I have just inherited a soccer league registration database in FMP v4, which is new to me. Past practice has been to use the previous season's records to track the returning players for the current season. Once registration closed, all records marked ACTIVE are kept, and INACTIVE are deleted. Problem is, if one of these INACTIVE kids comes back next year the record for that player will have to be recreated.

I've been trying to have a kid's record copied to another file (Active_Player) from the original file (All_Player) when the player registers for the current season. Being new to FMP, I'm not sure if I should be learning about scripts or portals or something else.

General thoughts on which approach is best and specific example of how to do so would be appreciated.

it really has a lot to do with the way you are using the data in your active file as to the approach to take.

i think i would be inclined to just simply leave them all in the same file, and use the flag of "active/inactive" you already have set up to keep them straight.

you can use "find" to keep the two sets separate when you need them to be, and can simply locate last yrs. inactive player in your file and change his status to "active", and life goes on.

if you want to make it pretty, set up a simple script attached to a button to go to your find page, and have the script set the "active/inactive" flag to default to "active". that way people aren't constantly looking up inactive players all the time.

i think i would do it like this:

make a global field in define fields, i'll call it gActive_default

write a script like this--

set field (gActive_default, "Active")

enter find mode

set field (active_flag, gActive_default)

go to field (player_name)

end script

then attach the script to a button, and you are hooked up. if the user wants to find inactive players, they simply change the flag in the find record. i recommend that you set your active/inactive flag up as radio buttons if you haven't done so already. the "cut" command in the edit menu clears radio button entries, so you can use that to find any player independent from his active status. a pop up menu would work well for this too, because you can include a blank line. its a little more obvious for your users.

the global field is only so that you can change its default behavior based on what you are doing lots of finds for, and you could set gActive_default while in browse mode, and of course remove the first "set" line in the script, or it will all be for naught.

good luck!