filemaker pro 11 the missing manual phần 2 potx

67  :     Advanced Find Techniques Figure 2-7: The Edit Saved Finds dialog box shows all your saved finds. You can sort the list with the “View by” pop-up menu. You can sort alphabet- ically by name, by creation order or in a custom order, by dragging the arrow to the left of each find’s name. Use the Duplicate button as a starting point for creating a new find that’s similar to one you’ve already saved. The Delete button cleans up finds you won’t be using any more. 3. Click Edit, double-click the Vocalist find, or simply press Enter. The Specify Options for the Saved Finds dialog box appears. If you’re changing the action of the find, it makes sense to change its name. In this case, though, you’re repairing a find that wasn’t set up correctly, so leave the name the same. 4. Click the Advanced button. The Specify Find Requests dialog box appears. The actions that create the find requests are in a list. In this case, there’s only one action, which is equivalent to a request in a manual find. 5. Click the Find Records action, and then click the Edit button (or double-click the action). The Edit Find Request dialog box appears. Here you can change the way this specific request does its work. Currently, it’s set to search in the Address field for the word “central”. 6. Click the action in the top list, then scroll the list of fields near the bottom left of the window until you see the Notes field. Click it. You’re telling FileMaker to search the Notes field instead of the Street Address field. The Change button becomes active as soon as you select the field. The change doesn’t take place until you click the button or press Enter, though. 7. Click into the box on the right marked “Criteria”, and then type vocalist. You’ve entered the second part of the changed request, which is to search the field for the word “vocalist”. See Figure 2-8 for the settings. 68 FM P : T M M Advanced Find Techniques Figure 2-8: This dialog box changes a find request from searching the Street Address field for the word “central” to search- ing the Notes field for the word “vocalist.” The Action pop-up menu lets you choose between “Find Records” and “Omit Records”. In a single request, you can search more than one field, which is like setting up an AND condi- tion in Find mode. Multiple requests within a single find are the same as an OR condition in Find mode. 8. Click Change, and then click OK or Save in all the dialog boxes until you’re back on your People Detail layout. If you click Cancel on the last dialog box, then FileMaker warns you that all your changes will be discarded. Use this technique when you’re not sure if your settings are correct. Since the Delete button doesn’t warn you before it deletes a find request or a saved find, you can use this technique instead as a fail-safe. When you click Cancel, FileMaker discards all the changes you made while the dialog box was open. Try out the edited search, by choosing it from the Find pop-up menu or by choosing Records➝Saved Finds➝“Vocalist (notes field)”. This process involves a lot of steps, but once you understand the Edit Find Request dialog box, the process is easy. You can use a slight variation to create a new saved find without performing it first. Just choose Edit Saved Finds, and then click New instead of selecting an existing find and editing it. Tip: Practice creating finds from scratch comes in handy when you start scripting static finds (page 488). Several find script steps use the Specify Find Requests and Edit Find Request dialog boxes you’ve just seen. 69  :     Editing What’s in Your Fields Editing What’s in Your Fields Once you’ve found the records you want to work on, it’s time to learn timesaving and creative ways to revise and format your record text. Each field is actually like a mini–word processor, with features that you’re familiar with if you’ve ever written a letter on a computer. You can do basic things like select text, and cut, copy, and paste. You even have a Find and Replace feature, and flexible text formatting powers. Drag-and-drop Editing In addition to copying and pasting, you can drag text from one place to another. But first, you have to turn it on in FileMaker’s preferences, like so: 1. In Windows, choose Edit➝Preferences. In Mac OS X, choose FileMaker Pro➝Preferences. The Preferences dialog box appears. 2. Select “Allow drag and drop text selection”. If you don’t like using drag and drop, just come back here and turn it off. 3. Click OK. The dialog box disappears. Now that dragging is turned on, here’s how it works: 4. Make a new record (Records➝New Record). Now you’ve got a nice clean work surface. 5. In the Notes field, type FileMaker has editing super power. Next you’ll drag to fix it. 6. Double-click the word “super”. The word is highlighted to let you know it’s selected. 