Duplicate or Copy Record for a Field Input

[Scorekeeper]

Hi all, Thanks for having this great resource available.

I will apologize for the length of this but, have patience and I hope not to loose or bore anyone.

After reviewing several other posts here, some where close but, none worked for me that I could understand or get to work properly I feel the more the information the better for a solution to be found.

Of course I'm new here and to give a little background It has been a long time since I have really been active with FileMaker. The last time I truly did any programing within Flemaker was probably back with Filemaker3 for a dbase. I have done some minor maintenance for some other clients a long time ago also with Filemaker 7 but, that was not anything that required much out of the ordinary either. Things sure have changed a lot since then of course.

Now to the problem. I have been asked to help with a personal FM dbase that one wishes to create for a home inventory system similar to but different than any that is shared or that I have seen previously. They wish to use this for a food type inventory for home storage of supplies. This could also be used for other purposes such as churches, camps etc. if so desired probably.

The twist is that they also wish to have a field of use by or an expiration type date. This dbase takes the input of a UPC code and allows for various information to be filled in to this inventory product. The expiration date will be used when searching for Items to use up first and to be able to delete first from the dbase. Example one would wish to use up older milk that is about ready to expire versus than newer milk that has a week or more left before it needs to be used up etc.

Most all of this is fairly straight forward of course with the exception of two things.

One is entering new inventory and not having to re-enter every field for same UPC items. This is currently what I'm having problems with and will give more detail in a minute.

The second is for reports for searching, finding the closest use by date ad deleting that one record or other records according to expiration date(s) This is probably not too hard given the fields one can use to search with and sort by. I won't worry about this one right now but, wanted to make one aware of process they were looking for to maintain their dbase more efficiently.

The fields including type and Options as set for a record currently include:

Inventory ID (Number - Auto enter Serial On creation)

UPC (Number

Item (Text)

Type (Text)

Size (Text)

Brand (Text)

Category (Text)

Sub Category (Text)

Location (Text)

Overflow (Text)

Date (Date

Example for Field and data:

Item    Category     Sub Category  Type       Size   Brand  Location  Overflow  UPC           Inventory ID  Date

Roast   Meats        Beef          Chuck Pot  3.75          IF4                 041771034382  4             20110110

Roast   Meats        Beef          Chuck Pot  3.75                    OF4       041771034382  5             20110310

Steak   Meats        Beef          T-Bone     1.5           IF3                 041771034384  9             20110110

Steak   Meats        Beef          T-Bone     1.5                     OF3       041771034384  12            20110210

Each new item is scanned in with a UPC Wand Reader for both incoming inventory and outgoing inventory. We do not care about cost as that is not an issue with this dbase and purpose.

What I would like to be able to do for them is that when a new UPC is entered, that a search is then done to see if there is an existing/previous UPC match. If so then copy or duplicate that record as everything will be the same other than the Date of expiration and possibly the Location or Overflow although either of those two may still be the same. The duplicated record would then be entered as a new record or a new input form with the copied values could then be visible so one could edit any differences out with the three fields of Date (of expiration), Location or Overflow if needed and then when the user is done they can click finish or something that would either add the whole record or edit the new record to finish off that new record's input.

If a UPC match is not found then continue on with a normal New record entry.

What I am wanting to do and although I have tried several different methods of find, duplicate record etc, nothing has worked. Hoping to fin some help here that will be fairly simple hopefully with the results desired.

I hope this is enough information and layed out well enough for someone to easily understand and be able to help me with.

TIA