FileMaker Pro 12: Beginner Tutorials
Working with the Database / Status Toolbar
Subtitles of the Movie (FileMaker Pro 12: Beginner / Working with the Database / Status Toolbar)
The Status Toolbar, this area the top that I'm circling gives you access to some of the most common features in FileMaker. We're going to go over just about every feature in the window in Browse Mode even down here to the bottom so you have one place to access this information. But in some cases we're going to save the detail for later. So the basic idea behind the Status Toolbar is that it recreates features that are under the Records Menu or the View Menu. But they're much easier to access, going up to the Records Menu and finding what you want may take longer than simply clicking on something. So in the case New Record it's a very common thing you might want to do, rather than going Records and pull it down do that, it may be much quicker to click on it, much more visual for some people. Of course you have also have the Keyboard Command which can be even faster. Basically FileMaker is trying to give you options for every type of person. Some people like the Menu, some people like the Keyboard, some people like the Status Toolbar. So let's start from the left-hand side and go across. We've already discussed briefly the Rolodex here, let's you walk through your records and notice that it dims out on the left side when you're out the farthest end. Here's a Slider, you can slide all the way to the records you might want, something like that, all the way to the end, all the way to the beginning, that's commonly the way I use it is all the way to the beginning and all the way to the end. I don't usually type in a Record Number or slide it, it's just too difficult to do. Plus what does record 24 mean? Inside of a different Found Set, let's say 50 records, Record 24 might be one record and inside a Found Set of 100 records it might be a different record. It's all relative depending on the Found Set and the Sort Order what Record 24 or 23 or whatever would pertain to. And then of course along with the Slider, you can type in the record number you want but again I don't use that very often. So once you type it in, hit Enter or Return and it'll go right to that record but again I don't use it very often because I just don't know what Record Numbers are, they're relative, it's a relative number, numbering it within the current Found Set. So not very useful but maybe you'll like it, I don't know it's up to you. Typically what I'll do to find somebody like Jennifer Norris who's showing on the screen is use the Find Feature which we'll go over later. Right next to it you'll see this little visual indicator that shows you what your Found Set is and your Total Records. It's right next to it also, 41 out of 43 but this gives you an idea that you have 41 records in light green and 2 records out of the Found Set in dark green. Just a visual indicator so you can look up there and you say oh yeah I'm looking at most of my records right now. Now if you click on it, it will switch the Found Set for you and now you're looking at a lot less of your records. You'll only look at two of them, so you can see how that works, you simply look through that and you can keep toggling between those Found Sets. And that's really the same feature as Show Omitted Only; if you do that it does exactly the same thing. So also right next to it you'll see that it says 41 of 43 Found, now if we go ahead and say Show All Records right here, you notice it doesn't say found it says Total. If we come over here and say Omit a Record, you know we're back to the Found Set so Found essentially means that you have less than all the records showing. Then you'll see right next to it Sorted or Unsorted. Those are the two most common choices but we also have Semi-Sorted and you'll see that occasionally. So Sorted means it's alphabetical or a chronological, Unsorted means it's in Creation Order meaning it's not sorted. Semi-Sorted means that you may have edited a record or added a record after you sorted it, so it's not quite sorted. In addition if you come over to the Sort Button here which is also under the Records Menu, you'll see that it depends on whether you have this option checked or not but we'll go over this later. That's the Persistent Sort, do you have Persistent Sort on or not? If you Persistent Sort on you're never going to see Semi-Sorted. Okay so let's move on down here, you got Show All which just shows all records, you have New Record which we've gone over before, it just makes a new record. Delete Record, we tried that also, again those are under the menus here, I usually memorize these Keyboard Commands because I use them a lot. Then we have Find which we're not going to cover here but this allows you to find records using criteria, such as I want to find Glen Hernandez. I could type in Glen and find his record or type in John and find probably multiple records. Now notice this little icon next to it, the little Down Arrow that means you can click on this Icon or click and hold. If you click and hold it's going to show you the different options which we'll go over later. And so the last one we have on here is Sort, now not all the features from the Records Menu are here but you can customize this Status Toolbar which we'll go over later. Then you have your Quick Find Area which we're going to spend some time on, well not right now but it's the Quick Find. It's kind of like Find but it's a quicker way to do this and now right below this and still on the Status Toolbar is the way to switch Layouts. You see we have Contact and My Table, now if you remember My Table came from an earlier exercise where we were showing you how you could add a table then we deleted it. So if we went to that layout there would be unknown, the table doesn't exist anymore. View As, we have Form View, List View which we'll show you how to do and Table View which is the, the view you start off with. Table View is kind of like a Spreadsheet View and again you can get to these right here as well if you want to. Then you have Preview which corresponds to Preview Mode. You have Edit Layout which is the same as Layout Mode right up here, then we have this little button here which allows you to show your Text Formatting Options and that's also available here as well, Formatting Bar. You can show and hide it, in fact you can show and hide your Status Toolbar here as well. And you also have the ability to show and hide your Status Toolbar down here. Now let's go back to this, your Formatting Bar, I typically don't use this in Browse Mode and I will explain why in a second but here's how you use it. You first have to click into a field and then it will become available, it will tell you what font you have; you can change the font, the size, the color. You can do highlighting, bold, italics, underline, your justifications left, center, right or full. But generally I don't do this in Browse Mode and that's the one reason why it's not defaulted to being open because what happens is if you change something in Browse Mode it overrides Layout Mode. And as you'll see when we get into Layout Mode you can go in there and say I want this font to be 36 point on this layout but on this other one I want it to be 12 point. As soon as you change it in Browse Mode that doesn't work in Layout Mode any more so you can't have a print out be in one font or one font size and a, a screen for viewing on screen being on another font and another size. So you generally don't want to do that unless you really know what you're going to get out of it, what the consequences are going to be. So there's that area, now down here when we showed you the Status Toolbar to show and hide that, you also have what percentage zoom you're in. You can go smaller or bigger and you can get as big as you want up to 400 percent and once you get to the larger size, if you want to quickly go back to 100, you just click here and it goes right back there instead of having to zoom down all the way. So that's pretty nice and of course you have your Mode Change here which we've shown before. But I'll recommend that in Browse Mode you won't use the Plus and Minus often, it's mostly for Layout Mode that you would use that for.
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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