7. Drag the selected word between “has” and “editing”. Figuring out where dragged text is going to land can be tricky. If you look closely, you see that in addition to the text you’re dragging, a little vertical line moves along under your arrow. You can see this in action in Figure 2-9. (Unless you have excruciatingly precise mouse movements, you probably have to fix the spaces between words. Unlike most word processors, FileMaker isn’t smart enough to figure out where they go for you.) 70 FM P : T M M Editing What’s in Your Fields Figure 2-9: When you turn on “Allow drag and drop text selection” in Preferences, FileMaker lets you drag selected text around with the mouse. Here, the word “super” is being moved after “has” by dragging. The little vertical line under the arrow shows you exactly where the text will go when you drop it. Tip: You can also drag text from one field to another. Instead of moving the text, FileMaker copies it. In other words, once you let go of the mouse button, the text is both where it started and where you drop it. If you want this behavior when dragging within a field, then hold down the Ctrl (Option) key while you drag. Using the Replace Command Sometimes the whole reason you performed a find is to change something in several records. Maybe you just noticed that your data entry person put “New Yorq” on all the records she entered. The first step to fixing them is to find them. Once your found set includes the proper records, you could change the City field one record at a time (especially if you’re billing by the hour). But you use your time better if you use the Replace Field Contents command. Here’s how it works: 1. Click the City field (it doesn’t matter which record), and then correct the spelling to “New York”. You’ve just fixed one of the records. All the others in the found set need the same fix. (Make sure your cursor is still in the City field or the next step won’t work.) 2. Choose Records➝Replace Field Contents. The Replace Field Contents dialog box appears (Figure 2-10). It has a handful of options that may not make sense to you yet. That’s OK; just choose the first one: “Replace with”. The new data you just typed is listed beside this option. 3. Click Replace. FileMaker now updates the City field in every record in the found set. When it’s done, you’re still sitting on the same record, but if you use the book icon to click through the records, then you see that they’ve all been changed. 71  :     Editing What’s in Your Fields WORKAROUND WORKSHOP Find and Find Again Unlike the Find/Replace window in most other programs, FileMaker’s doesn’t politely step aside. If you try to click in your database window to switch back to it, then FileMaker just beeps at you. In fact, you can’t do anything else but find and replace unless you close the Find/Replace window first. You can always move the Find/Replace window around the screen by dragging it, but if your database window is big, or your screen is small, the Find/Replace window can really get in the way, keeping the very results it’s finding hidden behind it. Here are a few pointers to help you cope: Make sure the Find/Replace window is as small as possible by dragging the resize handle in the lower-right corner. Like most windows, it’s resizable, but its smallest size is almost always big enough. If you close the Find/Replace window (click Close or press Esc), then FileMaker keeps the last-found item highlighted. Since FileMaker remembers all your settings, you can al- ways open the Find/Replace window again, and then con- tinue searching where you left off. Wouldn’t it be great if you could click the buttons in the Find/Replace window without having it open onscreen? Fact is, you can. In the Edit➝Find/Replace menu, you see two handy commands: Find Again and Replace & Find Again. (They’re grayed out unless you’ve done a Find/ Replace operation, though.) Choosing these menu commands is just like clicking the Find Next and Replace & Find buttons in the Find/Replace dialog box. FileMaker also offers one more convenient shortcut. If you have some text already in a field, and you want to find the next occurrence of the same text, then you can choose Edit➝Find/Replace➝Find Selected. This one command does the same thing as copying the text, opening the Find/ Replace window, pasting into the “Find what” box, clicking Find Next, and then clicking Close. All the other options in the Find/Replace window stay just as when you last used them. These handy commands all have keyboard shortcuts that, somewhat confusingly, only work when the Find/Replace dialog box is closed: • To find the next occurrence (Find Again), just press Ctrl+G (�-G). • To replace the currently selected text, and find the next occurrence (Replace & Find Again), press Ctrl+Shift+G (Option-�-G). • To find other occurrences of the selected text, press Ctrl+Shift+H (Option-�-H). Note: The Replace Field Contents command can be very dangerous. It really does change every record in the found set, even if that wasn’t your intent. Make sure you’re absolutely certain you have the right found set before clicking Replace, because you can’t use the Undo command afterwards. Saving a backup copy of your database just before using Replace Field Contents is advisable. 