FileMaker Pro 9: The Missing Manual

Opening and Closing Database Files

Each database you create with FileMaker Pro is stored in a file on your hard drive—just like your Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and all the PowerPoint presentations you’ve ever created. This file contains all the information about how the database is structured, plus all the information stored inside it, which means you can open, close, copy, or back up a database as you would any other file. But if you need a bit more explanation, this section explains how to do those tasks, including some quirks that are particular to FileMaker files.

UP TO SPEED: A Tour of the Templates

FileMaker Pro’s standard templates make it easy to perform routine tasks found in typical businesses, schools, and homes. Just choose a template and get right to work. Chances are one of the 40 templates built into FileMaker is set up to manage the kind of information you’re working with, so you waste no time on setup. Here’s an overview of the nine basic template categories:

• The Business - Finance set has the bean counters in mind. Track employee expenses and work hours (billable or otherwise), and generate purchase orders.

• The Business - General category is an assortment of useful templates from document management to to-do lists. With this category, you can keep track of computer files, create a searchable and printable product catalog, and more.

• If you need to keep track of real things—physical assets, customers, inventory, or just about anything else—use the Business - People & Assets category.

• Managers and planners can start in the Business - Projects category, where they’ll find databases to help plan events, track problems, schedule people and other resources, and manage tasks and projects.

• See Education - Activities if you’re organizing field trips or other events that require you to keep track of who’s coming or who made a nice donation to the school boosters’ fund.

• The Education - Administration set helps you administer your school’s tasks. You can send emails to groups of people (to get a big turnout at your fundraising event), store notes about the research you’re doing into how long sleepy students stay awake after lunch, or just keep track of student’s names, addresses, and how to get in touch with their parents if they play hooky.

• Education - Resources is for collectors and those who keep track of collections. Librarians can manage a lending library, IT departments can make lists of their computer equipment, and anybody who needs to manage electronic assets, like graphics files or PDF documents, can do so right in FileMaker.

• The Home - Collections category includes databases to tell you who borrowed your OK Go CD and which computer has your vacation photos from your bike tour of Italy last summer.

• FileMaker is the people’s database, so it’s no surprise it comes prepared to tackle real problems. Home - General gives you a place to store Grandma’s vegan apple pie recipe, helps you send email invitations to the big family reunion picnic, and lets you keep track of who’s allergic to bee stings.

Opening a Database

To open a database that already exists, open FileMaker Pro and choose File → Open Database. Now select the file you want to work with (see Figure 1-7). If you prefer, you can find the file using Windows Explorer (Windows) or the Finder (Mac OS X), and double-click its icon.

When you open a database, you’ll see one or more windows on your screen. If you’ve opened the Contact Management template you created on Creating a New Database, you have one database open, and that database has one window displayed.

Figure 1-6. The Contact Management template is an ideal way to create a simple database that contains information about people, like their names, email addresses, and phone numbers. It can hold up to two addresses for each person, and you can even store a picture with each contact—a handy feature if you have trouble putting a face to a name.

Figure 1-7. When you choose File → Open, you see the standard dialog box that lets you find the file you need. A drop-down menu lets you choose the specific type of file you’re interested in opening. (As you can see, FileMaker can handle more than just its own files. You’ll learn more about that in Chapter 17.)

WORKAROUND WORKSHOP: The Other New Database Dialog Box

If you don’t see the box pictured in Figure 1-5 when you choose File → New Database, you may have told FileMaker to stop showing it to you (probably by turning on the “Do not show Quick Start again” checkbox also shown in that figure). To get the template-filled box back, follow these steps:

1. Click Cancel in the dialog box that did appear, if you haven’t already. The imposter window goes away.

2. If you’re on Mac OS X, choose FileMaker Pro → Preferences. If you’re on Windows, choose Edit → Preferences. The Application Preferences dialog box appears automatically, with the General tab in front. At this point, you can change a handful of settings that apply to the FileMaker Pro program itself.

   Make sure “Show FileMaker Quick Start Screen” is turned on.

3. Click OK. Bye-bye preferences.

4. Choose File → New Database again. Now the window shows, with the full complement of templates.

If templates aren’t your bag, you may find the New Database dialog box a bit of a drag, since you have to turn on “Create empty database,” and then click OK every time you make a new database. Instead, just follow the steps above, but turn “Show FileMaker Quick Start Screen” off. Now, when you choose File → New Database, you’ll see the stock-standard “Create a new file named” dialog box right away.

Closing a Database

To close a database, close all its windows in FileMaker: Choose File → Close or press Ctrl+W (⌘W). When you have more than one database open, it isn’t always easy to tell which windows go with each database.

If you’re not sure what to close, there’s an easy way to close all the windows in all the databases you currently have open. Hold down the Alt key (Windows) or the Option key (Mac), and then click the trusty File menu. On Mac OS X, the Close command is gone, replaced by a more powerful Close All. On Windows, the command is still called Close, but despite the name, it too closes all open windows. Choose it and FileMaker closes all its open windows, which also closes all your open databases.