Help

Creating a database
F
ILEMAKER PRO HELP 185
7. In the Repeating area, enter a number for Maximum number of repetitions.
If the field is a calculation field, you see the Specify Calculation dialog box instead of the Options
for Field dialog box. For Number of repetitions, enter the number of repetitions (up to 32,000).
8. Click OK.
9. Click OK to close the Options for Field dialog box, or click another tab to set additional field
options.
Notes
• Use the Data tab of the Inspector to change the number of repetitions displayed on a layout.
• In a repeating field, there's a separate display area for each repetition. If you define a field to
repeat, all repetitions have the same size and other field characteristics.
• Some FileMaker Pro features (like calculation and summary fields, and find requests)
include all the values in a repeating field. For example, when you create a find request,
FileMaker
Pro searches for values in all repetitions, even those that aren't visible in the
current layout. Other FileMaker
Pro features, like sorting, only use the first value in a
repeating field. For information about how a feature works with repeating fields, see the
Help topic for that feature.
• Values in a repeating field cannot be easily summarized to create a report. You can,
however, define a calculation that uses an aggregate function, which is similar to
summarizing data on a record-by-record basis.
Related topics
Getting the contents of a repetition in a repeating field
Setting up the display of repeating fields
Defining field indexing options
In FileMaker Pro, you can create indexes, which are lists of the words or values in a field.
FileMaker
Pro uses indexes for searching and for joining related tables. Indexes increase the speed
of searches but also increase file size.
FileMaker Pro uses different indexes for different tasks:
• Value indexes can be created for text, number, date, time, and timestamp fields, as well as
calculation fields that return results of these same types. Value indexes are used for joining
related records and for searches in number, date, time, and timestamp fields, and
calculation fields that return results of these same types. A value index is created by taking
each line of text (delimited by the carriage return character) and taking up to the first 100
primary character weights that all the characters in that line generate, according to the
Unicode Collation Algorithm. See
Choosing a language for indexing or sorting.
Note Some behavior is dependent upon the data source or drivers when using Japanese
collation that does not distinguish Katakana or Hiragana, either in full- or half-width. This is also
the case with Roman characters with accents.
• Word indexes can only be created for text fields and calculation fields that return a text
result, where they are used for searches. A word index is created by storing each unique
word in a field. Fields containing large amounts of text can generate large indexes, as each
unique word in the text field appears in the word index. This can significantly increase file
size.