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FileMaker 10

Subhead and Subtotal Bliss in Table View with FileMaker Pro 10

This feature is a great one to implement the minute you purchase FileMaker Pro 10. You can drastically beef up the value of table views by adding sub-summary parts – lots of them. This feature is so good that I plan to add about 20 table view layouts to my own Studio Manager product.

Here's what you usually get in Table view:

Tableview Unsorted

In this example, the table is sorted by Filename which doesn't have a sub-summary on the layout. I tried adding a sub-summary above for the Drive field, so when I sort by Drive by clicking the Drive column heading, I get this:

Tableview Sorted by Drive

I then added a sub-summary above for File Type and then a sub-summary below to allow me to show a record count. When I click the File Type column heading which causes a sort by File Type, I get this:

Tableview Sorted by File Type

The layout I created looks like this in Layout mode:

Tableview Layout

I like this a lot because all I had to do was create this layout which takes about 5 minutes max. And I have multiple views based on the column my user clicks. This is browsing your data! This empowers the user. If your data is such that you really need multiple sorts to occur, you  may need to add buttons for your sorts in the footer area.

Finally, the thing I like most is that I can do this with a single layout that is not complicated or hard to figure out. No tricks to remember or stacked fields or anything like that.

One more thing: the Modify Button. The user gets to add or remove fields to his or her view when he wants without going into Layout mode. Removing fields is especially great. You don't want a field? Just uncheck the checkbox:

Modify Table View dialog

Notice that you can add fields from here as well by clicking the plus button. If you do, you get this new Add Fields dialog:

Add Fields dialog

This is ease of use folks! [Continue to: Part 2]

2 replies on “Subhead and Subtotal Bliss in Table View with FileMaker Pro 10”

Janet,
Thanks so much for talking about this. The live subsummary feature is one of my favorites but I had not thought to implement it in table view. Seeing this is making my mouth water.
In addition, I spoke directly to FM engineers who told me the great news that doing subsummaries in browse mode is not a resource hog, in that when you change values the whole list does not resort, the currently edited & committed record just bubbles up /down to where it should be.
Thanks again and keep rockin.
Denis

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