VISUAL QUICKPRO GUIDE FileMaker Pro 7 Advanced FOR WINDOWS AND MACINTOSH [Electronic resources]

Cynthia L. Baron, Daniel Peck

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External File References

Table Occurrences in the same database are automatically created in the Relationships graph. But before you can create a relationship or use scripts or value lists from an external file, you have to create a file reference that tells a table where to look for this related information.

There are no limitations on the number of file references you create. That's very good news if you are not sure where or when a file with that information might be available. To cover all possible situations, you can add multiple file referenceslike oneon a network and one on a local hard drive. The paths to these references are searched in the order that you list them.

To create a file reference

1 .

In the table where the reference will be created, choose File > Define > File References.

2 .

When the Define File References dialog box appears, click New (Figure 6.8).

Figure 6.8. A file reference must be created before you can use elements of an external file.

3 .When the Edit File Reference dialog box appears, click Add File (Figure 6.9). In the Open File dialog box, choose the file to be referenced. Click OK three times to finish.

Figure 6.9. Use the Add File button to create a file reference to the File Path List.

Tip

Although you can use a wild card (*) in place of a full IP address (like 10.0.0.1) to force FileMaker to search the network for the referenced file, doing so will slow down the entire network. Always specify an IP address.

File Path References

File references have different formats depending on whether they are local files (on the same hard drive) or on a network. A file reference can also be absolute (with a full path name) or relative (in the same directory as the file that contains the reference).

In addition, file references can be restricted by platform (Windows or Macintosh) or by whether the referenced file is hosted by FileMaker or by a file server, so that FileMaker will only find the file if it is on the specified type of computer.

You can edit file references manually by changing the text in the Edit File Reference dialog box (Figure 6.10).

Figure 6.10. File paths can be edited manually in the File Path List.

Here are some examples:

Relative (Generic). file:documents/data.fp7

Full path (Mac). Filemac:/MacintoshHD/documents/data.fp7

Full path (Windows). Filewin:/C:/MyDocuments/data.fp7

FileMaker network. fmnet:/10.0.0.1/data.fp7

Network path (Windows). filewin://someonescomputer/sharedocs/data.fp7