I’ve used Filemaker as a simple database for years, but now I want to create a simple report. My data is currently in Excel. Attached is a pdf depicting an example of what I hope to accomplish. Can anyone please tell me if Filemaker can accomplish my goals, and if so, how should I proceed?

 

Thanks so much, Anna   

Concatenations.pdf

Will your report always show three (or some other fixed number of) Quarter columns? Filemaker is not flexible in the horizontal direction, and if the number of Quarters you want to report can fluctuate, you should consider changing your report's format to something like:

 

Course 1:

•  Quarter A - X

•  Quarter B - Y, Z

•  Quarter C - V

Course 2:

•  Quarter A - U, W

•  Quarter B - S,

•  Quarter C - R, S

Will your report always ...

Yes. The reports will always display three Quarters. Thanks so much for your question. Do you see a way that I can accomplish my goal with Filemaker? 

Edited March 3, 201510 yr by Lee Smith
Please do not quote the entire post when responding

Do you see a way that I can accomplish my goal with Filemaker?

 

Yes, but I hesitate because you describe your skill level  as 'Novice' and this is not going to be simple at all.

 

First, you will have to find the three Quarters (or rather Semesters, if I understand correctly what your data is about) of interest. This is already not simple, because these are not sequentially numbered, so you cannot just find those that are "higher than the maximum minus three" - as you could do with numerical data, if you wanted to find the last three semesters.

 

Once you have the names of the three semesters, you can use them in three calculation fields (or a single repeating calculation field with 3 repetitions)  to get the list of instructors (which your file for some reason labels as "State") that will be teaching a particular course in each of the three semesters (this is referring only to your first report). This too is far from being trivial.

 

I would urge you to consider a more traditional report along the lines I have shown in my previous post.