First time post.. I don't have a lot of experience with FileMaker but do have many years experience with other databases. Trying to figure out the best way to accomplish the following scenario.

I'm building a basic invoice system. I have a relationship between my Invoices table and my Contacts table. I have enabled the ability to create new Contact records via the relationship. This works great but I would like to prevent people from creating duplicate contact records.

What would be considered the best way of letting users search for a Contact record before creating one. Open a window and letting them search contacts is trivial but how would I let them 'select a record' and associate it with the lease that's open in the parent window ?

I wouldn't enable the creation of Contacts from an Invoice. I would only allow a new Invoice from the Contact record.

As for avoiding duplicates, a typical approach is to script the Add New to first take the user thru a Find, then if none found, Add New. Here's a link to a demo. http://fmforums.com/forum/showpost.php?post/332071/

I would also build a Contact cleanup mechanism.

Thanks for the tip(s) and example.

I've decided to not allow creation of new contacts from the invoice (as you've suggested) and also create a pop up which allows the user to select or create a contact record quickly.