Autofill question from novice user

[earthtones]

I am relatively new to Filemaker. I am using an invoice template database that I have altered slightly and it has worked great so far. I have all the basic design concepts down and have manually converted all my business transactions to this new database. Here's my question. How do I get the fields to autofill all of one clients info when just their name is chosen? Each field will give me a drop down menu as to what's available for each field (i.e. name, address etc) but when I choose John Smith's name from the drop down, I want all the rest of John Smith's info to fill-in automatically.

 

Thanks for any help and look forward to consulting this board on a regular basis.

 

smiley_cool

[Jim_Shelton]

I thought I needed the same solution with company being the key field, but time quickly proved I had more than one person with a single company. So I followed this example for AHunter.

 

Re: Transactions Reporting Quandary

Well, the most common use of related value lists is to have two fields in Table B (let's say Category and SubCategory) and a main table, Table A, that also has Category and SubCategory fields; the tables are related by Category = Category. From the perspective of Table A you create a value list of Table B::SubCategory based on related values only.

 

In Table B your records might look like this:

 

Cuisines..........Main Courses

--------------------------------

Italian..........Chicken Parmesan

Mexican..........Chiles Rellenos

French..........L'Entrecote

Italian..........Scaloppine Alla Paesana

Mexican..........Carne Adovada

French..........Canard Aux Champignon

 

In Table A, you pick the main Category (cuisine) first, and the value list that drops down from the SubCategory (main course) field, you see only the related values: if you pick "Mexican" you see "Chiles Rellenos" and "Carne Adovada".

 

Quote:

So if the relationship shows all related values in Transactions for a Prospect, then there is no way to restrict the date range or other values

 

Well, not "on-the-fly", maybe, but if you anticipate doing it by date, you could create a new relationship based on the combo of whatever fields you're using to join Prospects and Transactions now plus (let's say) a global date field in Prospects and the Transaction Date in Transactions:

 

Prospect ID & "|" & g.SelectedDate

 

Prospect ID & "|" & Transaction Date

 

Then you'd need a new value list of related values based on that relationship and a calc field of ValueListItems, but now you can show only the dates you want.

 

 

You can also use a "multikey" strategy in which the same relationship can be deployed for more than one function, e.g.

 

Prospect ID & Case( not IsEmpty(g.SelectedDate), "|" & g.SelectedDate)

 

Prospect ID & "¶" &

Prospect ID & "|" & Transaction Date }

 

the hard return coded into the latter means that one calc field reconciles to two values (one above the other) and in a relationship either one will match up with a value on the other end, hence "multikey".

[earthtones]

That seems a bit complicated for the database I have. All my clients have one specific address and one specific company per client. Any simpler way?

[earthtones]

OH, here's my database layout. I started with the Filemaker Pro template for invoices. I have drop down menus for all fields and they work fine. I'm looking to autofill new invoices for existing clients. I want to enter the first letter or two of the existing clients name and then have the existing list drop down. Then when I choose the correct client's name, the rest fill-in.....simple?

 

Name

Company Name

Address

City

State

Zip

 

Same for ship to....

 

Then I enter supplier, but that's always me. It's a REAL basic way for me to do addresses and recepits from the same program and keep all income totals in the same place also.

 

 

Thanks in advance!!

[Jim_Shelton]

Have you tried the Auto complete using previously entered values?

[earthtones]

Not yet, but I'll try it. Where do I enter or change this setting?