Changing field from an edit box to a drop-down list

[erichd]

I set up my database of sources/quotations for my PhD thesis with a box for topics associated with each record. I initially set up the topic field as an edit box, thinking that I could then enter multiple topics simply by adding hard returns.

 

Anyway, that doesn't work and I'd like to change this field from an edit box to several drop-down lists. The problem is that I have several different values in the drop down list for each record. Ideally, I'd like to separate these values so they display in different boxes (eg, Topic 1, Topic 2, Topic 3, etc). At present they appear just in one box but when I export the topics, say, or sort by topic, Filemaker only recognises the first topic. Hopefully that makes sense. I'm a novice here...

 

So I have two questions.

 

First, can anyone suggest how I might seperate this edit box field out into two different field entry areas (Topic 1, Topic 2, etc.) without manually going through all my records?

 

Second, it also seems impossible to tell Filemaker that I want to have two or more values assigned to one record from one single field index of topics. So I've had to duplicate the field ... but that's not ideal. Is there something I'm missing?

 

Thanks for any solutions.

 

Opps!

[Databasic]

Hello Erichd

 

There is a way to loop through the record and parse out the individual topics based on the hard return - but hopefully a guru like Alan Hunter or David or Loretta ect will help you out - way above my level of patients.

 

In the second part - If you list the topics in a list displayed as check boxes you can make multiple selections for a single field. Cheers