Summarize Portal Data

[j4mes]

Hi there,

I have been using Filemaker for a few weeks now and am still blown away by how powerful the system is and what one can achieve. I have been reading so many posts here to get up to speed but can't seem to find the answer to my current query -

Intro - We deal in shoes, and have a shoe database and another database that has all the components that make up the shoes (laces, soles, inners, etc...). These are linked by ID.

I have a purchase layout where I create top level purchase orders. Each order gets it's own ID. In each order, there can be several underlying orders that have their own ID's that reference the shoe being purchased in the order. That is fine, and fairly vanilla. From there, I click a button that opens up a new layout and shows me the components for each shoe in the order as an individual record using a portal. E.g, if there were 4 shoes in the original order, there would be 4 records returned and in each record there would be the portal showing the components of the shoes (several rows).

Often, an order for 4 pairs of shoes will have several duplicate components (laces etc). These currently show up individually on each record as you would expect.

Is there a way to take all the data from the 4 returned records, create a single record so that the duplicate components are combined, and the other components are listed?

Oh my gosh. I have just read that back and anyone that can make sense of that really does have my respect. What a mess. Do let me know what parts you would like clarified.

Thanks in advance.

J