I am trying to lookup value from another file based on a relationship
which matchs a joined field in two files. The problem is that it is not
retuning an exact match in the relationship. Therfore returning
incorrect lookup values.

ie

172164:3R73A517C44AB6AWA
Returns
172164:3R73A517C44AB6QHA

It matches everything but the last few letters ie AWA & QHA. Is there
a limit to the amount of characters that can be matched??

Any help appreciated.

Tim

Timbo <thook (AT) hookplastics (DOT) com.au> wrote:

You don't mention your version of FM, but because you're looking up from
"another file" instead of "another table" I'm going to guess FM 6.

Your key values are too long without spaces. In FM 6, text fields will
index up to 20 characters per word, but not more. In your example
above, FM doesn't see any difference within the first 20 places, so your
matches are invalid.

The solution is to break the field into several words using spaces. The
colon is not a word-separator in FM6, it is in FM7. Once the spaces are
interspersed, FM 6 will (if I remember correctly) index up to 160
characters for the purposes of relationship matches.

Remember to insert spaces on BOTH sides of the relationship.

Lynn Allen
--
Allen & Allen Semiotics www.semiotics.com
FSA Associate Filemaker Design & Consulting