal which i make appear or disappear by changing the relationship field. this works fine if the parent and queue file are on the same computer, but when the queue file is pulling related records across the network, the one row portal no longer updates and appears as it does on the host computer's copy of "queue".

is that vague enough?

thanks for any advice

I think this may help.

When I have portals, on a networked solution, any updates on the parent table will for sure show up in the related tables if you use the Go To Layout (original) script step. Refresh didn't seme to help, but this did, so I stick it at the end of a lot of scripts where the script edits the relationship key fields, and therefore needs an update in the portal rows.

HTH