72 FM P : T M M Editing What’s in Your Fields Figure 2-10: The Replace Field Contents dialog box has three op- tions: “Replace with”, “Replace with serial numbers”, and “Replace with calculated result”. You’re con- cerned only with the first option right now. It replaces the contents of the current field in every record in the found set with whatever’s in the current record when you click Replace. So, in the current record, type what you want to be in every record before you call up this dialog box. (You’ll learn about serial numbers in Chapter 3 and calculations in Chapter 8.) Find and Replace Like your word processor, FileMaker has a Find and Replace feature. Also as in your word processor, you can (and should) use Find and Replace tools as often as possible to automate your editing process and eliminate retyping. Suppose one of your clients is called MegaBank. For one reason or another, they decide to change their name to Bay Lout Bank. Unfortunately, you have 27 folks in your database with the old name, and the name is sprinkled in Company Name fields, Notes fields, and so on. You could look through your records one by one and fix them yourself, but you’re never going to become a database maestro that way. Instead, do a Find/Replace operation. FileMaker fields can hold a lot of information, and people often put things like let- ters, emails, product descriptions, and other potentially long documents into a field. In cases like this, the Find/Replace command is just as useful as it is in your word processing program. Since FileMaker has fields and records to worry about, though, its Find/Replace dia- log box is a little more complicated than what you may be familiar with. Luckily, the concepts are simple, as shown in Figure 2-11. The Find/Replace dialog box lets you search for a snippet of text in one field or all fields of one record or all found records. It can also replace every occurrence of that text with something new—either one at a time, or all at once. Note: Don’t confuse Find/Replace with Find mode. Find/Replace is for finding text in one or more fields and one or more records. Find mode is for finding records. You’ll probably use Find mode much more often than Find/Replace. For the full story, see the box on page 76. 73  :     Editing What’s in Your Fields Figure 2-11: In FileMaker, you use the same dialog box both to find text and to find and replace text. If you aren’t replacing anything, don’t click any of the Replace buttons. The text you’re looking for goes in the “Find what” text box. If you’re replacing it with something new, type that text in the “Replace with” text box. (If you want to replace some text with nothing, making it go away, then leave the “Replace with” box empty.) Here’s FileMaker’s version of Find and Replace: 1. Choose Edit➝Find/Replace➝Find/Replace. The Find/Replace dialog box opens, as shown in Figure 2-11. Tip: Turning on “Match case” ensures that FileMaker looks for an exact uppercase and lowercase match. For example, when “Match case” is turned on, “Kite” and “kite” don’t come up as a match. If you turn on “Match whole words only”, FileMaker eliminates partial word matches. For example, “Drag” matches “Drag” and not “Dragon.” 2. Under “Search across”, select “All records.” You’ve just told FileMaker you want it to look through all the records in the found set. 3. Under “Search within”, select “Current field.” “Current field” refers to the field you were editing when you opened the Find/ Replace dialog box. If you weren’t clicked into a field when you opened the dialog box, FileMaker still lets you select the “Current field” option, but it com- plains when you start the find, so if you want to search a specific field, close the dialog box, click in your intended field, and then reopen the dialog box. You can select any combination of Search across and Search within. Here’s how that shakes out: • All records and All fields. FileMaker looks through every field on the lay- out for a match, and repeats the process for each record in the found set. • Current record and All fields. FileMaker looks through every field on the layout in the current record only. • Current record and Current field. FileMaker looks only in the current field. When it reaches the end of the text in that field, it stops. 74 FM P : T M M Editing What’s in Your Fields • All records and Current field. FileMaker looks through the current field, and then moves to the next record. It keeps looking through records for more matches, but it pays attention only to the current field. 4. From the Direction pop-up menu, choose All. The Direction pop-up menu controls which way FileMaker goes when it starts its search. To figure out what that means, imagine a long string running through your database. One end is tied to the first letter of the first field of the first re- cord in the found set. The other end is tied to the last letter of the last field of the last found record. This concept is pictured in Figure 2-12. Figure 2-12: The Find/Replace command expects you to give it a direction. To decipher what that means, you have to do a little visualization. Here’s a picture of the imaginary string, starting at the beginning of the first record, and stopping at the end of the last. When you click into a field, and the insertion point sits there blinking in front of a letter, it’s marking a spot on the imaginary string. If you’re not clicked into a field, then FileMaker decides to mark the string right before the first letter of the first field of the current record. In this example, your cursor is sitting right there between “Made” and “Dragon”. Product Classic Diamond Kite Color Red and Blue Description This kite is a classic! It makes a perfect f… Record #1 Product Hand Made Dragon Kite Color Yellow and Red Description From tip to tail, this kite measures a full… Record #2 Product Eagle Kite Color White and Black Description This is