Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!feeder.erje.net!us.feeder.erje.net!news2.arglkargh.de!news.mixmin.net!aioe.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Helpful Harry Newsgroups: comp.databases.filemaker Subject: Re: Filemaker - sorting Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2015 13:16:46 +1300 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Lines: 39 Message-ID: <190220151316467404%HelpfulHarry@BusyWorking.com> References: <89ec3722-5afd-4f2a-8a25-80fe64981d82@googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: Jp/9oU9M1zlaJJVaPVbMBQ.user.speranza.aioe.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org User-Agent: Thoth/1.5.4 (Carbon/OS X) X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.8.2 Xref: csiph.com comp.databases.filemaker:1994 In article <89ec3722-5afd-4f2a-8a25-80fe64981d82@googlegroups.com>, ihp98230 wrote: > I have several hundred different data base files in Filemaker format. I would > like to merge many of them so I am down to only a handful of large files but > still retain the ability to work within any one of them when that is more > convenient. > > I am contemplating establishing a new field in each file, and merge all of > the old files into this larger file. However I would still like to retain the > old file names but as a field heading so if I want to look up one specific > section I can still do so quickly and easily. > > It is easy to add an additional field to every Filemaker file, the question > is how can I do that quickly when there will be nothing in that field > initially. Some files can have thousands of individual records but i cannot > find any way to create a new field and then put the same thing in each of > those records quickly and easily. Doing it one file at a time could easily > take days simply using copy and paste, but doing it 50,000 times. > > Does anyone know a quick and easy way to do this? > > Any help would be appreciated. Probably the safest and easiest way is to initially make the new field as Calculation field that is set to be whatever text you want. i.e. NewField Calculation, Text Result = "FileName" where Filename is really whatever the name of the file is. Click out of all the Define Fields windows and FileMaker will create the new field with that data. Then go back into the Define Field window and change the NewField to be an ordinary Text field - it will retain the calculated data. Helpful Harry :o)