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FileMaker Pro 12: Beginner Tutorials
Creating a Database / Quick Start
Subtitles of the Movie (FileMaker Pro 12: Beginner / Creating a Database / Quick Start)
When you launch FileMaker Pro or FileMaker Pro Advanced you are greeted with the Quick Start screen and if you haven't used FileMaker before this is a good place to start. It takes a lot of the Menu Commands you see up at the top and places them into one little dialog and the ones that you really need the most when you're starting off. You can see here you have the ability to create a new database, it simply asks you to name your file and then save it and it creates a brand new empty file which we'll get to later. You can also convert an existing file, you'll see in here. You have all different choices of types of files you can convert. Probably the most common would be an Excel file, it's either a .XOS or XLSX and you can just take that spreadsheet and make it into a database very quickly with this feature. You also have User Starter Solution, this is a common way to start for beginners as well. What you have here is a list of all the templates that are premade for FileMaker. I'm going to choose the Contact Manager, save it on the desktop and you'll see I have a nice, neat, clean Contact Manager. It's got all of the common fields, it even has a Google Map that once you put the address in there will show you on a Web Viewer where this place is. It's really a nice little way to start plus you have access to everything, you can go into Layout Mode and add a field or change the fields. If you get out of Layout Mode you can go into Manage Database, you can mess around with the fields, the relationships, the tables, whatever you want to do, you can change. You can go into Manage Scripts, so you can add a script or modify a script. You have full access to this complete solution so you can customize it to your needs. And you'll notice once we've created that file, it shows up under the Recent Files. In fact we can come down here and Manage the Favorites, come down here and hit the Plus Sign, locate a file and then when we're done you'll see that we now have it on the Favorite Files because you only have so many Recent Files. And then once it gets down to the bottom, if you'd like to open this log and have it right there and you can easily get to it or hide it if you want, you can have as many here as you want. If you don't want it anymore, just go into Manage Favorites, Select it, Subtract it, and it will no longer be there. And there's also this handy little Browse when you come into here, it just simply asks you which file do you want to open up, it's just the standard Open Dialog. And you also have a Filter if you have quite a few files underneath this Recent and Favorite Files, you can type in the letters of that and you notice once we type something different that doesn't match Contacts, it disappears. So you can if you have a lot of Recent and Favorite Files, this will make it easier to find it. So those are all great now on the right side, as we said this is for beginners. You have some excellent resources here. You have some video tutorials, hands on tutorials and this really just opens up the PDF documents that come with FileMaker so it's just an easy quick link to it. And then you can also go to a website that will allow you to go to forums where you can ask people and people are pretty generous with their time usually on the web and they'll, they'll answer questions for you for free as long as you describe your question very well. Now as I said all these things really with the exception of the tutorials are available under the Menus. For instance if we go to the File Menu, you'll see Create a New Database, New Database from Starter Solution, Open which corresponds to the Browse Button down here as well as converting because you can Open and choose what type of file you want to open up. So you have all that stuff available under these menus, everything's here plus much more. So once you get passed the basics of FileMaker, you really don't need this Quick Start Screen so I usually come in here and uncheck it and then it doesn't show up anymore unless you want it to. You can always over come here to the Menus, under Help and choose Quick Start Screen but during these tutorials we're going to use exclusively the Menus, we're going to skip this Quick Start Screen. But I wanted to give you an idea if you're just starting with FileMaker, this maybe a great way to start off easy and get into it easily.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | FileMaker Pro 12: Beginner |
| Author: | John Mark Osborne |
| SKU: | 34323 |
| ISBN: | 978-1-61866-046-6 |
| Release Date: | 2012-06-08 |
| Duration: | 16 hrs / 169 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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