FileMaker News

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Download the Windows FileMaker Pro 8.5v2 Updater

FileMaker has released an updater for FileMaker Pro 8.5 and FileMaker Pro 8.5 Advanced that addresses certain Windows Vista issues.

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Going Beyond FileMaker Pro

Featuring: FileMaker Pro 8.5 Advanced

As the name would imply, FileMaker Pro Advanced contains many advanced features that allow you to manage, extend, and customize your FileMaker solutions beyond FileMaker Pro. Along with the Database Design Report and the Script Debugger, you have more tools to help you develop better databases.

Exclusively in FileMaker Pro Advanced, you can create Custom Menus for your database solutions. Imagine removing unneeded menu items like "Delete all records" or " Replace field contents" from the interface users who do not have the proper privileges. Not only can you remove menu items but you could create your own menu items. Combining menu items with your own scripts, you could create menu items like, "Add new person", "Duplicate invoice", or "Email customer."

Additionally, you can create your own helpful tooltips, or "mouse overs." Tooltips are a great way of helping a user understand the correct use of a button, field, or tab on your form. Tooltips can also display additional information on a crowded layout or form. Say you only have room for a name and phone number on a list of contacts. By adding a simple calculation to a tooltip, you can display additional address information about the contact just by hovering over the contact's name in the list.

- Rick Colcock, Corporate Systems Engineer, FileMaker, Inc.

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Listen to the Podcast: eBook for FileMaker Pro 8.5

Listen to Steve Schwartz talk about his FileMaker Pro 8.5 Visual QuickProject Guide. If you've never created a database before, the task can be daunting. Recognizing that you don't necessarily want or need to know about every FileMaker Pro 8.5 features, this compact guide is the quickest route to creating a functional, organized database.

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Luxury Real Estate Agent Uses FileMaker Pro

Small Business Success

Dreyfus Properties, a brokerage in Palo Alto, California, deals in multi-million dollar homes, mansions, and sprawling properties in one of the state’s most prosperous regions, just minutes from Silicon Valley. Dreyfus uses FileMaker Pro to keep track of his contacts and to log info about the homes he deals with. “When you start to write down all the amenities and features these homes have, you end up with a lot of information,” he says. “We use FileMaker to keep everything in one spot.”

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FileMaker Web Seminars: Connect with Knowledge

Get back to the basics with the Getting Started with FileMaker Pro 8.5 web seminar. See how to build a custom database from a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and then customize with all the new features of FileMaker Pro 8.5.

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Support Corner

Need a question answered?
FileMaker Customer Support is dedicated to providing our customers with the best service possible. Either find your answer online via the FileMaker Knowledge Base, or call us.

Tips and tricks

Use Calculation Fields to See Graphic References
FileMaker Pro remembers where you've stored a graphic using a path to the graphic file. You can view the path by creating a calculation field with a simple calculation. This tip shows you how.
By Susan Prosser, technical editor

FileMaker Pro remembers where you've stored a graphic using a path to the graphic file. You can view the path by creating a calculation field with a simple calculation -- the container field that stores the graphic reference. You can see this technique in action by opening the FileMaker Starter Solution: Photo Catalog (located in "Home - Collections").

You'll need to define a new calculation field and call it "Image Path." The calculation will equal the name of the picture container field which is "Picture." That's it.

Place any graphic in the "Picture" container field, and make sure you've stored it as a reference to see the calculation in action. When you store a graphic in the file, the result of the calculation field is just the name of the graphic file. But when you store the file as a reference, you'll see a full path to the graphic file. The result could look something like this:

size:200,313
image:images/rebecca.jpg
imagemac:/Bawlmer MCU/ current work/Advisor/January 2007/images/rebecca.jpg

The first line (beginning with "size:") is the physical dimensions of the graphic, in pixels. The second line (beginning with "image:") is a relative path from the FileMaker Pro file to the graphic. The third line (beginning with "imagemac:") is a full local or remote path.