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

Creating Related Data with Portals

One nice thing about portals is that they are more than a way to display data from one table in a different table. They also give you a way to create new records in the destination table based on information from the source table. When you enter a new record with a portal, the key field in the related table has the contents of the match field in the main table entered automatically.

To enter data in related tables using portals

1 .Go to the current table layout where the portal will be added, and switch to Layout mode (Control+L/Command+L).

2 .Make sure the layout has enough room for the portal. If it doesn't, drag the Body tab down to resize the part.

3 .Click the Portal tool. Click on the layout and drag the pointer out and down to size.

4 .

Choose File > Define > Database (Control+Shift+D/Command+Shift+D). When the Define Database dialog box appears, click the Relationships tab.

5 .Double-click the relationship connector (=) to bring up the Edit Relationship dialog box (Figure 6.31).

6 .Make sure that "Allow creation of related records" is checked for the table that you will add records to. Click OK twice to finish.

7 .Switch to Browse mode (Control+B/Command+B) if you aren't there already.

8 .

Click in a field in the first blank row of the portal (Figure 6.32). Enter data in any of the fields in that row.

The data you entered is contained in a new record in the related table.

9 .You can switch to the related table to see the new record (Figure 6.33).

The key field in the new record of the related table is automatically filled in with the data in the current record of the source.