User manual

Table Of Contents
Chapter 5 | Sharing data 108
7. Select whether or not to apply the current layout’s formatting to the exported data.
Working with external data sources
You can define data sources in a FileMaker Pro file to access data from:
1 other FileMaker Pro files
1 SQL databases that use ODBC technology for sharing information
When you define data sources in FileMaker Pro files, current data from external databases is displayed
in your files. You can use FileMaker
Pro to add, edit, delete, search, and sort data in the external files.
The following procedures provide an overview of how to access data in external FileMaker Pro
files or external ODBC data sources.
Working with external FileMaker Pro files
To set up a file to access data from another FileMaker Pro file:
1 Add tables from other FileMaker Pro data sources to the relationships graph in the current
FileMaker
Pro file.
1 Add fields to layouts to display data from the other FileMaker Pro file.
Working with ODBC data sources
To set up a file to access data in supported ODBC data sources:
1 Install and configure an ODBC driver for the external data sources you want to access.
1 On the computer that hosts the current FileMaker Pro file, define a system Data Source Name
(DSN) for each ODBC data source you want to access.
1 Set options for the ODBC data sources you want to access (for example, whether users are
prompted for a user name and password).
1 Add one or more tables from the ODBC data source to the relationships graph in the current
FileMaker
Pro file.
1 Add fields to layouts in the FileMaker Pro file to display external data.
1 Optionally, add supplemental fields to external tables and layouts to display calculation and
summary results based on data stored in external ODBC data sources.
Select fields
from this list
Select to apply formatting
FileMaker Pro exports
these fields
To export related fields, select
the related table from the list