Many to Many Portal Relationship?

[Steve E.]

I'm working on a database for field organizers to use in the Initiative-1068 Marijuana Legalization campaign in Washington State, USA. Petitions are individually (uniquely) numbered. The petitions are then checked out by the field organizers to volunteers. Volunteers collect signatures and then return the petitions to the field organizers who check them in before sending them in to campaign central.

The database has two three tables: Volunteers, Petitions, and Contacts. In Volunteers, there are 2 fields for entering the range of petitions (field1= low#, field2= high#). Relating the range of petitions to individual volunteers is accomplished by:

i. a self-relation

ii. selecting a volunteer from a value list of all volunteers

iii. which triggers a "show related" script

iv. which goes to that volunteer's record in Volunteers

v. then using a script to recursively enter the entire range of petition numbers.

This all works fast and flawlessly.

My problem is with the later "check in" of the petitions.

I'd like for users to again be able to enter a range in two fields (field 1 = low #; field 2 = high#) and then have those previously created records all display in either a table format or preferably a portal so the field organizer can then enter the number of signatures collected. When I try to do this as a find within the portal (i.e. 35..57) it only finds one record. I've tried various relationships between Volunteers and Petitions including creating Voljunteers2 and Petitions2 with self relations, but have not found a structure that works. Is there any way to set such a relation or even just do a range find within a portal? As a last resort, I could display the information I want in a table, but that seems really clunky.