I have a sales prospects table with name, phone, addr, etc.

I created a portal that shows related fields from a contact history file but just date and short desc. I am displaying multiple rows.

This portal works just fine.

But I want to be able to scroll through this list and display additional fields from that same record else where on the screen, right next to it to be precise.

So as I scroll through a list of dates and short descriptions I'll see the fields containing the additional details I want on another part of the screen.

It's the second bit I don't know how to do.

Thanks

Have a button in the portal set a global field in the contacts table to the ID of the portal record. Define another relationship between prospects and a new occurrence of history, based on matching the global field to the ID field in history. Put fields from this new table occurrence next to the portal.

So as I scroll through a list of dates and short descriptions I'll see the fields containing the additional details I want on another part of the screen.

You cannot accomplish it when simply scrolling your portal. How would FM know which detail (of the several rows you are viewing at the moment) to display for you? But you CAN achieve it if you click the row you wish to view or if you wish to use a button to click/move through your portal records instead of the scroll bar. Would that work for you?

Okay, if it works for you, Michael just explained how to click a row and display the detail next to it. :smile2:

Thanks I'll try this.

Well yeah if I'm just scrolling there is no focus. What I meant to say was that I wanted to be able to use arrow keys to traverse the list and the row that has focus determines the details to display. Like a mail app with a split screen works - you traverse the overview list and details are displayed in another pain. But I didn't want to have to use a mouse to click on each row to see detail.

I see that Bento 2 has incorporated this feature in its split view. It's such a frequently needed feature that its amazing that one must resort to creating buttons to accomplish it. Who knows, maybe there will be a Filemaker release in our lifetime that has such features.

Thanks

Have a button in the portal set a global field in the contacts table to the ID of the portal record. Define another relationship between prospects and a new occurrence of history, based on matching the global field to the ID field in history. Put fields from this new table occurrence next to the portal.

So far so good, but when I move to another record in the prospects table, that global field is still set to the value of the previous and so displays that same data till I click another row button

A simple solution would be to script your navigation, so that you move through records using buttons. The script can set the global to empty when changing records.