Cascading Dropdowns 2

[Jful23]

Happy Friday everybody!

Wondering if you can help out this poor gal before the day is over.

I am an experienced Access developer who has been recruited to develop a FP database and am having an issue that I can't seem to resolve.

I have two tables, Project and Employee, joined in a relationship by Project Name. On my form, I have a Project dropdown, which is working perfectly. I would like to create a second dropdown based on the first....for example, if I select Project 1 from the first dropdown, I would like the second dropdown to be populated with the related values in the Employee table.

Any suggestions are GREATLY appreciated.
Enjoy your weekend!
Regards,
Jamie

 

[JeanW]

FM 7 or lower ?

 

[Jful23]

Good evening!

I am using FMP 7.0.

Thanks for your reply!!

 

[JeanW]

Hi,

To set this up, you will first require a relationship which matches the project field to a project field in the same or another file.

Then set your valuelist to use values from the employee assign to projects, but select the option for "Only related values...", and specify your Project relationship.

Happy FileMaking

 

[Jful23]

Got it - thanks so much!!!

 

[Tearose]

I have this same problem, but I need more help. I really don't understand how to set up the Relationship. The book says "Create a file with 2 fields:List1 and List2." Where do I create this file? Does it mean another FileMaker database? Then, what I don't get is how to tell it which members of list2 should show up when I select a particular member of list1. Thank you to anyone who can explain this to me.

 

[JeanW]

It’s best to try some new techniques by making little files to try things out.
I think this is the case if the book says ‘Create a file...’
Later on you can incorporate the technique in your application.

Suppose you have a file ‘Food01’ with two fields, one for Type with Fruit and Meat as data and a second one, Kind with Apples, Oranges and Grapes for the fruit and Chicken, Beef, and Porc for the meat.
Six records in total. 3 record with Fruit as data and 3 records with meat, with the corresponding kind.

In your new file, Food02, you have 2 fields, Type (List 1) and Kind (List 2).
Create a relationship: ‘Food’, specify file: Food01, where type from Food02 (left) = ::type from Food01.
Create a valuelist ‘Type’, use values from field, specify, all values, specify file, ‘Food01’, field=Type.
Create a valuelist ‘Kind’, use values from field, only related values from relationship Food, use values from field ::kind.

Back to layout mode, format field ‘Type’ to show values from valuelist Type, and format field ‘Kind’ to show values from valuelist ‘Kind’.

Back in Browse, click in Type field, and the values will show from the field Type from file Food01 (Fruit / Meat), make your choice.
Go to field Kind and you will have the corresponding values from your choice in field Type......

If you need more help....
...btw, this is how it goes in FM 6...
If you have FM7 let us know...but the technique is fairly the same...

HTH

 

[Tearose]

That helped so much! but when I got to the last instruction, clicking on Kind, all 6 options were there, not just the 3 meat options. Was a step left out? (BTW, since I work for a non-profit, we have FMP 5)

 

[Tearose]

I figured out what the problem was. This line should have said Food01 instead of Food:
Create a valuelist ‘Kind’, use values from field, only related values from relationship Food, use values from field ::kind.
But the actual problem I had was misreading some of what was correctly written by you, and clicking the wrong spot. Once I tried again, I figured out the right way, then saw that it was what you had said to do. Thank you for putting in the details that the book left out.

 

[linda9]

Hi JeanW (or anyone else who knows the ins and outs of FM7),

Would you be able to provide the details of setting up cascading dropdown menus for FM7?

Thanks.

 

[JeanW]

Hi,

not that I don't want to answer, but to make it easy for you, with a sample file, take a look at:

http://www.nightwing.com.au/FileMaker/#fmp7

FWIW, one of the demos (the third) includes an example of a conditional value list in 7.

Make a copy from that file, and pull it inside out to see how it works....

Enjoy

JW