FileMaker Pro 12: Beginner Tutorials
Creating a Database / Adding Fields to a Layout
Subtitles of the Movie (FileMaker Pro 12: Beginner / Creating a Database / Adding Fields to a Layout)
You may have noticed in the previous section when I exited Manage Database that I had no fields on the layout. That's because of a Preference Settings, let's show you what I mean by that. We're going to click OK to get out of Manage Database and you may have your fields listed up here and again that's because of a Setting in Preferences that I've turned off. You'll find Preferences under the FileMaker Pro or FileMaker Pro Advanced Menu on the Macintosh or under the Edit Menu on Windows. So I'm going to go into Preferences, once you get in there, whether you're on Mac or Windows, it will look essentially the same here with the Tabs across the top. And there are quite a few Preferences you can fiddle around with on here to make FileMaker work the way you want to. Take a look at these. We're not going to go over every single one, we're going to go straight to the Layout Tab and you're going to see that you probably have Add Newly Defined Fields to Current Layout checked. I've unchecked it because I don't want the new fields to be added automatically, it's really a Beginner Feature and it can really mess up your layout. If you have a beautifully designed layout with graphics and stuff what it'll do is it will put up your new field at the very bottom of the layout and if the body part is right at the bottom of where you have your objects. And of course you don't know what a body part is yet or maybe you do, it'll move that body part down and it will make a big ugly mess of things. And so I generally turn that off because I want to control when these get added. So I would recommend unchecking that and then what we're going to do is work with Layout Mode now to quickly put these fields on the layout. We're going to do a brief summary of this, just show you the basics so you can get started here in case you don't have fields on here, you need to add them. If you already have them, well you can probably skip this part right now. Now what I'm going to do is, I'm going to switch from Table View right here, over to Form View, this is the traditional view, Form View and it's what you typically see inside of FileMaker if you've used FileMaker before. There's also a List View as well and that's another traditional view but the Table View doesn't allow you to add any interface or not so much interface and it, it's really for a quick database that looks like a spreadsheet. Professional developers typically use just these two forms here right here. So we're going to go and click this button Edit Layout Mode which you can also get to by going to View, Layout Mode or coming down here and going to Layout Mode. But this is the easiest one, I'll be using this most of the time, Edit Layout. And I'm going to get rid of the Inspector for right now, it may or may not be showing, if it's showing just to get rid of it. So we need to see it and what you're going to see in here are a lot of things that you don't understand if you're new to FileMaker. You have a Header and a Body and a Footer, these are parts. Don't worry about that, all you need to know is that the Body goes from this point to this point and you need to get your fields into this area. That's not always true but for right now it's true enough. So we're going to go over here to our Tools, that's lots of them, again you, you'll learn as we go on. We're going to go to this one tool right here called the Field Tool and if you just simply drag out here, just to where you want it maybe right about there, let go, it'll give you a list of all of your fields. I'm going to start with the Company Field, make sure Create Label is checked, click OK and it's put the Company Field on there for me. I'll come and drag another field, let go, choose Name First and I'll keep doing this for awhile, keep going down this list. Notice that, that little Feedback there, show, show has it's lined up with that one? Very perfect, it shows how it's the same distance from the other one, so it makes it very easy to place things on the layout. So go to Name Last, drag another field out there, got it in the right spot, Address 1, we're just going to go right down the list here, add them all in here. Make sure we get it in the right spot here that looks pretty good; I think it's probably off but I'm not too worried about the way the layout looks right now. There we go, I'm going to do the City and if you're running out of room to put them in the Body part, you simply put your cursor over this line and drag the Body part down, it's that easy. Then we drag another field out here, State, another one, keep going down the list here. Postal Code, Phone and I think E-mail is the last one here, all we have, well we have Date of Birth, can't forget that one and it's just going to fit in here. So the rest of the fields are all, the Housekeeping Fields and you don't necessarily need to show these on a layout because again, they will work without showing them on the layout. And you don't really need to see them all the time, they're not that important or maybe they are to you, who knows? Well, we're going to Exit Layout and now you can come over here and you'll notice that when I try to click in that field, it says No Records are Present. Well that's because we have zero records, we have to create a new record either by going to the Records Menu or by clicking this button inside the Toolbar. Now we have one record and now you can see that we can get into these different fields by clicking into them. So I'm going to type in Datebase Pros and notice there's not enough room to display everything once you exit out of it? We'll get into resizing these fields and other things later on. We can type in John and then Osborne. So again we're showing you the very basics of how to work with Layout Mode, that's all I want to show you. Now I also want to show you that the Housekeeping Fields are already working for you. So if we go to Layout Mode and drag those fields on there very quickly, again we don't necessarily need to have them on there but I wanted you to see how they work. So we'll get them on there real quick, there we go, last one and I'm just double-clicking on the field, rather than clicking and going to OK, just a quick way to do that. We'll Exit Layout, you'll see that it's put in even though it can't display it all in the size of the field you have, it's put the Creation Date and Time in there, plus the count and that, we'll learn more about counts in security. So that's great, so we're just doing a little aside here to make sure you have all the fields in a layout, then make sure you're in Form View. So using a professional style of view and we're going to go right back to Manage Database so we can continue working on the things we haven't covered in here yet.
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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