trying to show an X for membership years

[Coyne]

Boy, I thought this would be easy but the obvious is missing me. I have a two-table database of club members with addresses, member number personal info etc. in the 1st table and the 2nd table has their member number, names, and a field to fill in the years that they've paid.

Back in Table 1 I wanted to have a simple list with their names and various years with an "X" showing that they have been members that year. I created a new calc field with the parameter

If [Year] = 2011 ; "X" ; ""

I created copies of this for 2010, 2009, etc.

The problem is I can only get one "X" per member (not all the years that they've been a member get an "X") and not all members even get an "X" for any of the years they've been members.

So how can one best do this?

Also, just in case it's easily possible, I'd also like for the user to click on an empty field for (say) 2012 and have that automatically generate a new record in the 2nd table for that person to indicate that they've paid for that year. I think I know how I'd do this once I get past the first part of this task.

Thanks,

Gary

[comment]

If I follow you correctly, you have a table of Members and a table of Memberships. If so, why not simply place a portal to Memberships on a layout of Members? Your method would have you adding a field for each year ad infinitum (or, in current Filemaker's terms, until the year 4000).

[Coyne]

Yes, that's easy and I've already done that. But I'm working with some people who want to see a simple "X" for the respective years. The problem with the portal approach is that if you have Joe who's been a member of 2009, 2010, and 2011, and Bill who's been a member for 2008, 2010, and 2011. Both members will display three years in the portal and if you quickly glance you do have to look and see that Bill missed year 2009. If they had "X" for the year, than seeing the anomaly is much easier to spot. Yes, this approach also means that I have to update the layout every year or two.

Regardless, even if this is a rotten approach, I'd still like to figure out how to do it. It shouldn't be this hard. Yeah, call me anal...

Thanks though,

Gary

If I follow you correctly, you have a table of Members and a table of Memberships. If so, why not simply place a portal to Memberships on a layout of Members? Your method would have you adding a field for each year ad infinitum (or, in current Filemaker's terms, until the year 4000).

[comment]

Uhm... please update your profile to reflect your version (and OS).

[Vaughan]

Regardless, even if this is a rotten approach, I'd still like to figure out how to do it. It shouldn't be this hard.

"Being hard" is often an indication that the approach is rotten and not a good one to pursue.

[Coyne]

Hm, took me a few minutes to find this but I've updated that which seemed necessary. For the record here, I'm on FM 11 Advanced and I'm using Mac OS X.6.7.

Sorry, I didn't think to add that before. My bad.

Gary

Uhm... please update your profile to reflect your version (and OS).

Yes, that is one possibility. Another possibility is that there is an answer. I hope someone can help me on this.

Thanks though,

Gary

"Being hard" is often an indication that the approach is rotten and not a good one to pursue.

[comment]

OK, so how about this way? I believe this should also answer your original question.

DisplayYears.zip

[Vaughan]

Another possibility is that there is an answer.

Indeed there is. Your current approach isn't it.

Sometimes the answer is telling the client that what they want isn't a good solution.

I'm working with a client at the moment going through a complex problem that amounts to tracking information that is recorded now, but needed some weeks or months in the future. It is requests for course enrolments: somebody says they cannot do the course this session but wants to be advised when the next session is being run. There are currently 3 or 4 ways places int he database the information can be stored, and it's a mess.

"Why," I asked, "don't you enter next sessions courses into the database and enter the client requests directly into the system as an enrolment? Get rid of all the notes completely."

As Mos in the IT Crowd said: "Put seat belts on your ears, because they're about to go for the ride of their lives."

[Coyne]

Sorry for the delay in responding.

Yes, this seems like a very good contender. I need to see if there's a neat way to have this viewed horizontal, but other than that this could/should be great.

Thanks very very much.

Gary

OK, so how about this way? I believe this should also answer your original question.

[Coyne]

Hey,

Just wanted to let you know that this did exactly what I wanted it to do. Thanks very much and I learned some great formatting at the same time.

This turned out to not be a rotten approach after all.

Best and BIG THANKS!

Gary

OK, so how about this way? I believe this should also answer your original question.