| Home Files | FileMaker 101 Tutorial Series |
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This is an accumulation of three years writing monthly articles for My Mac Magazine. They loosely follow my own progression with the application. Articles 1-25 are all tied together in the central FM 101 database file, with linked example files, available on the downloads page, as either a version 3-4 or 5 file. Articles 26 on are new, download from the article itself.
| Articles | Descriptions | |
| 1. | Fields | Basic fields, serial number, concatenated text calculation, creation and modification dates. |
| 2. | Indexing | What indexing does, and some cases where you don't want it. |
| 3. | Layout | Basic layout techniques, with several commands and tricks to speed up design |
| 4. | Global Fields | A search-and-replace with globals, as well as an Undo |
| 5. | Relationships | Defining, keys, related fields, setting keys with portals or value lists, calculations with related fields |
| 6. | "Finds" with Globals | Using Globals in "Finds," saving found sets with Copy All Records, globals with portals |
| 7. | Duplicates | Marking duplicates, either first or last entries, summing records |
| 8. | Globals and Portals | Using Globals with Portals for navigation |
| 9. | First Mark by Lookup | Marking first entries only automatically with a lookup. |
| 10. | Synchronizing Files | How to strip duplicates from imports, or update records from an import, synchronizing two files. |
| 11. | Calculated Keys | Alphabetic Portal, Clairvoyance |
| 12. | Global Containers | Alternating Rows, Outline rows using global container fields and calculations |
| 13. | Imports & Lookups | Import Order (and disorder), Lookups, Value list using a related field |
| 14. | Self-Relationships | Using self-relationships, identifying records w/ globals keys. Calculations w/self-relationships. |
| 15. | Globals & Filtered Portals | Get the Records you want in Portals, using global keys to reset the portal. |
| 16. | New Records via a Constant | Universal new record creation using a global and constant relationship; in cases when "allow creation of related records" won't work. |
| 17. | Documentation, Internal | Naming and organizing the elements within your database. So that you can remember what things are and what they do. |
| 18. | LoopLoop | How to use Loops to “walk” through a found set, making decisions and/or numbering records. Creating an Outline report form. |
| 19. | Date & Time | Date & Time can be used as numbers, finding ranges, concatenating as a key for a Log file |
| 20. | Auto-Enter or Lookup? | Auto-Enter by calculation allows Relookups on a Key; Auto-enter Lookup does not. How and when to use each. |
| 21. | Multi-Key Value List Window | How to use a multi-key field for portable many-to-many relationships, including conditional value list windows. Also simple Passwords |
| 22. | Walking the Relationships | Use relationships to move between and perform operations on different sets of records during scripts. |
| 23. | Help! | Attaching a built-in Help system to a multi-file database |
| 24. | Tracking Items | How to track an item, both when it is used and when it is not used. Also shows some "before & after" portals, and highlighting rows in a portal. |
| 25. | Bookmarks with AppleScript | How to use AppleScript to enable web browsers to bookmark web pages directly into a bookmarks database. (Most functions Mac only; Bookmarks are cross-platform.) |
| New Articles | ||
| 26. | Auto-Enter Last Date | How to compare the value in a field to the most recent previous one entered using the Last(self-relationship::field) function. |
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