Hi. I have three tables: managers, contacts and phone numbers. Each
manager can have multiple contacts, and each contact can have multiple
phone numbers. On the manager layout, I created a portal to list the
phone numbers for all related contacts. This works fine until I
realized that any contacts *without* phone numbers won't appear in the
portal at all. This is a problem since I use the portal and GTRR to
navigate from manager to related contacts (whether or not they have a
phone number).
As a possible solution, I made a script that creates a 'blank' phone
number everytime a new contact is created. The 'blank' phone number
lists the contact name and dutifully appears in the manager's portal.
The trouble is I can't think of a clever calculation/relationship that
can distinguish when to use the 'blank' phone number (ie, for a
contact without phone numbers) and when to ignore the blank (ie, when
a contact has one or more real phone numbers). This became especially
tricky with multiple contacts, phone numbers, etc...
Any suggestions? I also tried making a "Show All Contacts" button,
but that seems inelegant and doesn't really solve the problem.
Thanks!
FM Advanced 8.5 on Mac OS 10.5.2
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