FileMaker Pro 9: The Missing Manual

Views

In the Contact Management database example, you learned how to add to and edit your new database with only one record onscreen at a time (see Saving a clone of your database). This view is a common way to look at your information, but it’s far from the only way. In fact, there are three possible ways to look at a database: form view, list view, and table view.

The one-at-a-time approach to viewing records you saw in Chapter 1 is called form view. In list view, you see lots of records in, well, a list. If they don’t all fit in the window, you can use the vertical scroll bar to scroll through them. If you’ve used a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel, table view will look familiar—it looks a lot like a spreadsheet, with one row for each record and one column for each field.

To switch among views in any FileMaker database, use the View menu. Choose View → As Form, View → As List, or View → As Table. You’ll see what each view looks like as you learn about them on the following pages.

Note

When you design a database, you can add clickable buttons, tabs, or other handy means to switch among views. For example, the Contact Management database you used in Chapter 1 has view tabs built into the template (see Figure 1-5). You can even turn off certain views if you want. If your database holds mostly digital photographs and makes no sense in table view, then you can make sure no one ever sees it that way. (You’ll learn how in Chapter 5.)

Form View

In form view, you see only one record ...