Hello all! First time poster, week long lurker. Lots to read here.

I have been building a simple solution for our fire department to teach myself FM9.

We have been maintaining a database of burn permits in an excel spreadsheet for years. It is time for FM!

I took the contact template supplied with FM9 and chopped/diced/cut/copied....and came up with my frankenstein of a solution.

My problems:

1) At the very top of the page I have setup 2 drop-down lists. I want to just "freeze" them so they remain the same on every contact until changed. The 911 operators need to quickly see if it is a burn day or not and the reason, so I thought I would just put a drop list stating such at the top. The problem is as you scroll through each record it doesn't "stick" or "stay". It sees it as a entry available for each record. I tried putting it in the header with no luck. I can't seem to "unassociate it with "display data from".

2) When a permit is issued it is for either 1, 90, or 365 days. I have a field for the date issued and created a second field with a conditional format to show the "expiration date". It works only the first time. So if the user accidentially put in 90 days and meant 365 the formula won't correct itself. It remains populated with the wrong date.

3) Lastly, I have set up a formula so that when a permit expires it should conditionally format the cell to turn red and display "Expired". It worked on the first test I did then all records showed expired. Similar problem I think to my #2. Once it registers the condition once it doesn't check it again for updates.

I have attached my solution in case anyone would like to help or has an idea of what this newbie is doing wrong!

I only hope my next step of uploading this PHP for our intranet goes smooth. ;)

BurnPermits.zip

Try using globals to make your selection.

I have setup 2 drop-down lists. I want to just "freeze" them so they remain the same on every contact

I think you'd better use a single-record preferences table for this. In a single-user solution, you could use global fields.

if the user accidentially put in 90 days and meant 365 the formula won't correct itself.

Use a Calculation field - not a Date field with auto-entered calculation. If you're using Get(CurrentDate), make sure the calculation is unstored.

Thank you so much to the both of you!

Both ideas worked. Those little things like a "global" check box are things that must take time to get! But now that I have been told once I will bet I remember.