our finest kite. Record #3 • Forward. FileMaker starts looking at your current spot on the string, and moves forward (towards the end of the string). When it gets to the end, it beeps. • Backward. FileMaker starts looking at your current spot on the string, and moves backward (towards the beginning of the string). When it gets to the beginning, it beeps. • All. FileMaker starts off just like a Forward search. When it reaches the end of the string, instead of beeping, it loops back to the start of the string, and keeps looking. It finally beeps and stops when it gets back where it started. Now that you’re through setting all your Find/Replace options, it’s time to de- cide which button to click: 75  :     Changing Text Appearance 5. Click Find Next. • Find Next starts FileMaker looking. When it finds a match, it highlights the match right in the field. The Find/Replace window stays put, so you can click Find Next as many times as necessary to find what you’re looking for, and then click Replace to change it to your replacement text. Click Find Next again to go to the next match. • If you feel the need to work more quickly—say you’ve done Find Next and Replace a couple times, and everything looks in order—click Replace & Find instead. It replaces the current match, and then finds the next one all in one step. Repeat as many times as necessary. • If you’re sure you want every match replaced, then click Replace All, and FileMaker does the entire find-replace-find-replace dance for you. File- Maker always asks you if you’re sure about Replace All first, just in case. For instance, if you have some clients whose last name is Anderson and others whose company name is Anderson, you may not want to use the Replace All option. You need to check each occurrence individually to make sure you don’t accidentally change someone’s last name. 6. When you’re done with the Find/Replace window, click Close. Note: Find/Replace has no undo, and since you can replace across all records and fields, it can be dan- gerous. Be careful with this command. Also, it can take a long time because it looks through the individual words in each field. If you’re searching across all records, and you have lots of records, be prepared to wait a while as FileMaker does its magic. Changing Text Appearance Much like a word processor, FileMaker has commands to set the font, size, style, and alignment of the text in a field. When a field is active, or you’ve selected some text in a field, you can choose from any command in the Format menu. Also like a word processor, you can apply formats to paragraphs of text and you can even create tab stops within a field. Text Formatting You can use all the usual commands (font, size, style, alignment, line spacing, and text color) individually, or use the handy Formatting bar. 76 FM P : T M M Changing Text Appearance UP TO SPEED Find with Replace vs. Find/Replace You may be wondering how Find mode combined with Replace Field Contents is different from Find/Replace (dis- cussed earlier in this chapter). In fact, they’re very different, but deciding which to use can be confusing. Here are some guidelines: • Find mode is significantly faster at finding things than Find/Replace. In Find mode, FileMaker uses some- thing called an index, which lets it find 10 matching records out of 293,000 in an instant. Find/Replace, on the other hand, looks through the fields the same way you would: one by one. It’s faster than you, but it still takes time. • Replace Field Contents always operates on one field across the entire found set. Find/Replace, on the oth- er hand, also lets you replace across all fields in just the current record, as well as all fields in all records of the found set. • Replace Field Contents always replaces the entire contents of the field. You can’t replace every occur- rence of “teh” with “the” for example. You can only give a new value that replaces everything in the field. • Most important, Replace Field Contents assumes you’ve already found the records you want, and al- ways modifies every record in the found set. Find/ Replace adds a second layer of searching, as it scours the record or the found set looking for matches. So why would you ever use Replace Field Contents? Some- times you really do want to replace everything in the field every time, just like in the Company Name example on page 72. Also, Replace Field Contents is significantly faster at changing lots of records than Find/Replace. It takes just a few seconds to accomplish what Find/Replace would spend several minutes doing. In general, if you want to find records, use Find mode, but if you want to find certain bits of text, use Find/Replace. Likewise, if you want to replace everything in a field in every record, use Replace Field Contents, but if you want to replace little bits of text, use Find/Replace. (If you want to replace little bits of text across thousands of records, study first, or be prepared to take a vacation while your computer thinks about it.) Finally, you have no reason not to mix Find/Replace with Find mode. Since Find/Replace searches records only in the found set, you can establish a good found set first to make your Find/Replace go faster. (For example, if you’re replac- ing “teh” with “the” in the Notes field, then you may as well find all the records that have “teh” in their Notes fields first, since Find mode is so much faster than Find/Replace.) Each of these text formatting commands lets you override the original formatting for a field on a record-by-record basis. That is, changing a word to bold on one record doesn’t affect any words in any other record in the database. So while it can be handy to make the occasional note stand out (as you see in Figure 2-13), profes- sional database designers rarely use these commands to format individual chunks of text. Instead, they change the formatting of a given field in Layout mode. Formatting performed in Layout mode will apply to every record in the database. You’ll learn how to do that in Part 2. [...]