From: thingles@xerxes.cs.umn.edu (Jamie Thingelstad)
Subject: Re: FMP 2.0 question
Followup-To: thingles@xerxes.cs.umn.edu
Organization: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, CSci dept.
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 17:33:51 GMT

In article <TRIANTOS.92Dec28133339@netcom.Netcom.COM> triantos@netcom.Netcom.COM (Nick B Triantos) writes:
>In article <1h0ialINN2pp@gap.caltech.edu> kby@cco.caltech.edu (Kimo B. Yap) writes:
>
>   I'd like to make a database in which a company is a record, with contacts
>   (a reasonable number) as a field within that record.  Two questions:
>
>   1.  For repeating fields, is there a way to access the repetitions of the
>       field other than those that the first "n" specified for the "display
>       n of m fields" question?
>
>There is no quick and painless way to select an arbitrary repeat from a
>repeating field yet, although I hope that it can be added in to a future
>version of FileMaker Pro.  What you can use, though, is the "Go To Next
>Field" script command to simulate Tabbing in to the next repeat of a
>repeating field.  You can then Cut/Copy/Paste to your heart's content.
>
>   2.  (More important) Is there a way I can make a layout that will print
>       one label for each contact from the single company, and do this auto-
>       matically for variable numbers of contacts for each company?  That is,
>       (for example) if I have two companies (two records) and the first one
>       has one contact and the second two contacts, I want to be able to (if
>       both of these records are in the currently selected set) get a total
>       of three labels out of the same layout.  Although I asked (1) implying
>       the contact was a repeating field, it doesn't have to be that way if
>       that's the only thing that would prevent me from doing (2).  The main
>       criterion is one record = one company = 1 to n contacts.
>
>In short, no.  FileMaker Pro is capable of printing the body of a layout
>only once per record, not once per repeating field.  What you can do,
>though, is to save your file as a Clone of itself, close the original,
>import from the original into the clone, and split the repeating fields.
>Now, if you originally had 1 record with 5 employees, you will have 5
>records with 1 employee per record.  All non-repepating information will be
>copied into each of the five records.  You can set up some scripts to
>automate this procedure, although I will warn that this won't be the fastest
>beast in the world...    8-)

I do filemaker work for a lot of departments on my University. It is
literally AMAZING how many people wanna do what is being described here.

The most powerful way to do this is to have one database that keeps track
of the companies, and another that keeps track of contacts, then they
can use lookup's to get whatever information between the databases. The
side affect is that you usually have a situation where you have to TYPE
the name of the company in the contacts database, and if that is spelled
wrong it wont work right. A solution to this that I have implemented
is when a contact is entered (this is a person database, so there is a
first name & last name field) the name is concatenated and then a lookup
is performed to a calculation field in the main database to get a n
ID number, if none is found i put '<<NOT FOUND>>' into the field and then
I have a script that runs every 24 hours (thanx to Userland Frontier 2.0)
that goes through the database, finds all these 'illegal' entries
and prints them out for the appropriate person to fix. This situation
gives me the MOST flexibility, especially since you know SO much more
about the contact, rather than it just happened (for example, I have
counselor's keeping all their case notes right in the contact database).

>   PS  I saw something a while ago about being able to select a record based
>   (oops, I mean select a layout) based on a field in a record, but I can't
>   find the thing I saw; could someone refresh me on this; I thought I might
>   be able to switch layouts per record or something like that.
>
>From within the ScriptMaker script editor, you can choose "Go to Layout
>[Specified by Field <XX>]", where <XX> is a field.  The article you saw was
>probably mine describing how useful this feature can be.

This is very nice... thanx for the tip BTW.

>Good luck, and happy FileMaking!
>
>-Nick "At least I don't need a SoundBlaster to play nice music" Triantos

HAHAHA... Apple Sound Chips > SoundBlaster!!! I think I have talked to you
before, on tech support lines! :)

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   _/_/_/_/ _/_/   _/  _/ _/ _/_/_/   Jamie Thingelstad               624-4037
      _/   _/  _/ _/_/_/ _/ _/_/      Technology Coordinator