Conditional formatting to set field access

[elipsett]

It would be really nice to have a simple "Locked: Yes / No" radio button on a record, so that nobody can accidentally delete data when they wanted to find something, for example.

I can handle this at the layout level by setting access rights to a particular layout using a yes/no button on a different layout, but that's pretty kludgy.

Is it possible to enabled/disable field Browse using a script or conditional formatting?

Or to make it impossible to change the content of the field some other way?

Could this be handled with a custom function?

(Can't find anything pertinent at http://www.briandunning.com/filemaker-custom-functions/list.php)

Thank you for your time.

[comment]

To solve this purely at the layout level, you can use two sets of fields - one enterable, the other not - in a tab control object.

Alternatively, use a global gLocked field and allow record editing only when not gLocked. Note that the script that toggles gLocked needs to run with full access privileges.

[elipsett]

Both intriguing ideas, thank you.

I used Visual Basic for many years, and the ability to directly access any item property was very, very useful.

My mind still tends to think of solutions from the VB point of view, which is usually not the right approach with FileMaker.

Thanks!