Can I combine some fields? 1

[Tearose]

This 10 year old database (FMP5.5) with 6000 entries has 4 comment fields. We've decided it would make more sense to have all entries in these fields combined into one Comments field, and delete the others. How can I do this without overwriting any of the comments?

 

[JeanW]

If I understand you correctly, you want the data from 4 fields into 1 field.
And from that moment on only use that (5th) field to put comments in for the new records ?

One possible way to go:
Make a comment05_t field - text.
Make a script to put the comment01...comment04 into comment05.

Something along these lines:
Set field (comment05);comment01 & "¶" &
comment02 & "¶" &
comment03 & "¶" &
comment04

You can extend this with more "¶"'s to make more spaces between the comments.

To avoid to adapt all the records manually, put this script into a one time loop for all the records.

To stay at the safe side, just remove after that the 4 comment fields from the layout, but not (yet) from the field definitionlist, you never know.
After a while, when you're sure everything is OK, you can rename them.
I usually rename the fields instead of deleting them....

 

[Tearose]

Thanks, Jean. I knew I could count on you. I suspected it would be similar to the multi-field-search field setup, but I was hoping there might be something easier built-in.
Jill