Hi all:

I am working with fp5, and I have a customer database that also manages contact events. I have the file customers related to a contactevents file. Customers are searched and if contact is needed then the type of contact is put into the field called Tasks. Since a customer can have multiple types of contacts from searching, each contact task is put on a line in the field. For example, customer1 has multiple contact tasks. The Tasks field has these values separated by a return:

New Customer

Upcoming Event

Here is where the problem comes. If a better way is out there I'd love to use it instead of this.

The user enters the results of the contact in the ContactEvents file. In there the values of Tasks are shown in a Tasks field because it is related so you can select the task to take care of.

You select one of the tasks when filling out your contact sheet, for example "New Customer." I want the "New Customer" line removed from Tasks in the main file. I was thinking of a calculation field that compares the 2 fields and substitutes "New Customer" for "" but that still leaves an empty line because the next value is on the next line. I'd like the Tasks field to now only show "Upcoming Event" since the New Customer contact has been taken care of.

I hope this makes sense. If you need more clarity please let me know because it's confusing me now.

Thanks a ton for helping me through this one if you can.

1) Use a relational data structure: each task should be in a related record.

2) Update to a later version. FMP 6 and earlier is stone-age compared to FMP 8.5 and later.

Thanks for the help. I am creating another file and relating the tasks as per your suggestion. I would like to get a hold of a new version but I need advanced server and that ain't cheap. Maybe when I get my business successful I can make it a business cost. :)