... in the box at the bottom of the window If FileMaker figures out the correct spelling, then, in the list under the Word box, it selects the spelling And if you’re the type who calculates your gas mileage every time you fuel up, you’ll be delighted to discover that FileMaker keeps track of how many words you’ve spelled wrong so far, and tells you at the bottom of the window 80 FileMaker Pro 11: The Missing. .. keystroke, obviously, because in FileMaker pressing Tab jumps you to the next field See page 3 02 to learn how Field Controls make plain old tabs work the way you’re used to Like most word processing programs, FileMaker gives you two ways to create tab stops: the Text Ruler and the Tabs dialog box 78 FileMaker Pro 11: The Missing Manual Changing Text Appearance Setting tabs in the Text Ruler With your cursor... want the indent set You’ll learn how to set tab stops on the next page When you turn on the Text Ruler, FileMaker adds a space along the top of the window to hold the ruler When you’re in a field, the ruler itself appears in the portion of this space directly above the field, with the zero point on the ruler lined up with the left edge of the field (When you’re not in a field, the ruler just measures the. .. word FileMaker doesn’t like the looks of Plus, if you right-click (Control-click on the Mac) the underlined word, and then, from the shortcut menu, choose Suggested Spellings, then FileMaker offers suggestions for spelling the word properly If you see the correct spelling among the suggestions, just click it and FileMaker will replace the misspelled version From the same menu, you can also tell FileMaker. .. (Figure 2- 21) You access Preview mode via the View menu, the Mode pop-up menu, or Ctrl+U (⌘-U) (see page 19) Note: When you first go to Preview mode, the page count says “?” instead of the number of pages FileMaker doesn’t know how many pages it’ll print until you force it to count them If you drag the Page Slider all the way to the right, then FileMaker shows the last page On its way there, FileMaker. .. of each tab stop manually Here’s the drill: 1 With your cursor in a field choose Format➝Line Spacing➝Other The Paragraph dialog box makes its entrance 2 Click Tabs Ta-da! You found the Tabs dialog box (Figure 2- 16) Tip: If the Text Ruler is showing (Figure 2- 15), then you can get to the Tabs dialog box quickly Just double-click any tab stop in the ruler The Tabs dialog box opens with the clicked tab... Figure 2- 18 82 FileMaker Pro 11: The Missing Manual Preview Mode and Printing Figure 2- 18:  Out of the box, FileMaker uses a Spelling Language that matches the language of your operating system But you can use a different language if you prefer Just select it from this pop-up menu As you can see, FileMaker even has a medical language dictionary that keeps it from balking at all your ER terms Use the New... width of the content area.) Left indent First line indent Right indent Figure 2- 15:  Like most word processors, FileMaker has a text ruler that lets you position margin markers right where you want them When you drag the Left indent arrow (the one on the bottom), it moves the First Line arrow (the one on the top) with it, so first drag the Left indent arrow where you want it, and then move the First... from the fields they identify All the formatting you learned about in Chapter 2 can be applied to text objects The spell checker even works in Layout mode, except that it checks text objects instead of data inside fields And if you’re using the visual spell-checking feature (page 82) , you’ll see the dotted red underlines if you make a typo or misspell a word 100 FileMaker Pro 11: The Missing Manual. .. lets you tell FileMaker which records to print 84 FileMaker Pro 11: The Missing Manual Preview Mode and Printing Figure 2- 20:  On Mac OS X, FileMaker s special print options are tucked away in a secret place You have to choose FileMaker Pro or FileMaker Pro Advanced from this unnamed but very important pop-up menu In this example, you can see the field styles you can pick from if you elect to print a . you force it to count them. If you drag the Page Slider all the way to the right, then FileMaker shows the last page. On its way there, FileMaker counts the pages, too. The process may take some. underlined in red in the box at the bottom of the window. If FileMaker figures out the correct spelling, then, in the list under the Word box, it selects the spelling. And if you’re the type who. them. When you drag the Left indent arrow (the one on the bottom), it moves the First Line ar- row (the one on the top) with it, so first drag the Left indent arrow where you want it, and then