Novice Drop down list question

[peter4jc]

Hello,

 

I come from a VB background. I'm really liking many of the simplicity features of FileMaker and today I've stumbled to my very first problem that has lead me to post help on this forum.

 

I have a field called SalesmanID which is a Dropdown List

It has a Value List called SalesPeople that has EmployeeID as the value field and FirstName as the display field.

 

When I select an employee from the DropDown list the EmployeeID appears rather than their FirstName.

 

How do I make it so that the field shows the FirstName but stores their EmployeeID?

 

 

Thanks

[David Head]

First, you would redefine your value list to display only the second field. Then, if you format the field to display as a pop-up menu, the name will remain displayed but the ID will be stored. Other than that, there are workarounds to display the selected name while hiding the stored ID.

 

On a side note, be careful with your value list. In the event that you have two staff with the same first name, you will only ever see the first person. This is because the value list you have set up uses the index of the field rather than all existing records. Again, there are ways around this but just a heads up to you. smiley-wink

[peter4jc]

Yes I saw that using a popup menu will do what I want. This will work for now but for other uses I still need to learn how to do what I asked so my question still stands for help.

 

Could you help me with the workaround you mentioned?