Lookups in numeric portal fields missbehaving

[charper]

I have Order records, Item records, and Product records stored in one flat file. I have a layout for displaying information about Order records only. It has a portal on it that displays the line items (Item records) for a given order. The portal displays an Item ID field which has a popup list that lets the user select from a list of Product IDs. When a user selects a Product ID it gets placed in the active Item ID field in the portal, no problem.

Now, I have several other Item fields displayed in my portal along side the Item ID field. Some of these other Item fields are text fields and some are numeric. They get their values by LOOKUPS via the Item ID field into the corresponding Product records.

When I create a new order record on this layout then place my cursor inside the portal, and select a product from the popup list on the Item ID field, the Item text fields get their values looked up correctly but the Item NUMERIC fields remain blank. What am I doing wrong?

Here's a hint. If, after I request the new Order record creation and BEFORE I place my cursor in the portal, I click on whitespace (outside of all fields) in the layout, THEN proceed to select Products in the portal, all of the lookups work fine including the numeric Item fields. Wierd.

Here's another hint: If, after I request the new Order record creation and BEFORE I enter the portal, I perform a find and find this new Order record, then proceed to select Products in the portal, all of the lookups work correctly. Curiouser and curiouser said Alice.

To hack around this problem I've put this latter technique into a script that executes when I request the order record creation and everything is cool now, but I would strongly prefer not to have 'hack' fixes like this in my system, so I need to get to the root cause of this lookup problem. Any ideas why these numeric lookups aren't behaving?

[charper]

Yeah, no one wanted to tackle this one on the OTHER filemaker forum I'm in either. Guess this one should go to tech support at fmp. What's that cost by the way?

[Vaughan]

Are yhe number fields formatted as "number" in both databases? If one is TEXT there might be trouble.

[BobWeaver]

Also, do you have the "if no exact match use value" selected in the lookup? If the numeric field ever gets a value in it--even a zero--before the lookup happens, then it won't lookup.