Category: FileMaker Tips

Now that there is no longer a global field type in FileMaker 7, I find that I often forget to go to the storage tab and click the Use global storage check box. Then later I find out the hard way. Something doesn’t work and after all sorts of investigations I figure out that my global field isn’t really a global. I feel pretty silly and have wasted valuable time.

Something that helps me avoid this is naming my global fields so that they all group together. In FileMaker 6, I was happily putting an underscore in front of each of my global fields like this: _InvoiceNum. That conveniently sorted my globals to the bottom of the alphabetical sort order where my clients wouldn’t stumble over them very often. In FileMaker 7, the underscore sorts to the top, so I’ve chosen to put a zg in front of the field name like this: zg_InvoiceNum. Not pretty, but it accomplishes my purpose.

I now can periodically just go to the bottom of my table field lists as I am developing and scan through the Options column of my globals to make sure they are all set as globals. Such a scan would be a great checklist item before turning over a solution to your client. I put it on my checklist.

If you’ve had trouble printing field definitions in FileMaker 7, it’s because the functionality has moved and improved. The print button is now in the field list under Define Database in the lower left corner.

The second thing to know to avoid frustration is that the Print button only prints selected fields. If one field is selected, only one field will print. If you want the full list of field definitions, just select all (Cmd-A or Cntrl-A) when in the field list and click the Print button.

You can now be selective about which field definitions you print. It’s not an all or nothing proposition anymore. Just shift-click to select a group of fields and cmd-click to select individual fields.

Now you can save trees when you print field definitions. You don’t have to print out a really long list just to see a few calculations in hard copy. Another benefit that developers will appreciate is that you can give your customer a selective list of field definitions for documentation or training purposes. That could be handy.

It’s easy to run out of room on your Relationships Graph. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to easily widen or narrow table occurrences (TOs)? You can move and resize TOs using the arrow keys. In this example, the Contact TO has been widened using Control-Shift-Right arrow. The Phone TO has been narrowed using Control-Shift-Left arrow.

You can also select the TOs with the keyboard by typing the letter of the TO in this case typing p selects the Phone TO and c selects Contact.

Here I just typed p to select the Phone TO and then typed Control-Right arrow to move the Phone TO over a bit to the right and then Control-Down arrow to move it down a bit. Couldn’t be any easier! [I created these two tables for an exercise in Learn FileMaker Pro 7 by Jonathan Stars which I reviewed on August 5th.]