You are here: Advisor.com » Advisor Guides » FileMaker.Advisor.com » The Advisor Guide to FileMaker Pro database software for advanced users and solution developers, covering FileMaker Pro, FileMaker Advanced, FileMaker Server, FileMaker Mobile, and more, for Windows and MacOS.
Making changes to the data model of an existing application can be tricky, which is why it's important to think things through before you build your system. But, from time to time, business rules change and so must data models.
Out of the box, the only visual cue FileMaker Pro gives users to indicate the current record is a three-pixel black line. Here's how to improve on that.
Let users save or cancel a record -- without requiring a gloal field for every field the user will enter and a script to set the global field to the regular fields.
Field validation has been available in FileMaker Pro for a long time, but you've had very little control over the message and the buttons in the validation dialog. Script triggers change all that.
Users accostomed to working with spreadsheets often forget to hit the Tab key and instead type the Return key to go to the next field. Here's how to prevent the mess this creates.
Values that have carriage returns in them get broken into separate values for the purposes of a value list. Here's a workaround that lets you use text blocks containing carriage returns as values in a value list.
Here's a formula that tests to see if a record belongs to the currently logged-on account, but also allows the full-access password to see all records.
Often, data you want to import into FileMaker Pro comes to you in a format that is not conducive to the proper design of a database. Here's a parsing technique to speed things up.
By John Mark Osborne, Database Pros president and owner, and FileMaker Advisor technical editor
NEW: If you're new to FileMaker, or not ready for advanced developer advice, check out ADVISOR BASICS of FILEMAKER PRO -- the how-to journal just for you.
Complex hierarchies can be tricky. Here's how to treat top-level items, work with hierarchical found sets, let users expand and collapse records independently, and more.
Using conditional formatting lets you divorce the feature from the table schema, allowing the progress bar to work in any table and in any file without modification.
By John Mark Osborne, Database Pros president and owner, and FileMaker Advisor technical editor
You're using ESS to link a FileMaker Pro database to an external database, and you've changed some values. Some of these values sync and some don't. Here's the answer to this mystery.
By Chris Moyer, technical editor; and Bob Bowers, techncial editor
Most users don't even know how to cancel a script, but many users know how to accidentally type the right keys at the wrong time. So find out how to protect your solutions with the Allow user Abort script step.
By John Mark Osborne, Database Pros president and owner, and FileMaker Advisor technical editor
Indexing your data improves solution performance and can help you in many ways, but it can be a little tricky to figure out how it all works. Get to know the ins and outs of FileMaker Pro indexing here.
Find out what to do if you want to normalize contact data, but you don't have complete contact information.
By Chris Moyer, The Moyer Group CEO and FileMaker Advisor technical editor, and Bob Bowers, Soliant Consulting CEO and FileMaker Advisor technical editor
Effective deployment and administration of either version of FileMaker Server 9 requires you to open a number of TCP ports on the various machines that comprise the FileMaker Server 9 environment.
By John Mark Osborne, Database Pros president and owner, and FileMaker Advisor technical editor
By Chris Moyer, The Moyer Group CEO and FileMaker Advisor technical editor, and Bob Bowers, Soliant Consulting CEO and FileMaker Advisor technical editor
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