About This Book
FileMaker Pro comes with a printed manual and an impressive online help system. These are actually pretty helpful resources—if you’re a programmer, that is, or if you’ve been working with FileMaker for a while. Between the manual and the help system, you can figure out how FileMaker works. But you’ll have to jump back and forth between page and screen to get the complete picture. And neither source does a great job of letting you know which features apply to the problem you’re trying to solve.
This book is designed to serve as the FileMaker Pro manual, the book that should have been in the box. It explores each feature in depth, offers shortcuts and workarounds, and explains the ramifications of options that the manual doesn’t even mention. Plus, it lets you know which features are really useful and which ones you should worry about only in very limited circumstances. Try putting sticky tabs in your help file or marking the good parts with a highlighter!
FileMaker comes in several flavors, and this book addresses them all. FileMaker Pro, the base program, takes up most of the book’s focus. FileMaker Pro Advanced is an enhanced version of the program. Like the name promises, it contains advanced tools and utilities aimed at making development and maintenance of your databases easier. Its features are covered in Chapter 12 and 19. FileMaker Server lets you share your databases more safely and quickly than FileMaker Pro’s peer-to-peer sharing. Learn about Server in